Report aims to save watchdog journalism

A Duke professor is responding to the journalism industry’s SOS signal.

“Accountability through Algorithm: Developing the Field of Computational Journalism,” a report by James Hamilton, director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, suggests four ways to address the decline of watchdog journalism: more efficient data-analysis tools, digital dashboards for journalists, new watchdog positions for readers and interdisciplinary research between fields such as social science and medicine. Hamilton collaborated with Fred Turner, assistant professor of communications at Stanford University.

“We may be running an experiment at the state and local level where we get to see what happens when there’s less scrutiny of what officials are doing,” Hamilton said in reference to the decline of watchdog journalism.

He noted that newspapers facing budget cuts tend to first eliminate coverage of “things that are the hallmark of accountability,” including the environment, courts and education. These issues are the first to be bumped off newspaper pages because they require original and time-consuming reporting, Hamilton added.

Software developers, newspaper editors and deans of journalism schools were just a few of the 1,200 who recieved the report via e-mail Friday.

“Accountability through Algorithm” suggests that a more tailored version of GoogleNews can help reporters track stories back to the original article, in addition to finding related articles for research purposes.

The next generation of watchdog journalism would also cater more toward reader involvement to make news reading more personal. If readers want more in-depth information about a story, they will be able to link to related documents and articles. This model is also more cost-efficient because the content would be free up to a certain point—but readers would be charged for additional, more-detailed information.

And these proposals will be applied as soon as this summer. Hamilton said the DeWitt Wallace Center will work with Relevance, a Durham software company, in a new DukeEngage program during the summer of 2010. The goal of the program, which will accept three students, is to create open-source software to help reporters. This program is an example of the attitude necessary to the survival of watchdog journalism, Hamilton said. 

“I think it’s something university-based journalism programs are particularly well-suited to do,” he said.

Rosen added that the interdisciplinary nature of the accountability model is characteristic of the university setting.

The report is making headway outside of academia as well.

Steve Riley, senior editor of investigations for The (Raleigh) News & Observer, said because the newspaper has fewer people, it needs to “get smarter.” And the work being done at the DeWitt Center is one way to help the publication get there.

“We’ll take all the ideas we can use to get faster and... smarter data,” Riley said.

Riley has met with Hamilton and Sarah Cohen, Knight professor of the practice of journalism and public policy, several times. Cohen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, said she has interviewed at least 40 reporters since she came to Duke in July and all of them have been enthusiastic about the prospects of computational journalism.

Cohen said she is confident computational journalism can help save watchdog journalism, noting that reporters have to read dozens of Web sites and blogs every day—a relatively inefficient process that technology could modify and improve for the future.

“It’s not a matter of inventing new technology, it’s a matter of applying it to journalism,” Cohen said.