I have a cool, free app on my Blackberry Tour – WattPad – that offers “100,000 free e-books.” I downloaded The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and have been reading it occasionally on the subway or when I’m waiting in a doctor’s office.
The background on the Blackberry screen is a medium-dark gray and the type is white, making it easy to read, and scrolling is easy, so the reading experience is pretty good.
“The Man With the Twisted Lip” is adventure number six of the twelve original Sherlock Holmes short stories that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote for the Strand Magazine and that ran from July 1891 to July 1892.
The story is an unusual one for Holmes because no crime is committed and part of the story is set in an opium den, which was a legal operation – there were no laws against smoking or selling opium in England at the time.
The story is about a Mr. St. Clair, who, as summarized by Wikipedia,

…has been leading a double life, one of respectability, and the other as a beggar. In his youth, he had been an actor before becoming a newspaper reporter. In order to research an article, he had disguised himself as a beggar for a short time, during which he was given a very large amount of money. Later in his life, he returned to the street to beg for several days in order to pay a large debt. Given a choice between his newspaper salary and his high beggar earnings, he eventually became a professional beggar. His takings were large enough that he was able to establish himself as a country gentleman, marry well, and begin a respectable family. His wife never knew what he did for a living, and Holmes agrees to preserve Mr. St. Clair’s secret as long as no more is heard of Hugh Boone.

After reading the story, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the current state of the newspaper industry – that it is often more lucrative for reporters to beg (work freelance, for AOL’s Seed.com, or ask for donations on their blogs) than to work for a newspaper.
And begging isn’t limited to individual reporters or bloggers; it’s utilized by journalism institutions, too. The majority of the funding for the NPR affiliate WNYC in New York comes from listener support, as it does for all NPR affiliated stations, whose semi-annual “begathons” drive listeners nuts, but bring in the dollars.
Also, leading media scholar Robert McChesney and The Nation columnist John Nichols make a convincing case for journalism (legitimate news) organizations asking the government for subsidies in their book The Death and Life of American Journalism.
Subsides can come in many forms, such as tax breaks, changing the laws about Joint Operating Agreements (JOAs), free postage, or paid advertising and notices. Critics argue that government subsidies would mean government control – the specter of Pravda dances in their heads.
But our government is broken. It can’t pass a health care bill, it can’t limit outrageous bonuses to greedy Wall Street bankers, and it can’t create jobs. If it can’t agree on how to fix a system that is obviously broken and patently unfair, it can’t possibly censor the press to which it might give reasonable subsidies.
The government is broken and so is American journalism. However, like then man with the twisted lip, journalism will find a way to live and prosper. Some local newspapers are beginning to come back to life without begging by employing the principles using Wayne Reuvers’s theories and strategies as espoused in “Own Your Own Backyard,” available at LivePlatform.com.
Frankly, I have more hope for journalism than I do for the U.S. government. I never thought I’d say this, but most journalists are smarter and less self-absorbed than politicians – and that’s a twist.

