Dean Starkman on Financial Journalism and the Disappearance of Investigative Reporting

Dean Starkman, author of The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism, was recently interviewed on All Things Considered on changing trends in news and what it might mean for the future of journalism.

Starkman argues that despite the amount of data now available to journalists and readers, stories are still being missed. While some smaller news outlets did spot and focus on shifts in financial markets, many of the major financial news organizations either ignored it. Rather than investing in investigative reporting, they were only listening to insiders with a vested interest in not shedding light on problems in the financial markets. Here’s an excerpt from his interview:

When you think about the financial crisis, it wasn’t like there was an absence of data. These are reporters working on the streets of Roanoke and the streets of Pittsburgh. This story was something that had to be reported from the bottom up. The quality of these transactions under which these mortgages were made, that was only gettable through basically ground-up reporting, talking to people who were outside the system.

Starkman also recently appeared on Yahoo! Finance to discuss The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: