The Public Herald’s top photo for 2011, John Strong Bag in “These Economies.” An iconic tribute to the occupation of Wall Street and economic uncertainty. © Joshua B. Pribanic
Dear PublicHerald.org readers:
As we look ahead at this important year, we’d first like to thank all of our readers. The unfettered nature by which you share, invest in, and contribute to +Truth and +Creativity energizes our original reporting. Thank you for continuing to support the need for investigative journalism in the public interest.
Public Herald (PH) operated for the last two months in 2011 publishing eight investigative reports, three +Creativity audiovisual pieces, and catalogued valuable photographs and documents (via Flickr and Document Cloud). All of this work was through our share-alike Creative Commons license, to be shared and reproduced by anyone with access to the internet.
Through our reporting, PH has affected the daily operations of the Pa. Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), specifically establishing stricter filing oversight of Marcellus waste streams reporting (26r forms).
We’ve observed, after discussing our concerns about the DEP with print and online news sources, an Orwellian Doublethink* incubated at the exchange of information, a conflict of reports and opinions about records coming into the agency and what the public is being told. Yet, it’s more than just what DEP is saying in response to its records, there’s also an insidious cave ruled by the Directors of Communication. A place where the press sends questions about original reports to reverberate to death — there lies a society of meaningful inquiry, starved by silence. The entrance reads, “DEP did not respond to calls for comment.” (Not meant for those left at the DEP still willing to talk off the record.)
PH’s third top pick for 2011. The photo is a metaphorical representation of how out-of-focus information has become regarding the development of natural gas. © Joshua B. Pribanic
Our investigation of the Chesapeake Energy blowout in Bradford County (April 2011) has called into question state recommendations for annual, single predrill tests of water supplies near shale gas extraction. A single pre-drill test has been deemed “inconclusive” compared to repeated post-blowout testing. Many homeowners with private wells in Pennsylvania already find annual water tests, that include the laundry list of gas drilling constituents, too expensive. If quarterly testing of private and public water supplies should be required to prove the true content of a water source, the economic burden to ensure safe drinking water for Pennsylvanians, and other states downstream of the its 45,000 miles of rivers and streams, will become much heavier. Our investigation of pre-drill testing also revealed the use of “historical information” (i.e. a person’s memory) as plausible data used by the gas industry to refute hard science, in addition to pointing out the conflict of interest in Chesapeake’s independent report about the impact of the blowout.
The comprehensive report Drinking Dimock published about legal precedent in Pennsylvania’s most controversial natural gas contamination case remains our most popular article to date, followed by Shoveling Water and our series on the Chesapeake blowout.
Before developing PH, we reported about a split estate in north-central Pa. where a landowner has not been compensated for over ten acres of hardwoods cleared for gas extraction, with additional acres threatened in the future. We do plan to continue our coverage of property rights and other land use issues. Public Herald also launched its first documentary, Triple Divide, about shale gas extraction at the unique headwaters of Potter County, Pa., wherein a chapter on split estate is scheduled to appear.
PH’s top second pick for photos in 2011. Whinter, a collection of photos for +Creativity. © Melissa A. Troutman
In the near future readers will see a dynamic, month-to-month publication of +Creativity pieces from nationwide poets, artists, musicians, and innovators who will be sharing their work with PH. This week +Creativity publishes about sound artist Avey Tare who recently performed songs from his unreleased second album in Pittsburgh. We hope our readers enjoy experiencing new artists through PH and help promote their work when possible.
The website will remain in Beta throughout 2012 as we partner with web-based firms to finalize a vision for the homepage, investigative sections, and interactive media within articles. The homepage will continue to feature the top pick for video investigations and spotlight +Truth and +Creativity choices, with a few other minor changes. Anyone can submit suggestions about the overall appearance of the site by reaching out to us via email in the About section (or by leaving comments below).
PH is one of few online publications searching exclusively for investigative news articles and video investigations, i.e. other than ProPublica’s muckreads service where anyone can ‘#muckreads’ noteworthy investigations on Twitter. Our search for worldwide stories of interest, published by The Investigative Newswire author, will continue to appear weekly. While these reports have not proven to be more popular than our own work on the website, they remain to be a valuable service for readers.
How do we manage to do all this with no budget or advertising?
While we are not part of the for-profit advertising model, there will be sections available in the PH website for sponsors starting this year. We’ll make our best effort to create relevant and unobtrusive space for designs.
PH is submitting proposals to foundations nationwide to secure funds for shovel-ready investigations of issues surrounding natural gas drilling, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), education, agriculture, freshwater, and the fishing industry. While we’re currently deep in file reviews wading for truth, the most important start for the new year will be to establish financial support and partner our immediate work with print publications. In the event we are not funded, our researched stories for 2012 will be passed on to trusted investigative news agencies to continue the work.
Most important, by becoming Lifetime Members to The Public Herald, readers directly support this work. Members enjoy exclusive gifts and private access to investigations before they go to publish, weighing in on the premise and structure of our stories. A current list of Lifetime Members will be published in Publicherald.org at the end of January. Each new member thereafter will be added to our online list of honored inductees at the end of each fiscal quarter.
We and our members are proud to play a part in “repairing some of the damage to our democracy caused by the shrinkage of newspapers and their reporting staffs,” as written by Paul Steiger, Editor-in-Chief of ProPublica.org. We hope you become a part of this work in 2012.
Sincerely,
Joshua Pribanic & Melissa Troutman – Founders of Public Herald
*While we do share strong opinions in this letter, our overall principle to produce unbiased reports for each investigation remains the PH axiom.
Public Herald is a nonprofit investigative news organization recognized by the IRS and founded in October 2011 by watchdog journalists Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic. Public Herald’s mission is to empower the voices of community who face challenging conditions through engaging investigative journalism and multimedia projects. We engage where a moral truth is suppressed, where policies and practices create immediate risks to the health of a community or ecosystem due to a lack of accountability or better modus operandi.
