LA Times reporters, David Sarno and Jessica Guynn, have a very good piece on REACT, the task force that searched the home Gizmodo’s Jason Chen, the blogger who temporarily had possession the lost iPhone prototype.

(The Gizmodo/iPhone prototype story somehow still hasn’t gotten less interesting, even with its alarming implications.)

The LAT reporting begins like this:

When a top-secret prototype of Apple Inc.’s new iPhone went missing recently, the computer giant summoned Silicon Valley’s version of the cavalry — an elite squad whose main mission is investigating crimes against high-tech companies.

Little-known outside the tech world, the unit is suddenly in the spotlight for its April 23 raid on the Bay Area home of Jason Chen, the 29-year-old technology blogger who had gained possession of the missing phone.

The unit swept in after Chen posted a photo and details of the new iPhone on the Gizmodo.com website. But the raid itself has become secondary to a larger debate burning up Silicon Valley and the blogosphere: What is this high-tech police force, and who controls it?

“It’s the iPolice,” said Steve Meister, a former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney. “This whole thing appears, rightly or wrongly, to be law enforcement doing the bidding of a private company.”

The task force, called REACT (for Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team), is a kind of SWAT team, chartered in 1997 to focus on “large-scale crimes that victimize the high technology industry in the Bay Area.”

There’s LOTS more, so read the rest here.

Kevin Roderick of LA Observed came to speak to my USC class Wednesday night. He described, among other things, how and why he launched LA Observed, the early moments he thinks put him on the map, and what he’s learned from seven years of blogging.

He first broke through, he said, when an LA Times staffer leaked to him a now infamous memo written by the newspapers then editor, Jon Carroll, in which Carroll publicly castigated a reporter for a perceived liberal bias on abortion-related story. The LAO memo leak story was linked all over the country.

After that the floodgates opened and Roderick received a semi-constant stream of leaked LA Times memos and insider news. (Hilariously, the internal memos began being written far better, Roderick says, and thoroughly spell-checked—now that management realized their private missives would all likely wind up being bannered on Roderick’s site.) As a result, the tumultuous and often disastrous changes in a major American newspaper were documented, chapter by chapter, on the cyber pages of LA Observed.

Class members asked a stream of other questions about digital entrepreneurship, about what makes a blog successful, about what stories Kevin thinks are being missed.

(The answer to the last was advice to look at the multitude of communities in LA County that are not being covered—that they are loaded with stories.)

The class ran overtime and no one wanted to leave even then. Roderick told me afterward that he came away from the night feeling upbeat about journalism’s future. “Listening to them, how can you not be optimistic?”

Yep, that’s what I think.

JUDGE DENIES DEPUTY UNION REQUEST TO STOP RELEASES FROM OC JAIL

Okay, Superior Court Judge Steven Perk has declined to buckle under to the OC Deputies’ union’s law suit asking for a temporary restraining order to keep the OC sheriff from letting any more inmates out from the jail early in response the the state’s corrections reform law that kicked in Jan 1. But the judge said he would revisit the thoroughly bollixed up issue in mid March. For her part, the OC Sheriff has been applying the law retroactively, even though anybody with a grasp of logic who read the law could see that this was not its intention—as California Attorney General Jerry Brown has stated with admirable succinctness.

As should be evident by now, I’m for the parole revisions and the new provisions that allow prisoners—both in prison and in jails—to earn a few days or weeks off their sentences by engaging in productive and rehabilitative programs. Such programs are statistically likely to decrease inmates likelihood of reoffending,. And, by the way, the amount shaved off their sentences is comparatively minimal.

But I do not see any reason why we have to start dumping people out of jails by the hundreds, freaking everyone out, when the law says to do no such thing. If for no other reason, its a lousy PR move.

Here’s what Jerry wrote on the retroactivity issue.. It’s a little long to paste the best of it here, so you’ll have to click through.

To make matters more bizarre, some of the crafters of the law are saying that they never meant it to apply to jails. (Well, Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, if you didn’t want your law—good ol’ SB 3X 18 —to apply to jails, then it might have been wiser not to have written into it the words, “This bill would also revise the time credits for certain prisoners confined or committed to a county jail or other specified facilities, as provided.”

The Wave has an informative take on the quarrel.

And the LA Times Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton have more of the details on the judge’s decision:

A judge on Thursday denied a request by the union representing Orange County deputies to end the early release of jail inmates but signaled that the decision would not be the last word on the issue, setting a hearing for further arguments next month.

In turning down the bid to temporarily block the releases, Superior Court Judge Steven Perk noted that Sheriff Sandra Hutchens has the final say in choosing how to address the new state law that went into effect Jan. 25.

The judge set a hearing for March 12 on arguments for a preliminary injunction.

