Reporter Joe Eskenazi takes a look at the state of investigative journalism in a cost-cutting, downsizing industry. A three-part series of blogs on the SF Weekly’s The Snitch:

While “getting more from less” is a favorite refrain in newsrooms—especially amidst cutbacks—it’s a patently ridiculous notion. You don’t get more from less. You get less from less. And that, in a nutshell is the future of investigative journalism: Less. We’ll have fewer reporters writing fewer stories on fewer subjects while authorized to spend less time and less money.

Today: A glance at the present and future of this fine mess we’re in. Tuesday: Know your “enemy”: The Internet. Wednesday: So, who’s going to pay for all this?

Carrie Ching

Carrie Ching is an award-winning, independent multimedia journalist and producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For six years, she led digital storytelling projects at the Center for Investigative Reporting as senior multimedia producer. Her multimedia reports have been featured by NPR.org, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, Grist, Time.com, Fast Company, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, KQED, PBS NewsHour, Salon.com, Mother Jones, Public Radio International, Poynter, Columbia Journalism Review and many other publications. Her specialty is crafting digital narratives and exploring ways to use video, audio, photography, animation and interactive graphics to push the boundaries of storytelling on the Web, tablets and mobile. Her work has been honored with awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Best of the West, the Online News Association, Scripps Howard, The Gracies, and was part of the entry in a Pulitzer-finalist project. Prior to her time at CIR she was a magazine and book editor, video journalist, newspaper reporter and TV comedy scriptwriter. She was on the 2010 Eddie Adams Workshop faculty as a multimedia producer working with MediaStorm to teach digital storytelling techniques to photojournalists. She completed a master’s degree in journalism at UC Berkeley in 2005.