In Part I I suggested that a $10 billion foundation be set up to save responsible journalism and that The NY Times be wrested away from the Sulzberger family, put into bankruptcy, and emerge as a mean and lean non-profit organization with the purpose of producing great journalism that makes citizens more informed, not with the purpose of creating profits to make stockholders wealthier.
In Part II I suggested that The NY Times and other important newspapers had to realize that journalism was not about union-feather-bedded printing presses and distribution systems and that these papers had to start charging for content. One way to get paid for their content was to make a deal with Microsoft’s search engine Bing to pay them for links to their content and block Google from linking to it free. They can also charge based on a Wall Street Journal-type subscription model or a Financial Times-type metered model. (It is rumored that The Times has decided on a metered model and will start charging soon.)
But saving journalism needs more than getting funding from a foundation, being lean non-profit organizations, and getting paid for content, either from subscribers or from Bing. It needs financial support from local communities similar to what NPR and its local affiliates receive and to be given increased financial support from local communities and the Federal government in the form of subsidies and tax breaks.
In the January 25, issue of The Nation, communication scholar Robert McChesney and The Nation Washington correspondent John Nichols wrote an article titled “How to Save Journalism” in which they made a logical case for government subsidies.
The authors suggest that the Internet is not the answer to saving journalism: “There is no business model or combination of business models that will create a journalistic renaissance on the web. Even if the market and new technologies were to eventually solve journalism’s problems, the notion that we must go without journalism for a decade or two while Wall Street figures out how to make a buck strikes us, frankly, as suicidal.”
They also write: “House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Henry Waxman was right when he told December’s FTC workshop on journalism, “This is a policy issue. Government is going to have to be involved in one way or another. Journalism, like other public goods, is going to require substantial public subsidy if it is to exist at a level necessary for self-government to succeed. The question, then, is not, Should there be subsidies? but, How do we get subsidies right?””
The Founding Fathers knew the importance of a free press and an informed citizenry, which is why they set up the system that the Post Office delivered newspapers free and give publishers subsidies in the form of paying them to print public and legal notices. So, subsidies are nothing new.
Another way journalism outlets (we’ve got to stop calling them newspapers because they must be on the Web, not printed on paper) can increase revenue is to do what music companies are now doing – making 360 deals with talent. The music industry was decimated by file sharing on the Internet and by Apple’s iTunes and iPods, so record companies cut way back pressing CDs and selling them in record stores and found other outlets such as Starbucks. Today, when record companies sign new artists and agree to promote them, the companies insist that the talent sign a 360 deal that gives the record company a cut of all the money an artist makes in concerts, T-shirts, and other gear and peripheral items – anywhere and everywhere – 360º in other words.
So, for example, The NY Times could sign a deal with Frank Rich in which Rich agrees to give The Times a percentage cut of his off-the-job income from such items as speeches, books, and consulting gigs. The notion driving this concept is that Rich wouldn’t be famous and highly sought after if it weren’t for his exposure in The Times. He might be Rich, but he wouldn’t be wealthy if he wrote for the Point Reyes Light, even though it won a Pulitzer Prize.
Journalism outlets could do events and conferences that don’t appear to be influence peddling; their book reviewers could host book clubs and author readings, their movie reviewers could host movie preview events and discussions, their restaurant and food critics could host events and tastings, and cooking classes.
My wife, Julia, and I paid $75 each for a Dim Sum tour of New York’s Chinatown from the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). We enjoyed it thoroughly and the guide, expert cook and teacher, Norm Weinstein, was terrific. But we would probably pay twice as much for a similar tour sponsored by The Times.
The Times and other newspapers in their state of journalistic head-in-the-sand ostrichitis would probably say that they are in the news business, not the tour or the event or the education business and that they have to remain “pure.” But they have forgotten what Harvard Business School’s Theodore Levitt said about the railroad business – that the railroads went out of business because they mistakenly thought they were in the railroad business.
Newspapers think like buggy whip makers thought in 1908, that they were in the buggy-whip business, but their business was killed by the automobile. If they had re-defined their businesses as the vehicle acceleration business, they might have survived. Newspapers need to similarly re-define their businesses and find multiple revenue streams to support their journalism.
These news outlets also need to exploit the new e-reader technology, as suggested by Alan Mutter in his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog on January 8 in a post titled “Holy Moses! Media need to gear up for tablets.”
The point is that journalism outlets have to explore multiple revenue streams, including government subsidies.

The 4th of July is not only America’s birthday; it is also the birthday of Rube Goldberg , who, as you probably remember, was a cartoonist who created “comically involved, complicated inventions, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation”—like his pencil sharpener below.

Goldberg won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for political cartooning when he was with the New York Sun. In 1948 reporters actually used pencils, wrote in reporters’ notepads, and then typed their stories on typewriters. Editors sent reporters out daily on assigned beats, then they then came back to the office and filed their stories, ink-stained pressmen printed the papers overnight, and trucks delivered bundles of papers to newsstands the next morning. The only input from common citizens was in the form of Letters to the Editor, a few of which were printed every day after careful selection. How quaint.
Today the practice of journalism is as complicated as a Rube Goldberg nutty invention. There is a vigorous argument going on as to what is journalism and who is a reporter. Is an independent blogger such as the Media Curmudgeon a reporter? Can a common citizen be a journalist? For example, I received the following note from a regular reader of this blog:
“As the great media watchdog you are, I wondered if you are aware of this? USA Today has this section (below) at the bottom of their main web page asking readers to provide news tips. Can’t you just see the problems with that?”

Have a news tip?
Do you have information for an investigative story? If you know details about waste, fraud, abuse or other wrongdoing, contact us today.
Go to tips.usatoday.com
My answer: No, I don’t see a problem with this. In fact, I think it’s a great idea and one that is catching on in newspaper and news websites all over the world. The movement is called citizen journalism and was brilliantly advocated in Dan Gillmor’s 2004 book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People. In the book Gillmor cites South Korea’s OhMyNews as one of the first successful websites featuring grassroots journalism, now commonly referred to as citizen journalism. OhMyNews, like most newspaper and news websites that solicit submissions from the public, as USA Today does, hire editors who check out and edit citizen-submitted stories and then post them in order of their relative importance.
Influential and journalism-oriented bloggers such as Jay Rosen, an NYU professor of journalism, on his blog Press Think, and Jeff Jarvis, former editor of Entertainment Weekly, on his blog BuzzMachine, both have been strong advocates of citizen journalism and collaborative journalism. Rosen and Jarvis advocate for an open Web on which citizens can participate and give feedback to traditional media. I agree.
The main-stream-media (MSM) have been too insular and arrogant for too long. The MSM snoozed and genuflected while Bush lied and led us into the horrible Iraq war. CBS, a charter member of the MSM, let Dan Rather go on the air with rigged information about Bush’s National Guard service, but citizen bloggers caught the misinformation and Rather quit. The MSM didn’t care much about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s massive screw-ups and cover-ups until blogger Josh Marshall on his blog Talking Points Memo revealed the scandal and kept hammering on it until the MSM picked up on it.
Yes, news websites might have a little extra work to check on some tips that are false, and, yes, there might be a few wild goose chases, but getting input from citizens is an excellent idea and worth the trouble. The more that news organizations get input from citizens, the more citizens will feel empowered as watchdogs and whistle blowers, and the more involved they will feel in governing. The professional politicians certainly haven’t been doing a good job of governing, and the journalists haven’t been doing a good job as watchdogs. It’s time we let the amateurs get involved—they could do no worse and they might wake up the watchdogs.