The law reformulated good behavior credits for state prison inmates, accelerating their release. But it also has caused confusion among local law enforcement officials, many of whom have been advised by county counsels to release inmates early, an interpretation that was backed up this week by Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown.

SPEAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION: THE SUPREMES WILL HEAR A 2ND AMENDMENT HAND GUN BAN CASE NEXT MONTH

The Wall Street Journal has this in Friday’s paper about the upcomng case the Supreme court will hear regarding the ban on handguns in Chicago and Oark Park, Ills.

The WSJ reports that the case has brought together a surprising mix of allies on the left and the right. Not a bad thing.

(Now if we could just have a similar left/right collaboration in Congress Over something. Anything.)

NATIONAL ENQUIRER OFFICIALLY IN THE RUNNING FOR PULITZER

As well they should be. Yes, there are ethical issues caused by their policy of paying sources. But they should still be in the running for their reporting on John Edwards. Speaking personally, I don’t think they deserve to win. But I do believe they should be shortlisted.

The Huffington Post (which is getting WAY too celebrity driven of late) has the story:

The Pulitzer Prize Board has officially accepted The National Enquirer’s submissions for breaking the John Edwards scandal, according to sources close to the Board. In a historic move, the Pulitzer Board conceded that the self-proclaimed tabloid is qualified to compete with mainstream news outlets for journalism’s most prestigious prize. The Enquirer is in the running for the Pulitzer in two categories: “Investigative Reporting” and “National News Reporting” for The National Enquirer staff.

[SNIP]

Before The Enquirer submitted its nomination, the Pulitzer’s long-time administrator Sig Gissler attempted to pre-empt this campaign by telling reporters that the tabloid is not eligible due to various technicalities. Gissler, however, showed great humility and fairness by reading The Enquirer’s submission and admitting that the paper is eligible to compete. Gissler has given The National Enquirer the legitimacy it long deserved for breaking a political scandal of national significance.

The National Enquirer single-handedly broke the stories about Edwards’ affair with a campaign staffer, their out-of-wedlock child, the expensive cover-up and the federal grand jury investigation of possible misappropriation of campaign funds. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the other reporters covering Edwards’ campaign did little if anything to follow up on the published stories in The Enquirer.

It has been said more than a few times that one of the important new models that will be a significant part of the evolving future of journalism will be partnerships between journalism schools and commercial and/or nonprofit media.

It appears that after a year or so of false starts, the LA Times has finally taken that idea to heart with the new partnership between the LAT’s much-lauded but extremely labor intensive Homicide Report and student reporters at Annenberg’s own online publication, Neon Tommy.

(This means that the Annenberg end of the partnership the faculty advisors will be—ta-da!—my pals Marc Cooper and Alan Mittelstaedt.)

Megan Garvey, the editor of the Homicide Report, evidently deserves much credit for realizing that having smart USC students reporting for her online section might make for an inspired partnership.

Here’s some of what she wrote about the LAT/Annenberg hook-up:

Read the rest of this entry »

The podcast for the special Christmas Day, 1-hour broadcast of KPFK’s Deadline LA has been posted.

As I mentioned before, the subject up for discussion was the future of journalism: What lies ahead? And what is important to preserve from the models of so-called legacy media?

And a lively discussion it was.

In addition to hosts Barbara Osborn and Howard Blume those on air were:

1. Michael Schudson, a Columbia School of Journalism professor who, together with the former managing editor of the Washington Post, Leonard Downie, Jr., has recently published a report about a particular aspect of the future of journalism, which has caused a big stir (and a certain amount of shouting) among those who are obsessive thinking, talking, posting and tweeting about such things.

2. Victor Valle, a Cal Poly professor of journalism and ethnic studies, who is also a former Pulitzer winning reporter. Valle had some provocative opinions about the flaws and blind spots inherent in even some of the best of conventional journalism, as it has been practiced in the last several decades.

3. To round out the threesome there was….um…me.

I finally listened to the show myself yesterday. And I suspect (and hope), you’ll find that our looping interweave of speculation and opinions will stimulate some of your own.

(If you come up with any ideas you’re willing to share with the rest of us—please do!)

I’m on KPFK’s Deadline LA today. The broadcast airs at noon.

UPDATE: Okay in my Christmas haze, I completely screwed up. It was on at 3:30 p.m. But, I will post the podcast when it’s up, which will be during the week next week, once everyone’s had time to rest up from the holidays

(And, no, we were not recording on Christmas. It was taped earlier.)

Other guests are two very, very bright men, Michael Schudson of the Columbia school of journalism and Victor Valle of Cal Poly. We will be talking about…what else?–The Future of Journalism.

I will be putting up light posting all the rest of this week, through Christmas. This means that the new stories I promised will be appearing after the holidays. (They’ll keep. One is about a young man in prison who may be innocent, and there will be more about Alex Sanchez case, and there are more.)

