Wednesday, April 22, 2009
News AJC scooped by local blogger!
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 9:12 PM
If you've spent much time on the Interwebs, you've come across the never-ending debate over the virtues of old-fashioned print journalism vs. blogging. (And if you haven't, you can some catch up here, here and most especially, here.)
Yesterday, the local blog Atlanta Unfiltered scored a big coup, posting a story — including the PDF documents — about a new county report indicating that fired DeKalb Police Chief Terrell Bolton "told a subordinate to falsify records to hide two luxury cars that the chief took home for his own use."
The day before, AU had reported that Bolton "took more than $35,000 in comp days after his supervisor refused to sign off on them," also according to the investigation, which was overseen by DeKalb Sheriff Tom Brown.
My first reaction was, Damn, I'm glad my beat isn't DeKalb police or I'd be getting a tongue-lashing from my editor about now for getting the shit scooped out of me by a blogger. In a follow-up story in today's AJC, the reporter acknowledges that he gained access to the report via Atlanta Unfiltered. Ouch.
Such a major get by a local blogger — which launched one month ago tomorrow — would seem to support the argument that such "citizen journalists" will soon replace daily newspapers as the go-to sources of up-to-date community information.
But, wait. Not so fast. The man behind Atlanta Unfiltered isn't your typical blogger. It's one Jim Walls, a 36-year newspaper veteran who toiled for nearly three decades at the AJC, most recently as editor over a team of the paper's top investigative reporters. In 2007, a year before he took a buyout, Walls was editor for one of the best investigative packages the AJC has produced in recent years, about Georgia's death penalty.
As Walls explains on his blog, he's currently shelling out his own money for public documents and he could use some help:
I gotta buy gas, and I gotta drive all around metro Atlanta. Also, I gotta eat, as does my family. I hope to earn a modest income from this enterprise. But I intend to offer all the public information offered on this Web site for free.
If guys like Walls can make a living maintaining an investigative blog — and generate the resources needed to fund his investigations — then perhaps "citizen journalism" can work as a business model. I guess we'll see. In the meantime, I'm glad someone with the skills and the know-how is out there plying his trade — even if his industry no longer has a place for guys like Walls.
Comments (18)
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I'd like to know the story behind why it was revised to include the "Atlanta Unfiltered" mention. Did Walls request it through channels at the paper? Or did the AJC just miraculously see the error of its ways? Also, notice that the AJC doesn't provide a link to Walls' site. I know, I'm never satisfied. Also what does "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has requested the February investigation results through the Georgia Open Records Act, but a copy was published Monday on blogger Jim Walls’ Web site Atlanta Unfiltered." mean? When did they request it? This morning?
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Actually, I neglected to point out that, as of two days ago, the AJC no longer has a police beat reporter for DeKalb — or anywhere else for that matter. Instead, there's one guy covering crime for all of Fulton and DeKalb. My guess is that we'll be seeing many such table scraps slipping through the cracks from now on. And I agree, DM, that Walls' status as a recent ex-AJCer probably helped him get a shout-out in the paper. Lord knows, when the AJC follows up one of our stories, it goes out of its way to avoid mentioning us by name.
AJC scooped by local blogger... for the 5000th time! And no, they never give credit.
You know what a great blog would be? One my atty. might want to start? A blog that simply catalogs all the times the AJC has stolen tips/stories/etc. from the LOCAL blogosphere, but has yet to establish a line of, er, credit for their sources and tidbits. It's not that hard to do. CNN and NYT writers/producers/anchors constantly cite their tips and info found on Twitter, for instance.. and give appropriate credit. So I guess you're not your "typical" SM savy "real" journo, Scoot? You're just a wee bit behind the "real" times. As for these not-so-"typical" bloggers of whom you hack... you are such a major horse's ass, Scoot Henry. If you bothered to ask or commune or what-the-fuck ever with any of the local bloggerati, you'd find journalism experience and backgrounds in a hefty number of 'em. For that matter, where's YOUR programming background to work the web free of some bankrupt clown like Ben Eason? I know, I know! Seems you aren't "typical." As for Walls... he needs to ask some rich-bitch to fund him a foundation. He's a charity case now. (Hint hint Jim, if you sprinkle a little "green" editorial around every now and then, I bet, say, Laura TURNER Seydel might be good for a few grand.... a Top 10 List of how "real" journos like to go green while relaxing at home doing "real" journalism, that sorta Oprah-style thing. And if you're too busy running around town, oh bless your heart as NO one in this town does much of that, Andy Shay's always good for whipping-up a list or two. But careful, don't want to exhaust anyone around this town! Multi-tasking... it's a bitch. Or so I hear.) Speaking of Oprah... time to send her a Tweet!
