A journalist's journey from traditional media to new media

By: Rachel Morgan
2/1/10

Robin Fields knows first-hand the changes traditional media is undergoing in favor of more interactive, tech-savvy alternatives – simply put, because she’s done it.

Fields, 42, is a senior editor for ProPublica, a non-profit, privately funded, independent new source that focuses primarily on investigative reporting and public interest stories.

Fields, who received her M.A. in journalism from Northwestern University, made the leap to the interactive fledgling news website from her steady nine-year gig as a reporter for the L.A. Times. The move wasn’t easy, she said – more like a leap of faith.

“I certainly get asked [why I left the L.A. Times to go to ProPublica] a lot when I made the decision, mostly by my friends,” the New York City native said. “I’d has a great run at the L.A. Times. I’d done just about everything I’d come there to do.”
When ProPublica called her in April 2008, asking her to get in on the ground floor of the interactive, relatively-new media outlet, she saw the perfect opportunity to do something more.

“What [ProPublica] had in mind seemed exciting,” Fields said. “It was a place where I could help shape what it was. With the bigger media outlets, they were what they were and they were going to be what they were with or without me.”

So Fields chose ProPublica, defying the trend and leaving the L.A. Times, a newspaper often referred to as “the velvet coffin,” since most of their journalists stay on staff, literally, until they die.

Fields, a slender blonde with a throaty voice and wry sense of humor, embodies the dilemma many journalists are facing today – work for the struggling, yet established newspaper or taking a chance on a new form of news media outlets such as ProPublica.

For Fields, taking a chance seems to have worked out. At the beginning of 2010, was promoted to senior editor. Now she oversees five reporters and ProPublica’s staff has grown to 32 employees.

“There are a lot of new things that [are being] tried,” she said. “Some will succeed, some will fail – but a lot of these things would never have happened if there wasn’t so much destruction.”

ProPublica strives to tell stories that are being phased out by a print industry that was being rocked by layoffs, loss of advertising revenues and cutbacks, she said.

“We want to have a ripple effect,” she said. “If you can put content out there that people can use, then you can have a much bigger effect.” On such interactive tool featured on the website is a state stimulus tracker, where readers can see exactly where and when their state’s stimulus money is being used.

ProPublica has the funds to publish its trademark longer, expensive-to produce investigative pieces partially because it’s privately-funded - a fact that draws some eyebrow raising.

But Fields maintains that ProPublica’s primary donor, the Sandler Foundation, has no say in the editorial content of the site.

“We basically ask them when the next check is coming in,” she said of the Sandler Foundation’s involvement in ProPublica. “They’re just as surprised as everyone else when we drop a story.”

Fields is used to the criticism of ProPublica’s controversial private funding and said other news sources as not immune to criticism, either.

“The only way you can prove your credibility is to do it everyday,” she said. “The L.A. Times was probably criticized 100 times a day for being a Democratic dinosaur, the Wall Street Journal for being a bunch of wide-eyed conservatives.”
New forms of media outlets like ProPublica are becoming more and more common as the journalism industry takes a nosedive.

These economic woes have also sparked collaboration between formerly rival news sources, Fields said.

“We used to be trying to beat each other on the same story,” Fields, a former investigative reporter said. “Now we’re often working in partnerships with other newspapers. Now, all of the papers share content with each other.”

It’s a far cry from Field’s early days as cub reporter in South Florida, which she refers to as “the most viciously competitive environments you could imagine.”

As far as Fields’ future, does she plan to stay in the world of interactive, online media or return to the world of print journalism once it recovers?

“I would never say I would never do that again,” she said. “I think that the big news outlets, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, are going to come out on the other side of this in some form that we haven’t gotten our heads around yet.”