Watchdog journalism is dying slowly.

In our last class we discussed watchdog journalism.  Which is the best way of saying "investigative journalism" ever, except for a term I have coined: super spy reporting 2.0.  This term has not caught on.  Yet.

Anyway, investigative journalism sounds awesome and exciting and all that, but what I learned is that it isn't.  Why?  Because it doesn't really exist anymore.  Investigative reporting used to be incredibly interesting because it brought to light political scandals and important secrets being hid from the public.  Now, as we discussed in class, it brings to light malfunctioning washing machines.  The fact is, it just isn't interesting or exciting or ANYTHING like that anymore.

There just isn't money to put a team of investigative journalists on a story that will take a lot of time to uncover.  We live in a society where people want their information ten minutes ago.  Uncovering something WORTH investigating takes a lot of time and time is money, as the old saying goes.  So it's pretty safe to say that watchdog journalism is on the decline, and plenty of internet sources will back me up on this.

For example: this article and this article and this article all point out the decline of watchdog journalism and attempt to figure out WHY it is declining.  There are a lot of different opinions out there, but I still have to think that it's the fact that a good investigative article takes time and no one wants to put in that much time when the focus of journalism right now increasingly has become keeping up with the internet.  Newspapers are worried about circulation, not how in-depth their stories are.

Basically the problem is all about money, which is actually what every problem in journalism is these days.  Good thing we've chosen a field so rich with opportunity.