What if journalism stopped telling you what to think — and started showing you what happened?
Simon Ostrovsky joins Chris Sampson for a wide-ranging conversation about field reporting, documentary journalism, the economics of the news business, and why we need to rebuild a model of journalism that puts reporters back where the story is actually happening.
Chris and Simon discuss what has happened as the economics of corporate news increasingly reward something much cheaper: commentary. Serious reporting requires travel, cameras, producers, fixers, translators, security, access, time and trust. Once that reporting exists, however, a studio can spend almost nothing discussing it, repackaging it and discussing it again.
That creates a dangerous economic incentive to fund the people talking about journalism rather than the people actually doing it. But it does not have to stay that way.
Platforms like Substack and YouTube give independent journalists an opportunity to build a different relationship with their audience — one in which subscriptions and support become an investment in actually doing the journalism.
That is part of our mission now.
We want to put experienced journalists back into the field.
We want to make ambitious documentary reporting possible without requiring the enormous infrastructure of a traditional television network.
We want to collaborate with journalists who know their subjects, give them the ability to pursue stories properly, and create reporting that respects viewers enough to let them see, listen and reach their own conclusions.
Go there. Stay there. Show what happened.
That kind of journalism worked before.
There is no reason we cannot build more of it now.
Simon Ostrovsky and Chris Sampson on The Wire Tap.
