The growing exodus of mainstream reporters from the nation's capital has ceded much of the turf to a new, more specialized kind of journalism.
Just as newspaper, magazine and television bureaus here are shrinking or shutting down at the dawn of the Obama administration, high-priced newsletters and trade publications are filling the breach. Climate Wire, an online newsletter launched last year, now has more Washington staffers -- 10 -- than Hearst Newspapers.
"This dramatically changes what gets covered and how," says Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which surveys the new landscape in a report released yesterday. "As the government is getting bigger and playing a larger role in our lives in an activist era, there are fewer reporters monitoring that on behalf of the general public.
"The niche media cover trees, not forests. . . . They're generally not involved in watchdog, exposé journalism that by its very existence is a check on malfeasance."
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