[andrewl]

This kind of article is a reminder of how much we need traditional newspapers, and what we'd lose if they went away. I sometimes read suggestions that independent bloggers will replace newspapers, but I don't think they can do everything newspaper reporters do. This reporter worked undercover for a month. There would also have been a lot of time spent on background research before she went undercover. Then it would have taken her more time after that to write the article. During all that time she was paid by the Toronto Star. An independent writer could work undercover, and some have, but they're stuck for that period making a very low salary and having to worry about making ends meet.

Then, at least as important, the reporter is backed by the Toronto Star's legal team. I suspect that if she were an independent and published her story on her own blog, this writer would have been sued by the bakery owners and compelled to take the story down. And she would also pay a lot for her legal defense. In this case, if the bakery owners want to sue, they can, but they'll be suing the Toronto Star, which has resources to mount a legal defense, and a voice with which to write about an unjustified lawsuit.

So this seems like real journalism to me, and I don't want it to go away. And when I say "real journalism" I'm thinking of George Orwell's view that "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations."

I'm also thinking of Finley Peter Dunne, who said the point of journalism is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

[Cthulhu_]

Bloggers can one-up journalists though - there's been a number of critical blog posts and articles from (former) employees at Uber, Google, etc, which eventually cost CEO's their jobs. Actually working and living the life is even better than being a journalist and having to dive into it.

[jdietrich]

Your examples kind of undermine your point. Disgruntled Uber and Google employees have the writing skills to make their point, they have the technical savvy and the social capital to get their message to a wide audience, they have the confidence and financial resources to resist legal bullying.

In a world without professional journalists, there's no-one to speak out for the poor and marginalised, no-one to unearth stories that are being kept well-hidden by unscrupulous people, no-one to do the months of digging and fact-checking that are involved in a major investigation. Journalism is a highly skilled craft that plays a vital role in society; we can't afford to delegate it to amateurs.

[andrewl]

I agree. A number of bloggers have definitely made contributions.

I'd be curious to know if the majority of people writing to expose abuses in their own companies are in white collar companies or companies like the bakery described in the Toronto Star. I would predict that more are in white collar companies, as they are more likely to already be aware of how to get content up on the web. Certainly employees of Uber or Google are. But I'm not aware of any research on this, so my prediction isn't backed by anything substantial.

Still, I think of people like the temp employees at this bakery as being more toward the voiceless end of the continuum, and more in need of a muckraking reporter.

[mcgrath_sh]

I agree to a certain extent. I think there is an interesting gap between "independent blogger" and "traditional newspaper" that is starting to pop up in sports media and may be able to be successful in typical journalism. This site would be hyper-focused on a specific niche and would have paying customers to access content. Essentially, I think what we see in a traditional city-based newspaper will splinter into 3-5 related sites (one for a state or region that does general news and these types of investigations with smaller local arms for local news) that have paid access (either subscription or per-article pricing) of some sort. I do see some problems with that with non-sports information though.

As an aside, I'm not terribly familiar with bitcoin, but I often wondered if something like reddit's bitcoin bot was the solution to pay per article access. A system where you simply paste your wallet key into the article to unlock the rest of it for a nominal fee ($0.03-$0.08 per article) would seem to be a way to pay for things without a zillion accounts or transactions on your card. I say bitcoin, but, realistically, any universal pool of money that can be quickly withdrawn from without an account on a specific site would be neat. There have been times I wanted to read investigative articles from WSJ or other subscription sites, but I don't want to subscribe or have yet another login. If I could just paste in a code or click Apple Pay for that one article, I gladly would. The counter to that is I don't want every sub $0.50 transaction popping up on my credit card, which is why a universal pool of money like Bitcoin would be best.

I do think the idea of having time and a strong legal team behind you is important for this kind of story. Currently, the best way to access that is a traditional newspaper. Small operations definitely can't take on the legal risks for something like this, which is why an Atlantic model is difficult for hard journalism. I do wonder if independent places would start pooling resources for things like this.