Stories I’d like to see

1.  How does ProPublica do it? Can it scale?

I received an intriguing email alert last week from ProPublica – the non-profit organization that, according to its mission statement, does “journalism in the public interest.” The email announced that ProPublica’s “nursing home inspection” tool now has a completely searchable database of “140,000-plus” reports from government inspections of these facilities for seniors, many of which have been plagued by charges of poor or even abusive care.

That reminded me that as its fifth anniversary approaches, ProPublica deserves full-blown feature treatment.

The small, New York-based organization, which has already won two Pulitzer Prizes, has done a slew of amazing reporting projects that have combined old-fashioned shoe leather with ingenious use of modern technology to gather and present compelling stories and provide ongoing resource materials. It has tackled  subjects ranging from political ad spending to doctors getting payments from drug companies to presidential pardons to this nursing home project. And that’s all in addition to an array of killer one-off stories, such as its report on speaking fees paid to Chicago Tribune editorial board member and syndicated columnist Clarence Page by a group lobbying to be removed from a State Department terrorist list, or the story about Magnetar, the secretive financial firm.

ProPublica was founded in late 2007 with a $10 million grant from Herbert and Marion Sandler, the former Golden West Financial Corp chief executives who made a fortune when they sold the giant savings and loan to Wachovia Bank just before the mortgage bubble burst. Under the leadership of Paul Steiger, the former Wall Street Journal managing editor who conceived the project with the Sandlers, ProPublica has since attracted grants from other major foundations, as well as several hundred smaller individual donations.

Steiger now deploys 34 reporters, researchers and what he calls “data journalists.” Their impact is magnified not only by how cleverly they mine and present data related to important issues but also by the partnerships Steiger and his team have forged with other news organizations, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR and Politico. These outlets, which often contribute reporters to supplement ProPublica’s resources, co-publish the resulting work through their own channels.

I’d like to see a story about how Steiger and his team conceive projects, use technology (especially data mining and social media), assess the impact of their work and control quality. I’d also like to know how they divide editorial responsibility with their publishing partners and what mechanisms, if any, they have built in to hold themselves accountable to those who dispute their reports. After all, a non-profit that focuses on targets like nursing homes, major financial institutions or hydro-fracking (the alleged dangers of which have been a near obsession at ProPublica) could easily develop a God complex and consider itself infallible.

Beyond that, I’d like to know how ProPublica manages its finances and what its long-term business plan is. According to ProPublica’s website: “We spend more than 85 cents out of every dollar on news – almost the exact opposite of traditional print news organizations, even very good ones, that devote about 15 cents of each dollar spent to news.”

Of course that’s in large part because ProPublica doesn’t print or deliver physical products or pay squadrons of ad sales people.

Equally important, ProPublica can pick its spots rather than cover everything a typical newspaper feels compelled to report on. There’s a lot more I’d like to know about that model. Its reporters are paid well, so I suspect the discipline of  targeting carefully is the key. That could suggest important strategic lessons for more conventional news publishers who, at a time of declining resources, have typically chosen to spread those resources lightly across all beats, even-lighter news and news covered by everyone else, rather than focusing on harder reporting that counts and that people will remember.

ProPublica’s annual report says it runs on a yearly budget of about $10 million, and the funds seem to come mostly from year-to-year donations. Are there plans to build an endowment to ensure that the organization will be more than a passing trend subject to the whims and fortunes of annual donors?

With that in mind, how about a sidebar or another story exploring why, in light of ProPublica’s success in supplementing the dwindling resources and resolve of for-profit news organizations to do ProPublica’s high-octane reporting, someone like Steiger couldn’t scale this model dramatically. Why not try to go to 20 or 30 billionaires and remind them that democracy, good government and free markets depend on the honest-broker information that good journalism provides and get them to endow an average of $1 billion each to create a $20 billion “Democracy Through Journalism” Fund? Assuming a 5 percent annual return, that would allow for a billion dollars a year – 100 times what ProPublica now spends – and put 3,000 to 4,000 serious journalists on beats across the country. Could that work?

(Conflict note: ProPublica, uses Press+, the publishing e-commerce system that I co-founded and of which I am co-CEO, to solicit donations on its website.)

2. Defanging Ryan:

This important story by Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin and Jake Sherman published in Politico over the weekend is the best of many raising questions about Paul Ryan’s role in the Romney campaign. Rather than Ryan becoming the guy who offers conservative policy specifics to supplement Mitt Romney’s more general stump speech appeals, “the congressman’s supporters fear just the opposite has happened … The congressman’s role now is … a dutiful No. 2, tossing out attack lines … [M]any Republicans believe the solution is not more Mitt, but more Ryan.”

