Since getting to know photographer Robert Gumpert his discomfort with the current world of journalism has been a constant. He doesn’t gripe about technologies like some photojournalist elders (which I don’t have a problem with, by the way), but Bob can’t see a way back from slipping standards as we veer toward the bottom-line priorities of “Newsonomics.”

Bob says:

From the beginning there has been a fight in journalism over where the “firewall” between advertising and the newsroom should be and, as a related question, “what is news?” Is news what readers need to know, or what they want to know?

And so these two articles caught my attention.

The first is At Yahoo, Using Searches to Steer News Coverage. It’s a good headline and pretty much says it all. Yahoo will be using what the reader wants to know to determine content. This is now called democratizing content. In the past it was called tabloid news. […]

[Secondly,] “Gaps in Watchdog Journalism Reflected in News From a Trial.” You could not ask for a better example of why good aggressive journalism is needed and what happens when it isn’t around. The article concerns the coverage of a police torture case in Chicago by John Conroy. Everyone should read this article. I say read this article instead of his regular pieces because no one is employing Mr. Conroy anymore, and few news outlets are doing his kind of investigative reporting.

We are all, individually and as a country, more vulnerable for it.

Here, here! It’s a pleasure to know you Bob.