https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-th...
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/the-public-e...
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/us/the-miller-case-a-note...
Doing it commercially is apparently problematic, but so is the government running the show, and nonprofits and volunteers doing it also have problems.
Guess it’s all problematic, we should just not have any journalism
It’s reality: everything has positive and negative qualities in various proportions. Instead of implying that something is “bad” by virtue of being “problematic”, why not simply state what the specific problem is? Because then you can’t shit talk the entire affair, I suspect.
Perhaps it was initially intended to be useful in this way, but it has been co-opted to non-specifically disparage.
In fact, much of its terrible strategy when it came to digitization, major political moments, and its own journalistic integrity (The Jayson Blair affair comes to mind) stems from this navel gazing.
Customarily the ombudsmen is supposed to do what you describe; the NYTimes got rid of theirs in 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/public-editor/liz-spayd-f...
The core commodity of these businesses used to be Information, the Tapes/Records/Printed Newspapers. Now that such information has been quite literally made free by the advent of digitization along with the internet, these entities need to find new ways to create scarcity from which to profit. Some respectful ways that the times may do this:
'Private' Investigative Journalism: Open an office where companies can pay their skilled, resourceful journalists to promptly investigate a lead. Ideally the results would be published afterwards but I don't see a reasonable mechanism for enforce that.
Physical Installations: Use immersive media to create a multi-dimensional storytelling experience. Sell tickets if it's 'fun' enough, or seek corporate partnerships that benefit from this message who want to sponsor.
Sell Premium Access of 'specialty' analysis with SLAs to other Corporations: Reuters sells Refinitiv/Westlaw, Bloomberg has their Terminals... Publicly publish the data every hour but within 50ms to paying organizations.
I don't see it as my job to find a business model for these entities, but I do se a bunch of opportunity in B2B relationships. I hope more knowledgeable folks can do better...
I think it's a sad but telling sign the so-called leadership at these collectives is dedicating effort to the paradoxical, Sisyphean task of stopping casual readership from accessing/sharing the content they worked so hard to create instead of seeking new avenues that exist in abundance.
As others commenters have noted, having a constant, public and freely auditable record is the only way to keep these entities honest.
Consider how the NYT might try to justify not critically reporting on itself. It can't say (1) "any wrongdoing on our part is not newsworthy": on the contrary: it'd be the most newsworthy thing in the world! It can't say (2) "our journalists don't have resources to investigate the topic": on the contrary: that's the one topic its own journalists are most well-positioned to investigate! The only possible remaining defenses I can see are: (3) "we simply don't engage in unethical practices, so there's nothing to report" or (4) "what do you expect, we're not gonna do what's bad for business". Needless to say, either defense would make it very hard to continue taking seriously its claim to disinterestedness.