In the meantime:

1. The LA Press Club says that the proposed Federal Shield Law that passed out of committee not too long ago, is flawed but worth passing.

2. Has Matt Taibbi failed journalism, or has journalism failed Matt Taibbi?

At True/Slant John McQuaid notes that Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi is being slammed by biz reporters who say that many of his facts on his stories about the finanicial meldown this year are not adequately…um….checked. McQuaid points out that while Taibbi may get get a few things wrong, he gets the big picture right.

Whereas, suggests McQuaid, the entire financial journalism corps managed to miss the looming financial crisis.

The real problem here isn’t one journalist, but journalism itself. The U.S. media’s neutral, non-ideological form of reporting reached its apogee in terms of political influence and number of practitioners post-Watergate and pre-9/11. But during that time, its reach and credibility among the public were also steadily declining due to — you name it: fragmentation, failing business models, culture wars, growing structural and demographic political divisions. Government (and governing itself) came under sustained assault, and its regulatory and political checks on business — never all that strong — have been weakened.

Taibbi peels back the layers on this and shows it to be outrageous. Whether you are a liberal or a free-marketeer, it is clear something big has gone wrong in the business-government nexus. If you’re going to part ways with Taibbi over his factual blunders or framing, that’s legit. But it still leaves the big question hanging out there — is his outrage misplaced?

Read the rest.

And here is Chris Lehman at the Awl on the same issue.

3. “After a Year of Ruin, Some Hope”

NY Times media writer David Carr has written an end-of-the-decade, glass-half-full essay about the state of journalism. Here’s a ‘graph.

Blogs and new-media sites are cartoonishly written off as places where people write up the soup they just ate, but in the past year, many sites have added muscle and resources to the pursuit of news. Everyone knows about the reporting assets and influence of Politico (Politico.com), but you know things have changed when Gawker (gawker.com), the attitudinous Manhattan media blog, is hiring the kind of reporters who pick up the phone.

Yes, well. Good point. It would likely feel like a better point if Carr hadn’t been one of those doing the “cartoonish” writing off.

No matter. Read it anyway.

4. “Journalism” and the “media” are not synonymous

Or so writes NYU J-school prof, and media Jedi master, Jay Rosen. Here are the opening ‘graphs.

Journalism, the practice, is not “the media,” although for many years most of the journalism that got done was done inside the media industry. Now that industry is in trouble, but not because people no longer want to be informed or entertained (they still do). Rather, the social pattern that sustained the media industry has been disrupted by technology.

The media used to work in a one-to-many pattern--that is, by broadcasting. The Internet, though it can be used for one-to-many transmission, is just as well suited for few-to-few, one-to-one, and many-to-many patterns. Traditionally, the media connected audiences “up” to centers of power, people of influence, and national spectacles. The Internet does all that, but it is equally good at connecting us laterally–to peers, to colleagues, and to strangers who share our interests. When experts and power players had something to communicate to the attentive publics they wished to address, they once had to go through the media. Now they can go direct.

Read on.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Bonnier publishing, a privately held Swedish media conglomerate, which—along with books and newspapers— puts out such magazines as Parenting, Popular Science, Field & Stream, Working Mother, and Saveur, has just released their R & D video titled Mag +.

Those who think about, obsess over…. or are mildly interested in—the ongoing conversation regarding the Future of Journalism (hell, yes, we capitalize that phrase), will enjoy it.

It’s been out for about about 24 hours and is already causing FOJ types to go into Twitter overdrive.

And for good reason. Although much of the technology is still in the fantasy stage, it has a lot of intriguing thinking behind it. (Paper magazines take note.)

Meanwhile, Esquire and GQ have come up with iPhone versions.

Not that anyone asked me, but Esquire and GQ have a smart notion in terms of monetizing their content. Esquire plans to charge $2.99 per month. Good idea. People may not pay to get online what they can get for free, but we are all now very well conditioned to buy inexpensive Aps. It’s a short jump to a subscription as long as the monthly charge feels (however illusory the feeling) AP based. In other words, at the moment, we are more willing pay for the technology and the delivery system that we want, than we are willing to fork over $$ for content.

PS: Note to WSJ: Yes, many of us who are devoted to news reporting will actually pay for content too, but don’t try to charge us twice. Such moves will cause us to harbor resentments.

For many of us, the LA Weekly has been painful to watch in the past couple of years.

The economy and the stewardship of a new set of owners—who seemed to care little about the paper’s traditional journalistic strengths—have done discernible damage to what was once the most successful alternative weekly in the America, and an essential voice in the city of Los Angeles.

Writing and editing talent either fled or were laid off. The fact checkers were fired. Ideas that did not fit a certain mold were stifled.

