"These 5.
The steady decline of investigative journalism due to diminishing support and funding is an undeniable fact. The ever-ongoing acceleration and over-crowding in the so-called attention economy makes that there is no longer enough room for complicated stories. The corporate owners of mass circulation media are also less and less inclined to see the working of the neo-liberal globalized economy and its politics detailled and discussed at length. The shift of information towards infotainment demanded by the public and media-owners has unfortunately also been embraced as a working style by journalists themselves making it difficult to publish complex stories. Wikileaks erupts in this state of affairs as an outsider within the steamy ambiance of ‘citizen journalism’ and DIY news reporting in the blogosphere. What Wikileaks anticipates, but so far has not been able to organize, is the ‘crowd sourcing’ of the actual interpretation of its leaked documents."
It is interesting that Wikileaks worked with high-profile news organizations that still do investigative journalism when it released this archive of material. In other words, it knows that this mountain of information needs analysis in order to mean something, in order for its full impact to be felt. And it is clear from the articles produced by major news organizations that it was the overwhelming impact of the large body of material that was most persuasive.
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