A well-funded unbossed?

The New York Times reports today that a new non-profit backed by strong critics of the Bush administration will assemble a team of smart and skilled researchers to generate the kind of investigative reporting that American newspapers used to do. The group plans to give away the results of their investigations to any news outlets that are willing to print the information.

To my mind, that sounds like unbossed.com with a payroll.

Paul E. Steiger, who was the top editor of The Wall Street Journal for 16 years, and a pair of wealthy Californians are assembling a group of investigative journalists who will give away their work to media outlets.

The nonprofit group, called Pro Publica, will pitch each project to a newspaper or magazine (and occasionally to other media) where the group hopes the work will make the strongest impression. The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeeds in government, business and organizations.

Let's see...long-term projects? Check. Uncovering misdeeds in government? Check. Uncovering misdeeds in business? Check. Uncovering misdeeds in organizations? Check.

Looks like traditional media types decided it was time finally to get out from under the thumb of the corporations that dominate the news business, and get into the unbossed line of work. A warm welcome, then. Make yourselves at home, there's plenty of room and no end of stories to be uncovered.

Nothing quite like it has been attempted, and despite having a lot going for it, Pro Publica will be something of an experiment, inventing its practices by trial and error. It remains to be seen how well it can attract talent and win the cooperation of the mainstream media.

Attracting talent won't be a problem, if they're truly unbossed and unbought and paying good salaries to boot. Getting the cooperation of the traditional media, however—that's a problem, at least as we've discovered here at unbossed. We give away good, basic research here day after day, week after week. And the corporate news media usually sniffs and turns its back, or if it does pick up our work it will rarely give even a modicum of credit. The new non-profit, with all the traditional trappings of a news outlet, may get more respect however.

Pro Publica plans to establish a newsroom in New York City and have 24 journalists, one of the biggest investigative staffs in any medium, along with about a dozen other employees. Mr. Steiger said he envisions a mix of accomplished reporters and editors, including some hired from major publications, and talented people with only a few years’ experience, so that the group will become a training ground for investigative reporters.

Headquartered in NYC; that's a good start. It might help to inoculate their work against the D.C. insiders' smugness that has done such damage to traditional news reporting during the last generation.

On the other hand, with close proximity to Wall Street (especially since it will be led by longtime WSJ staffers), Pro Publica may turn out to be rather less than eager to investigate fundamental issues of work, labor, and class than these times desperately require. It's not just that the beat reporter who specializes in labor issues has all but disappeared from the American newsroom. It's also the fact that the US has during the last generation rushed rapidly backwards in the direction of the Gilded Age, with a stagnation of wages, pensions and health coverage collapsing, and astonishing gaps in income and wealth opening up between the richest Americans and everybody else. The richest one percent of the country now has an income that is nearly twice as great as the total income of the poorest 50% of the country.

Since the funding for Pro Publica will come from members of that top 1%, it's a legitimate question to ask whether its reporting will highlight basic facts such as these.

crossposted from unbossed.com

Zombies to the left, super-patriots to the right

crossposted from the zombie-kingdom, unbossed.com

It turns out that the founder of unbossed.com, em dash, is a zombie in the pay of Hillary Clinton. Until today, my guess is that you would not known that. Read the infinitely entertaining Mr. Richard Poe for all the chilling details.

Poe has spent many years working with the equally perspicacious David Horowitz to uncover all manner of left-wing conspiracies, shining particular light on the less real ones.

Poe has maintained an exhaustive, and still expanding, list of enemies. Some no doubt are personal enemies (neighbors, for example), others (perhaps the majority) are enemies of all mankind—enemies such as the late philosopher Karl Popper, a famous anti-totalitarian and exponent of the ‘Open Society’. Near the top of Poe’s list are George Soros and Hillary Clinton

Clinton, Poe has learned, has a secret “far-left agenda” that she’ll impose on America once she seizes control of the government. It turns out that our own em dash is part of Clinton’s secret conspiracy, as Poe has can now reveal.

Can it be that leaders of the leftwing blogosphere suck their nourishment directly from the swollen teat of Senator Clinton’s pendulous fundraising apparatus?

Oh yes, it can. There is a veritable army of zombie-bloggers sucking at Clinton’s pendulous swollen teats of nourishment. For Clinton "helped to start and support" Media Matters for America, which allegedly rents out some office space to the Center for Independent Media, which once gave a fellowship to em dash.

Em dash, you zombie, you’re out in the open now.

I must apologize then to faithful readers of unbossed.com, who might well feel that they have been duped by our pretence of reporting on facts and such at this site. There were no facts, there was no such. We are an army of zombies working to impose Hillary Clinton’s swollen teats upon an unsuspecting nation of innocents.

The recent post at unbossed tearing Clinton down for her bellicose foreign policy and hawkish advisers? A mere ruse to distract you, the reader, from our secret zombie endeavors.

The post denouncing Clinton and other Congressional hawks for disowning their 2002 vote that gave George Bush a blank check to invade Iraq? The description of Clinton the presidential candidate as a ”jellyfish”? Well, we fooled you, didn’t we?

And the cleverest ruse of all has been this one: Aside from taking the occasional swipe at Hillary Clinton, unbossed.com has mostly ignored her. Now that is deep zombie cover for you. You’d never have guessed whence we take our marching orders.