Yet, recently those same owners (the Village Voice Media) have had the intelligence and/or luck to hire veteran editor Drex Heikes. Drex has run editorial teams for the LA Times on two coasts and is also the guy who remade the Las Vegas Sun into a Pulitzer winner.

Kevin Grant, a talented grad student at USC Annenberg (And, no, I’m not saying that because Kevin is one of my students) has done an interview/profile on Heikes and his plans for the Weekly—which include, Heikes says, starting to expand the emaciated news staff. In other words, the Weekly, is hiring again.

It is posted here at Neon Tommy, and it is definitely worth reading.

Here’s a clip:

“Sometime in the winter, spring, it bottomed out,” Heikes said gravely from his new desk at the Weekly’s Culver City headquarters. “I wasn’t here, but from what I understand, there were sparks on the pavement. The shocks were gone. There was just nothing left.”

The specter of loss still hangs quietly over the Weekly’s offices like stale L.A. smog. The organization has lost or pushed out some of its biggest names in 2009, including former Editor-In-Chief Laurie Ochoa, theater critic Steven Leigh Morris, film critic Ella Taylor, editor and reporter Steven Mikulan, and last week, film editor Scott Foundas.

Once the fattest alternative paper in the county, the rag has indeed looked weaker in recent years. A steep decline in advertising demand has forced the paper to cut out some of its strongest copy as it squeezes into a smaller page count.

The Weekly’s editorial staff is down to six full-time employees: three editors and three reporters. They will report directly to Heikes, a newspaper lifer who brought a Pulitzer Prize to the Las Vegas Sun earlier this year. He edited different parts of the LA Times for 18 years before joining the Sun in 2005.

“The way this’ll get structured is the way I ran the Sunday magazine at the Times,” he said. “Everything will come through that basket right there [knocks on desk]. I’ll read everything.”

More on the Weekly tomorrow, specifically on an areas where it…um....really needs improvement.

(Photo from Reuters)

For the second week in a row, the New York Times Magazine has presented a cover story that is everything that journalism should be.

The story, called “The Deadly Choices at Memorial,” is about the choices some doctors and nurses made at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans after the back-up generators failed, the majority of the most able patients had already been rescued, and only the very, very sick were left behind. Days later, when help finally arrived, 45 people were dead, 17 of those patients had lethal doses of morphine and other drugs in their blood streams.

In 2007, a grand jury declined to indict the doctors accused of administering those drugs as a form of mercy killing. The New York Times cover story painstakingly and intelligently revisits the entire issue.

The article’s author is Sheri Fink, a medical doctor and staff reporter at ProPublica, the independent nonprofit investigative journalism organization that began in 2007 and launched in 2008, as the news-business-as-we-know-it was in full collapse.

In more than two years of investigating, Fink obtained previously unavailable records and spoke to dozens of people who were involved in or observed circumstances at Memorial. She paints a complex story that points beyond itself to large array of moral, ethical and legal questions.

It is a work of journalism that is important and will likely be recognized come prize time.

But the New York Times didn’t pay for the reporting and the other costs of the investigation. ProPublica did. (The NYT had to cough up some money, but not the preponderance.)

Neither did the Times pay for last week’s excellent central story on women’s rights. It was rejiggered from an upcoming book.

So, how much does such a story cost to produce? Mother Jones magazine ran its own feature to answer that question:

They estimate $400,000.

For the record, I think that’s an overblown number. (They estimate the NYT fact checking process as costing $10,000 and the NYT lawyers vetting the piece, on top of ProPublica’s lawyers, who also vetted the piece, as costing $20,000 each, respectively. (Surely one $20,000 vetting should have been enough. And, $20,000? Really? I’ve had plenty of stories lawyer vetted since I have often written about crimes, so even the single vetting price tag seems a bit…um… steep. But whatever.)

You can see the rest of the numbers here.

Yet, despite my individual quibbles, the point is correct. Good journalism is expensive.

So this leaves the question that is often asked these days: in this rapidly changing media environment, who is going to pay for the journalism that is so necessary to a healthy democracy?

Part of the answer lies in these stories themselves. They were, after all, reported and written—newspaper collapse, notwithstanding—proving that some great work is finding a way to exist and always will.

But that isn’t the whole of the answer. ProPublica is a comparatively small organization that takes on only a few select issues to investigate

And Nicholas Kristof and his wife are both top-of-the-food-chain Pulitzer winners who were able to afford to write their book in their off hours, which resulted also in the magazine cover story, in part, because they make good salaries and get a goodly amount of expense-accounted travel, all courtesy of the New York Times.

And so what of all the stories that are being ignored? Judging by the compelling tips and pleas about stories that are sent to me alone on a weekly basis…that pile is growing larger every day.