A hard-nosed journalist and a hard-boiled author are teaming up Tuesday to talk about newspapering and crime fiction; to eat, drink and be merry; and to raise a few bucks for innovative local investigative news organ the Broward Bulldog.
The evening's featured guest is Michael Connelly, a Broward boy whose years as a reporter here and in L.A. lead to a reincarnation as a best-selling, prize-winning crime fiction writer. The host is veteran South Florida reporter Dan Christensen, who made his bones breaking stories for the Miami Herald and the Daily Business Review, winning a few awards of his own. In 2009 he plunged into the whirlpool of digital journalism, founding the Broward Bulldog.
A web-based response to the withering of traditional print journalism and investigative reporting, in a little over three years the Bulldog's already broken major stories national (about a previously unknown 9/11 conspiracy) and local (about cops gone wrong).
All that good work and $2.50 will get you on the subway. Serious digital newshounds have a tough row to hoe financially, since no one has yet completely figured out how to reliably and fruitfully monetize web journalism. The Internet, after all, is the real land of the free -- or so content consumers expect -- and ad sales on the Web still haven't reached volumes equal to the stream that once fed print. What's a crusading journalist to do?
In Christensen's case, he's to incorporate the Bulldog as a nonprofit 501(c)(3). Just like NPR, he's to turn to the public and ask them to contribute to becoming a well-informed public. Worth it? What's the price of democracy?
Connelly's sure to have interesting stories to tell. Before his series of novels featuring fictional L.A. police detective Harry Bosch took off, and before he worked in film and television, he covered Broward crime for the Sun-Sentinel during the cocaine wars of the 1980s. What we want to know is: What it was like to rent Raymond Chandler's old L.A. apartment for years and use it as a writing studio? That had to be inspiring.
Tickets and all the details about Tuesday's fundraiser -- time, place, prices -- is here.
Michael Connelly for the Broward Bulldog Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale Auditorium 1 East Las Olas Boulevard Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301 Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 5:30 PM
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