Chuck Lewis, investigative journalist, politely listens to wingnuts at Silha Lecture Wednesday

Charles “Chuck” Lewis, spoke at the University of Minnesota as part of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law anniversary.

He's pretty amazing, talking about public service journalism, editorial spinelessness, and private interests' intimidation.

During his speech, he disclosed some of the internal controversies that he's run into in his years as an investigative journalist for ABC, CBS, and the Center for Public Integrity.

My favorites:

• ABC canceled an extensive report on a situation near Love Canal where Occidental dumped three times as many chemicals into the local drinking water supply as at Love Canal. His footage and information from a hundred or so interviews never made it out of the network.

• The head of CBS put pressure on 60 minutes' Mike Wallace not to report on the cigarette industry because the he was also head of a cigarette company. Wallace supposedly told him to go to hell.

• The Center for Public Integrity was sued by Russian oligarchs. Lewis comments, "I hate when that happens." Their insurer lost more than $4 million fighting the case, which caused them to drop the center from its insurance. That spurred Lewis to raise a $5 million endowment and get guarantees that prestigious firms would do pro-bono work if the center was sued. According to Lewis, it's providing a model for the small non-profits that are sprouting up, to defend them from powerful moneyed interests. He said his legal philosophy now would be that a good offense is the best defense.

• He talked a lot about the dangers of private power (which is often discussed), mentioning that very few Pulitzers have been given for business reporting, largely because they face well-funded lawyers that threaten corporations' bottom lines. He rightly emphasized the impact of the Clinton-supported Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed these cautious (with news) reckless (with money) corporations to buy up the old media and help gut its public service arms.

Unfortunately, the earlier MPR interview, where Lewis stated that investigative journalism is about holding authorities accountable and getting the "bastards," brought in its share of wingnuts (not that those aren't awesome and true statements).

They asked at length, in a packed room, about the 9/11 commission, Pakistan, their travels to other parts of the world, and their problems with cable journalism (and one guy tried to get everyone to raise their hands to take a survey, really). Lewis was polite, but they wasted time for those of us who came to hear about investigative journalism, a different animal, after all, than MSNBC.

MPR Interview:

Is Star Tribune purposely burying lawsuits implicating Norm Coleman?

On Wednesday, the Pioneer Press reported that Norm Coleman canceled a campaign event after being confronted about a recent lawsuit accusing Coleman friend Nasser Kazeminy of funneling money to Coleman's wife Laurie through a business he owns.

The questioning, initiated by investigative journalists Paul McEnroe and Tony Kennedy of the Star Tribune, broke the story on the internet as the Minnesota Independent and others quickly figured the basic facts out. The Star and Tribune, although breaking the story, have generally buried in it their newsprint and online versions, as well as inaccurately titling the pieces to reflect Coleman's perspective rather than the news, and shutting down the comment boards. All this while Politico and other national news sources were overflowing with interest in the story.

Could the editor's approach have anything to do with the Star and Tribune's endorsement of Coleman last week, which they really hyped with graphics and a prominent place in both newsprint and online?

Friday I opened the paper expecting the Coleman news to have made front page, only to find it in the lower right side of the Metro section. Online, the headline was changed from "Suit alleges ally funneled $75,000 to Colemans" to "Coleman calls lawsuit sleazy politics," according to the Daily Kos.

The next day, it was the same deal, in the same weird location, with the second article being titled "Coleman calls on foes to 'stop attacking my family.'" To use a quote for a headline, wouldn't it have to be the basis of the story? The new story is actually about a second suit that was filed for the same reasons.

Neither article was given A spots on the website, the only way to find the first one for awhile was to look at the 'most viewed' box. The second article is represented only as a link under a story about Obama and McCain.

According to other bloggers, the Star Tribune first erased, and then began reviewing the comments to the article, many wondering why it was being given such short shrift.

"Due to the sensitive nature of this story, comments will be reviewed before being published."

As of now, no comments have been updated since early 4 p.m. on Friday.

As a side note, the footage of McEnroe confronting Coleman was made into an ad by the Franken campaign and the Star Tribune felt the need to explain that it didn't approve of the ad in a sidebar, both in the paper and online versions of the second story.

"The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee is running TV ads featuring a Star Tribune reporter questioning Sen. Norm Coleman about a lawsuit noted in this report. The video in the ad was filmed without the knowledge or consent of the Star Tribune."

Why the quibbling by Strib editors on such a big story with so many documents?

Seymour Hersch Profiled by Observer

Rachel Cooke of the Observer profiled legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersch. Over his long career, Hersch has broken such important stories as the My Lia massacre, Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia and the U.S.'s role in toppling Chile's president Salvador Allende. He's also contributed or followed up on reports on Watergate and Abu Ghraib among many others.

In the piece he condemns the Bush administration's march to war and criticizes the media's timidity in questioning:

"When I see the New York Times now, it's so shocking to me. I joined the Times in 1972, and I came with the mark of Cain on me because I was clearly against the war. But my editor, Abe Rosenthal, he hired me because he liked stories. He used to come to the Washington bureau and almost literally pat me on the head and say: "How is my little Commie today? What do you have for me?"

Richard Perle, former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, actually said he's "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist."

Coming from that mouth, how could that not be taken as a compliment.

Thoughts on the current state of the media: Part 1

Being a journalism student this year, after having experienced almost ten years in the workforce, has brought me to some interesting conclusions about the current state of journalism. For those who don't know, the newspaper industry is having a panic attack. Publishers and analysts decry dropping circulations, the cost of investigative reporting, plummeting profit margins (Oh no! Down to 35%!) and, of course, the internet. Today I want to talk about the drop in classified revenue.

For years, your local newspaper controlled the rates of classified advertising and made a substantial profit that subsidized things like cheap newsstand prices. For the first six or seven years that the internet was popular, newspapers maintained this dominance. But as people developed online classified systems that cost less for sellers and buyers, for instance monster.com for jobs, newspapers' classified share began to erode.

At first, things like monster.com weren't too much of a threat because they were still profit-based and usually charged for services. But when craigslist.org started to gain popularity on the mostly-free model, (that has really been the model of the internet age after all), newspapers didn't react.

The fact is, the consolidation of the industry under very few owners and their obsession with profit margins, made it impossible for the industry to react creatively. Newspaper owners were making money hand over fist. They didn't want to lose that. They already had dominance in the local classifieds, had they switched to a less costly model, say, even a dollar an ad, or god-forbid, free, they would have been able to beat off any threat from craigslist, instead they stuck to their old models, and slowly became obsolete.

Now publishers accuse craigslist of killing the newspaper industry in order to justify huge cuts in newsroom staff and talent. Jon Stewart recently brought this issue up in an interview with craigslist founder, Craig Newmark. His response:

"An even bigger threat is the pressure from Wall Street to get like 10 or 20 percent profit margins. Maybe papers should focus on better Web sites, delivering the news better through the Net."

Essentially, newspapers are sticking to that old logic. They cut quality, pander to the lowest common denominators and most simplistic ideologies, with the result being that they're no longer fulfilling the public need for critical, investigative, journalism. And they're surprised when the public starts to act like they're not relevant. Because of corporate consolidation, (thanks Clinton circa 1996), everything is lowered to the logic of profit margins, thus the industry doesn't have the flexibility to react when threatened by new technology or changing situations.

Craigslist isn't killing newspapers; newspapers' greed is killing newspapers.