The irascible Chicago columnist Mike Royko wrote that the relationship between a reporter and a politician should be the same as that of a barking dog to a chicken thief. As Bill Moyers reported on his April 25th PBS program titled “Buying the War,” none of the main-stream media (MSM) except the Knight-Ridder newspapers were barking when the Bush administration lied to the world about WMD and led us into the disastrous war in Iraq—and that included the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all the major television networks. If the MSM won’t bark at chicken thieves, who will? Who should we count on to fulfill the watchdog function of the press when the press is asleep?
One answer was in evidence when Media Matters for America called attention to Don Imus’ notorious “nappy-headed hos” comment. Imus has been uttering insulting racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks on the air for over 30 years, so his remark about the Rutgers women’s basketball team was nothing new. What was new was that his offensiveness was widely distributed—people other than his regular listeners and viewers and frequent guests became aware of his meanness. When people began protesting, advertisers bailed out and CBS and NBC canned Imus. But the advertisers knew what Imus was all about and the only reason they jumped ship because a watchdog started barking.
Today the watchdog function of the press is being performed by blogs and websites, such as Media Matters for America. For example, a team at Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo did excellent investigative work and broke the story about the politically motivated Federal prosecutors firings at the Justice Department and Attorney General Gonzales’ unbelievable incompetence. A bunch of bloggers looked into Dan Rather’s claims about George Bush’s Air National Guard service and found the evidence was forged, and Rather retired early.
The MSM is becoming less relevant, less credible, more lowest-common-denominator junk day by day, especially television. Anyone who wants to know what’s really happening and who’s stealing chickens, should go to the Web; depend on such sources as Media Matters for America, Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post, The Nation, or The Washington Monthly, and, yes, the NY Times online and the Washington Post online. Even though the last two newspapers were asleep and didn’t bark at Bush on Iraq, these newspapers have learned the errors of their ways and generally perform the watchdog function of the press—often following up on malfeasance reported on blogs.
Of course you noticed that all the sources I mentioned are considered progressive or liberal. Except for the NY Times and the Washington Post, all the others mentioned did not support Bush’s Iraq war—they got that right. On the other hand, you can read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal or, better, watch Bill O’Reilly on the Fox News Channel where you’ll get a dog who makes love to the chickens.

Guest blogger Neil Derrough, former president of the CBS Television Stations Division, writes:
Watching what’s going on with news reporting today often astounds me. The list of recent grievances committed by major news organizations should be of concern to all of us. Fabricated news stories have challenged the reputations of some of the most respected newsrooms. Questionable anonymous sources have become a recurring concern. All this has contributed to an awareness of newsgathering practices that usually goes un-noticed. Of all of the blunders, reporting rumor as fact is the most troubling to me.
The reporting of the aftermath of Katrina tragedy is an example of rumors driving news coverage. The reported rapes and murders in the Superdome, reporting about dead bodies found in a freezer and other rumors reported as fact drove broadcast and print coverage for days.
The most recent reporting of 12 miners surviving the mine explosion dramatically reinforces the practice of substituting rumor for fact. The 24-hour cable news channels that are driving much of this frenzy couldn’t resist going live with nothing more than a rumor about the miners survival. Essential journalistic standards were completely ignored. There was no excuse for newspapers to have banner headlines trumpeting the survival. Newspapers don’t have the immediacy concerns that exist with live reporting. There was time to find out if there was an authorized source for what they published. Competitive interests ruled.
Not getting caught up in the excitement of unverified information is one of the critical things expected from reporters. Where were the serious questions about the authenticity of the information? Where were the editors? Where were the senior news executives from NBC, CNN, Fox and the many newspapers? Why weren’t they demanding substantiation?
At a time when so many of our institutions are being questioned about their integrity we need to have confidence in the information we are getting from our news sources. I hope these incidents prompt a careful review of current practices. I also hope that the missing executive oversight is present to demand meaningful review and operational changes to keep this kind of thing from happening again.
We should all demand it.