Start-up news groups at a disadvantage?

Recently, the New York Times wrote an article that discussed how many smaller news-gathering groups and freelancers are at a huge disadvantage covering events overseas in comparison to larger news corporations. The most recent example of this was the detainment of Laura Ling and Euna Lee in North Korea, who worked for Current TV, a small YouTube-style news organization. Current TV, one of many similar start-up groups, has begun sending its journalists overseas to cover hot-topic stories in an effort to stay competitive with larger, more well-known news organizations. According to the article, in an effort to gain a greater news audience, these start-up organizations have begun “vanguard journalism” as a “unit assembled to cover untold stories around the globe”. The article continues that many say these small news groups are the “consequence of the fragmented media landscape and the declines in international news coverage by traditional outlets”.

While these small news groups have expanded their international coverage, many of their journalists and freelance writers have landed in sticky situations that, sometimes, the publication does not have the power to wiggle out of. However, large news corporations in the same situation have been able to use their “experience and leverage” as the article puts it, to protect their journalists. The article quotes Kevin Sites, a freelance journalist:
“There’s an impetus with any upstart news organization that you have to be bolder and you have to be more aggressive than other news organizations to get attention for your stories. That has to be admired. That also has a real inherent risk in it.”

These small news groups exemplify the shift to the future of journalism where journalists, both broadcast and print, are expected to do multiple technological tasks while covering a story; this enables the reader to further understand the topic through different visual and audio means. I myself am pursuing a career in journalism, and I’m already gearing up for numerous multimedia exposure I need to have in order to get a job after undergrad. I think this sort of expanded technological coverage is good, don’t get me wrong. In covering some stories, I think multimedia coverage is exigent. As a result, journalists are forced to become more interactive with the subject they are covering, sometimes putting them into dangerous situations, unfortunately (like Lee and Ling in North Korea). According to the story, in 2008 the Committee to Protect Journalists found that of 125 jailed journalists, at least 56 worked for online outlets and that 45 of the total were freelancers. This is a danger all journalists overseas suffer today, no matter who they’re working for. This article just examines how some get away with it more than others.

I think that small news organizations, such as Current TV, are necessary. They serve as independent groups that aren’t subject to the political and corporate ties of a large news organization. Unfortunately, they end up being the ones who suffer for trying to cover things that some large news corporations may not be. And purely because they have none of these corporate political backings? It seems unfair. I realize that the journalism industry has fallen into difficult monetary times, however, reporting for some publications has become a business; some only heavily cover what their audience wants to read and will pay for. This isn’t always what they SHOULD read, however. Small news groups, without this obligation, I think save the purpose of the profession. It’s just disappointing that because of their independence, their journalists are subject to more peril for merely doing the right thing.