Well, I hope some campaign reporter is not going to make me wait for “Game Change II” or the next installment of the Politico e-book series about the campaign to take me inside and tell me who in the Romney campaign (or was it Romney himself?) had what conversations with Ryan before (or was it after?) he was chosen and told him he was going to have to lose all that wonky specificity because specifics were not the campaign’s strategy.

This is not only a matter of curiosity – of wanting to be a fly on the wall during what could have been some dramatic conversations. Knowing what happened here will tell us a lot about Ryan. There’s been much written and said by Ryan’s critics that what he epitomizes more than ideological determination is a Washington-style careerism that saw him arrive at the Capitol as an intern and make all the right moves and connections to become a leader of the congressional Republicans. How he reacted if he was told before he was chosen that he would have to change his act to get the number two spot is likely to shed some light on that, as would how he handled it, and continues to handle it, if he was only given those orders after he was chosen.

PHOTO: Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan waves to supporters while holding a cup of coffee during a campaign stop at Cuban restaurant and coffee shop, Versailles, in Miami, Florida, September 22, 2012. REUTERS/Andrew Innerarity

1.   Quick questions for Paul Ryan:

It’s too bad Bob Schieffer didn’t get to these questions for Paul Ryan on 60 Minutes last Sunday night:

Have you calculated how much the average American enrolled in Social Security would have lost in the 2008-2009 market collapse if he or she had been allowed to move those funds into private stock accounts, as your 2004 Social Security privatization plan would have encouraged? Does that change your view of whether we should move Social Security in that direction?

In his recent profile of you in the New Yorker Ryan Lizza says you were “embarrassed” by the Bush years and by the votes you cast in support of deficit-widening programs such as the extension of Medicare to cover prescription drugs. Which votes, including that one, would you take back? And, more important, would you now urge a President Romney to move to repeal prescription drug coverage if you are elected?

You were on the Simpson-Bowles commission but, along with the two other House Republicans and two of the three House Democrats, you voted against the commission’s plan, which as you know was a compromise that called for cuts in benefits and spending as well as increases in tax revenues. Don’t you think that kind of basic compromise is necessary?

As you know, Governor Romney paid a tax rate of 13.9 percent on his adjusted gross income in 2010. What do you think a fair tax rate would be for someone in his income bracket? And how does that compare with what he would have paid if the Ryan budget plan had been in effect?

2. How does the welfare law’s work requirement really work?

The controversy ignited by a Romney campaign attack ad over whether the Obama administration is really trying to eliminate the requirement that welfare recipients get jobs raises a question I haven’t seen answered amid all that’s been reported so far: How does this work requirement actually work?

As Michael Crowley pointed out in this smart post on Time.com, requiring the poor to find work is especially difficult for “low-educated black and Hispanic workers, who in some urban areas face unemployment rates approaching a stunning 25%.”

So what exactly does the welfare reform law pushed by Republicans and signed by President Clinton in 1996 mandate? I know states have some latitude in applying it; in fact, it’s the question of how much latitude to give them that has sparked the Romney campaign’s charge that President Obama wants to scrap the requirement altogether by letting states waive it, which he denies. But how does the law actually operate in the various states? Can people still get checks if they only demonstrate that they are seeking work or being trained for work? For how long? And what are the definitions of seeking work or training? Let’s have a look at some real cases, and then let’s examine how the waivers being talked about would actually apply. Not only is this now a relevant campaign issue; it’s also an overdue story about how those hurt the most by the Great Recession are being treated by their government.

3. What’s happening in the Olbermann-Current litigation?

It’s now been four months since former Current TV marquee anchor Keith Olbermann sued Current and co-founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt for $70 million for firing him. The complaint, sprinkled with Olbermann’s trademark over-the-top rhetoric, leveled assorted charges of incompetence, fraud, and other misconduct against Gore and Hyatt. For its part, Current TV filed a cross-complaint, charging Olbermann with breach of contract.

So, it might be time for some reporter to check in with each side’s lawyers – or, for better quotes, if not better information, with Olbermann himself – to find out what’s happened since, including whether any depositions have been taken or any documents exchanged, all of which should be part of the public court record.

4. The Facebook IPO suits?

Speaking of lawsuits, what’s happening with all the complaints filed against Facebook, its underwriters and Nasdaq following its poorly received and even more poorly executed IPO last May? As I wrote then and as the brothers Winklevoss know, “Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have proved in the past to be tough defendants who don’t cave.” That could set this case apart from the typical suits like this, in which the corporate defendants pay off the plaintiffs’ lawyers with a quick settlement. As Facebook’s stock continues to struggle following disappointment with the revenue growth numbers reported in the company’s first post-IPO earnings statement, have the plaintiffs dug in harder? What about the defendants?

PHOTO: U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) stands as his vice president selection, U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) speak at a campaign event at the NASCAR Technical Institute in Mooresville, North Carolina August 12, 2012. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton