KMTV, Omaha asked Nebraska Watchdog to analyze the fallout from Bob Kerrey’s decision not to run for the U.S. Senate.

Reported by Joe Jordan, joe@nebraskawatchdog.org

Editor’s note: to subscribe to News Updates from Nebraska Watchdog at no cost, click here

There’s a good chance you’ve heard or seen them…attack ads targeting Bob Kerrey and his possible bid for the U.S. Senate.

Nebraska Watchdog’s Joe Jordan analyzes the blitz for KMTV, Omaha.

Nebraska Watchdog is asked by KMTV to analyze Senator Ben Nelson’s decision not to run in 2012.

Reported by Joe Jordan, joe@nebraskawatchdog.org

Editor’s note: to subscribe to News Updates from Nebraska Watchdog at no cost, click here

January, 2010

Nebraska Watchdog analyzes President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union Address. 

September 10, 2009

Nebraska Watchdog Investigative Reporter Joe Jordan interviewed by KMTV, Omaha after breaking  the story that MECA, a powerful public board, may have violated the Nebraska Open Meetings Act.

Nebraskawatchdog.org Launches New Method of Government Oversight

By James Barnes

The Daily Record  September 14, 2009

After 29 years with KMTV Action 3 News, veteran gumshoe journalist Joe Jordan recently has unleashed his inner watchdog to become the new managing editor and investigative reporter for a new non-profit website: www.nebraskawatchdog.org, which went online September 7, 2009.

The Nebraska Watchdog is a non-profit venture that will receive partial funding from Pete Rickets – Omaha-based billionaire who serves on the board of directors of TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation – and the FranklinCenter for Government and Public Integrity. According to the website, the mission of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity is to promote social welfare and civil betterment by undertaking programs that promote journalism and the education of the public about corruption, incompetence, fraud, or taxpayer abuse by elected officials at all levels of government.

Jordan said that Ricketts called him last December to discuss Nebraska Watchdog and they talked about it for several months. 

“When I felt comfortable in a variety of different ways – journalistically and professionally – I finally decided it was what I thought was the right move to make at this time in my life,” said Jordan. “Part of the reason I made this transition is the parameters of television make it difficult in some respects to do lengthy investigations because the time constraints that are put on you is difficult and I understand that. It’s difficult for management to say here’s two months go work on a story.”

According to Jordan, the format of television prevented him from doing the type of in-depth investigative reporting that he desired. Unlike an advertising-driven commercial enterprise, he contends the new cyber-watchdog venture will open up opportunities to dig deeper into stories, similar to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Paper’s style of journalism, which he described as his inspiration.

“The source of the stories is basically me getting on the phone or going in person to places and talking to people and going through lots of state records and documents and official correspondence that may not have received any publicity before,” said Jordan.

The CornhuskerState is not the first to develop the online investigative format. Jordan says the prototype for Nebraska Watchdog is texaswatchdog.org.  

“They started about two years ago or so. They have three or four reporters down there. I think they’re based in Houston [and] they’re sort of a prototype for this watchdog venture which is being done in a variety [of locations],” explained Jordan. “They’re popping up in several states and if you go to texaswatchdog.org you’ll see what they’re doing. They’ve done some pretty interesting stuff down there.”

Reflecting on the last 30-plus years in his career as a television news reporter, Jordan doesn’t feel there is much he will miss.

“I think what I might miss [about television] is covering some of those major breaking news stories … where you’re on the front lines. But my real passion has always been … for investigative reporting and so this gives me the opportunity to stretch my limits a little bit and concentrate on things that I   haven’t had to concentrate on before because the time constraints aren’t as rigorous [and] I don’t need to turn a story everyday.”

Many people have expressed surprise at Jordan’s career change but he says it aligns with what he has been doing for years.

“I understand that this is a major shift, but at the same time it’s not like I’m going from being a television news reporter to being a plumber,” said Jordan. “And I’ve got nothing against plumbing, but I don’t know anything about plumbing. I’m doing what I know how to do; it’s just a different medium. I think that whatever skills I do have as a reporter, I’ll get a chance to grow them even more and get better by having a little more time to work on some different stories.”

New Digital Frontier

Pioneering journalists like Jordan have been adapting their mainstream media skills to the new digital frontier for years. This migration and the new media evolution or, perhaps, revolution was briefly discussed in an article entitled, “Journalism Without Profit Margins,” published in the October/November 2004 issue of the American Journalism Review (AJR), a national magazine that covers all aspects of print, television, radio and online media. The magazine, published six times a year, examines how the media cover specific stories and broader coverage trends.

Depth Over Pizzazz

Senior editor Carl Sessions Stepp analyzed commercial and noncommercial television broadcasts and made the following observation about the PBS program, “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” which he says “prizes depth and analysis over pizzazz.”

“In an era of concentration, conglomeration and commercialization of news, a few holdouts steer their own eccentric courses, typically more civic-minded and serious, and they take pride above all else in working toward ideals that are mostly their own, not prescribed by corporate bosses, focus groups or advertisers,” said Stepp.

As the conventional media empire begins to buckle under the weight of rapid change, the Internet has a Manifest Destiny quality that has journalists at a crossroads regarding their craft.

“One of the sorts of law of unintended consequences,” said Jordan, “in late July I sent out a news release around the state … [and] within 48 hours I received calls from three different reporters who will remain nameless. They were asking me if there was room for them joining me in this venture. There may be but not yet. I think the idea would be to grow over time, but we’ll see.”

Once the new website got underway, Jordan began posting stories immediately.

Three Arms

“What I think is a little bit different from the Texas site is there’s basically three arms to this website. One is that I clearly want to emphasize this is a hard news operation and so one facet is hard news reporting,” said Jordan. “You know as well as I do, you watch the 10 o’clock news and there’s a lot of crime, fires and accidents. I’m not going to be covering crimes, fires and accidents unless they have a clear public policy facet to them.”

Jordan continued: “And there is a second arm which is a political commentary blog where it’s not my opinion but sort of my analysis of different political campaigns, different races that are going to be coming up; different candidates and political officials. And then the third phase is basically a video phase where I will be doing web interviews, interviews I will be putting on the web with candidates and public officials and others. But the main facet is the hard news of it.”

Is the software-driven Internet an effective medium for channeling hard news? Jordan thinks so and explained that with the advent of the Internet, change was imminent.

“My reference for the last 29 years has been Channel 3. I can tell you that for the last couple of years, if not longer than that – and it gets more significant every day– the news stations [including] Channel 3 spent a lot of time working stories for the web site,” said Jordan. “So while you are on the air doing a story, you’re also trying to attract people to go to your website. I was talking to the news director at Channel 7 (KETV) about this a couple of months ago. And we both agreed we’re not really sure where all this change is going, we just know it’s changing and you’ve got to hang on for the ride and see where it winds up because the world of news is clearly changing in terms of how it’s delivered.”

Jordan is uncertain about whether or not the new venture is necessarily cutting edge but he knows that people are more frequently going to the Internet to get their news. “There’s no question about it,” he said. “It’s at their convenience; they can go wherever they want.”

Despite his excitement about starting the new venture, Jordan was guarded in discussing possible story lines.

“I’m going to be spending a lot of time going through different city and county and state records,” said Jordan. “But I don’t want to get specific. [The] point is you don’t want to scoop yourself and have somebody else pick up a story that you’re working on, and, it’s not fair to individuals that you might be [investigating only to find] that there really wasn’t anything wrong.”

Jordan offered clues on the type of issues that he plans to investigate. Unlike his work at KMTV, he expects to be less focused on the private sector and more focused on public policy.

“Well, only where the private sector crosses into public policy,” he clarified. “There are a variety of private sector companies, like the airline industry, that’s a clear example where a private company is dealing with the public and in many ways there is a cross over there in terms of public safety. The mission of the Nebraska Watchdog website is government waste, fraud, and abuse, but we’ll look into any questions where public safety is involved as well.”

Leavenworth Street – the talk of Nebraska politics

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

***

The new Nebraska Watchdog website is up — run by Joe Jordan, produced by Joe Jordan and, reporting live, Joe Jordan.

(Well, actually Joseph Fenton Jordan, according to his YouTube site).

This is the new endeavor by Pete Ricketts and the non-profit Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. In the initial page, you can see stories about MECA, Pete Festersen, and an on-camera interview with Matt Sakalosky, among others.

The site also has a blog up by Jordan, though it’s not too apparent how different this is from the rest of the stories.

Freed up from the TV parameters, it would seem that Jordan can give a little more time for some straight opinion points — that P.J. Morgan could use a seat on the County Board as a stepping stone for a freed-up Omaha Mayor’s office; that a lack of any Dems to run for state offices will free up Dem money for Tom White’s attacks on Lee Terry. (A point that WE were going to make today. DAMN YOU Jordan!!!)

It is not clear how often Jordan will be updating the site — Daily? Weekly? Or if there will be other features. But we’ve enjoyed Joe Jordan’s work in the past and hopefully it will be a new source for you and for us on a continuing basis.

***

Omaha investigative journalist head’s non-profit news site

by Bryan Cohen

If Nebraska politicians thought Joe Jordan’s recent resignation from KMTV-3 would mean less door knocking from the Omaha newsman, they were wrong. Jordan announced he’ll be managing editor and lead reporter for the start-up investigative news website Nebraskawatchdog.org.  The site is slated to launch in September.

Joe Jordan

Jordan told The Reader he thought Omaha’s TV news outlets did a poor job covering the last mayoral election and wants to use his new post to further investigate campaign funding and debunk campaign advertising. The web format will also be better suited than television for more complicated news stories, Jordan said.

“In television, some stories aren’t good as investigations because they involve a lot of number crunching,” he said. “There were very few stories on the budget problems facing the city before the mayoral race.”

Nebraska Watchdog is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that receives partial funding from the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity and Pete Ricketts, founder of Drakon LLC, an asset management firm based in Omaha.

The non-profit, web-based format has become a beacon of hope as traditional news outlets struggle to maintain relevance and revenues. Sites such as Minnpost.com in Minneapolis and Voicesofsandiego.com have pioneered providing local news over a web-only, non-profit format. Jordan said he’s excited to start Omaha’s version of the new-news.

“Anyone that wants to see investigative news coverage can contribute. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican, Democrat or Independent … if you want to see good solid journalism, that’s what I’m going to try to put out.”

Jordan has spent the past 36 years as an investigative-political reporter on radio and television. He’s interviewed several U.S. presidents, including Barack Obama.

In 2003 Jordan won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Journalism. He exposed potentially illegal activity between pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and several members of congress.

By taking on more long-term projects, Jordan said he hopes to spark more interest in politics and policy.

“(Investigative journalists) spend more time looking into stories that don’t go anywhere, but if you don’t look, you’ll never find anything.”