I think about two days ago the AJC had posted on its website a story about Cobb Chairman Sam Olens was fixing to announced a campaign for governor (which he later decided against). But that story came from the AP. Normally what would happen in this situation is that a wire editor would have seen the story online, phoned the Cobb bureau editor who would have 1) hollered that reporter for not having it first and 2) get Olens on the horn (I'm sure SOMEONE there had his cell, I did) to write their own story. I guess with a tenth the staff from six months ago they'll start slapping stories on their front page from twitter, whatever that is. Adios, AJC.
Even before the layoffs, nearly half of the papers news and editorial content was not from the AJC staff. It left me to wonder what were those people doing every day?
Why Dale, we're busy stealing ideas from bloggers. That's half the day right there. I keep hearing such complaints, but have yet to see any concrete examples -- just a lot of hyperbole. As for the issue of credit, that's only necessary when you're citing direct information. If I see something on a blog that strikes my fancy, I might decide to do a story. You don't link inspiration, just information, if that makes sense. The reason bloggers link news articles is because typically that's where the reporting's done. If a blogger does all the reporting themselves, then obviously there's no need to link.
And the re-writing of press releases generated by pitiful PR flaks and the duping over of statements from APD stooges (such as crime reports on yet-another jogger attacked in DeKalb County)is rarely cited as the, hmmm, "inspiration" in all that back-breaking "reporting" done by Cox Plantation field-twits such as Christian Boone. He's a real H.L Mencken, eh Dale!
Obviously you haven't been reading the paper, Grayson (although you did link to an article of mine on Twitter earlier this week). Should we count up the stories we've reported on this year -- I mean, since you're "committing journalism" every day and I'm just re-writing press releases. Some recent headlines from Grayson's "blog": "What Atlantans Like About Kwanza Hall" "Georgia Gang Too Cool For School" Now there's some news for ya -- Georgia Gang-er Jeff Dickerson drives a hog! Thanks for keeping us informed. I'll resume ignoring you now.
chooneajc - here is a concrete example from March 17th where I was challenged to prove that the AJC regurgitated other peoples writing (press releases, wire service articles, etc) rather than producing local content. After all, AJC defenders hang their hat on the fabulous local content. Approximately half of the AJC was not local content on the day that I checked it. My numbers are posted here; http://atlmalcontent.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/were-in-good-hands/ Half the local content was from non-staff sources. That appears to be a typical number. 300 articles every M - F and they had how many on staff before the layoffs? That is my productivity question.
so apparently what happened on that Olens-AP story was that the print Capitol Bureau reporter (I don't know who he is; maybe he just got fired, who knows?) wrote an item about Olens' announcement as part of the roundup items for print. To him it was a trivial matter as it was widely known among the folks in his circle. It was not featured prominently in the print paper. So now what happens is the AJC has a bifurcated structure where there's print people covering local news and web people reading wires, twitter, blogs and mostly holding their jocks in the office. But guess what? These two groups don't communicate. That is, the web jockeys didn't read the capitol roundup and the capitol reporter isn't going to sit around refreshing his ajc.com browser all day. There is no technological infrastructure for these two groups of people who essentially have the same jobs to communicate. It's more of a keystone kops operation than ever. And it was pretty bad before. This is what happens at shitty businesses where leadership has no idea about deployment of elementary data structures. I just love the leadership's pompous, condescending, intellectually-superior attitude when, intellectually, they couldn't find their asses with both hands.
Just ran across this thread, which is old news now, of course. But for the record: I send all my headlines to the news organizations in town (except Peach Pundit, which asked me quite rudely to PLEASE STOP! Which I did.) I sent the Bolton stuff to the AJC and was quite surprised to see the shout-out from the AJC's Bolton story. It was a live link from ajc.com for about 90 minutes, which got me a few hundred visits. Then the link was deactivated. I did ask the AJC later to refer to me as a journalist or reporter, rather than a blogger, which they did in a follow-up Sunday story.
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