http://jou.sagepub.comJournalism DOI: 10.1177/1464884909102591 2009; 10; 319 JournalismJames S. Ettema New media and new mechanisms of public accountabilityhttp://jou.sagepub.com The online version of this article can be found at: Published by:http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at:Journalism Additional services and information for http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://jou.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navPermissions: http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/10/3/319 Citations at UNIV OF MARYLAND on August 26, 2009 http://jou.sagepub.comDownloaded fromJournalismCopyright © 2009 SAGE Publications(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC)Vol. 10(3): 319–321 DOI: 10.1177/1464884909102591ARTICLENew media and new mechanisms of public accountability James S. EttemaNorthwestern University, USASoft news of no social or political consequence spewing from cable tele-vision. Enclaves of narrow-minded opinion infl amed by blogs. Many current anxieties about the health of journalism refl ect a concern for the news media’s presumed function of maintaining a well-informed citizenry. But to such worries we must add another: journalistic vitality in holding offi cials and institutions accountable, if not to a frequently indifferent citizenry, then to each other. ‘The press can serve as a stand-in for the public, holding the gov-ernors accountable – not to the public (which is not terribly interested), but to the ideals and rules of the democratic polity itself’, as Michael Schudson has argued (1995: 217); but this function as well as that of informing citizens are both threatened by the chronic and progressive degeneration of tough-minded investigative reporting in print and issue-oriented public affairs documentary production on the air (see also Ettema, 2007). At the same time, however, new modes and mechanisms of public accountability are emerging from new journalistic media. Here are two accounts in which the old media look admiringly at the vigor of the new in this regard.Tracking the development of Boeing’s long-delayed 787 Dreamliner from his Boston living room, blogger Jon Ostrower ‘emerged as the go-to source of information about the world’s fi rst jetliner made from superhardened plastics, breaking stories of its production woes at a Seattle-area factory’. This according to the Chicago Tribune published in the city where Boeing is headquartered (Johnsson, 2008: 1). Ostrower’s Flightblogger earned the respect of aviation analysts and journalists by enlisting Boeing workers to correct – sometimes directly from the factory fl oor – any misinformation in the blog. The Tribune, somewhat breathlessly, recasts the use of these unnamed informants as a new and legitimate type of journalistic sourcing: ‘Among Netizens this is a version of open sourcing, where a blogger calls on a community of readers to contribute facts and correct errors to the greater good of all readers.’ In any case Ostrower’s solid reporting earned him access to Boeing facilities from at UNIV OF MARYLAND on August 26, 2009 http://jou.sagepub.comDownloaded fromJournalism 10(3)320which, adhering to negotiated ground rules, he sometimes sends Twitter dispatches documenting developments in real time. With regard to public accountability the key point is found in the Tribune’s judgment that ‘Jour-nalistic tools of the 21st Century like Twitter and blogging, a mainstay of political campaigns, are reshaping how news is made at companies renowned for secrecy’.Datelined San Diego, a report in the New York Times begins: ‘Over the last two years, some of this city’s darkest secrets have been dragged into the light’ (Perez-Pena, 2008: A1). These revelations, concerning malfeasance and corruption of city offi cials, came not from San Diego newspapers or television stations, according to the Times, ‘but from a handful of young journalists at a nonprofi t Web site run out of a converted military base far from downtown’s glass towers …’. The web site is VoiceofSanDiego.org which began in 2005 and has been followed by others such as MinnPost.com covering Minnesota’s Twin Cities. The Times goes on to pay its respects to the agenda-setting cap-abilities of these media: ‘As America’s newspapers shrink and shed staff, and broadcast news outlets sink in the ratings, a new kind of Web-based news operation has arisen in several cities, forcing the papers to follow the stories they uncover.’ A local journalism professor says in this regard, ‘Voice is doing really signifi cant work, driving the agenda on redevelopment and some other areas, putting local politicians and businesses on the hot seat’ (Perez-Pena, 2008: A18).Many other such stories about new media and new mechanisms of public accountability could be told – for example Talking Points Memo’s relentless tracking of the scandal arising from the Bush Administration’s im-proper fi ring of US attorneys. But many of these stories would have another theme as well: the fi nancial tenuousness of these enterprises. Ostrower was ready to quit his after-work blogging due to exhaustion when he was hired by an aviation industry publication to become its fi rst blogger. And VoiceofSanDiego is forced to live on charity, according to the Times’ story, requiring the web site and its peers to model themselves on public broad-casting rather than newspapers with income from foundations, individual donors, audience contributions and some advertising. Without acknow-ledging the obvious irony, the mighty New York Times quotes the professor’s comment that ‘This is the future of journalism’. With idealism but without a clear solution, one of the founders of VoiceofSanDiego characterized the problem this way: ‘Information is now a public service as much as it’s a com-modity,’ he said. ‘It should be thought of the same way as education, health care. It’s one of the things you need to operate a civil society, and the market isn’t doing it very well’ (Osnos, 2008). at UNIV OF MARYLAND on August 26, 2009 http://jou.sagepub.comDownloaded fromEttema New media and new mechanisms of public accountability321ReferencesEttema, J. S. (2007) ‘Journalism as Reason-Giving: Deliberative Democracy, Insti-tutional Accountability and the News Media’s Mission’, Political