In this New York Times article, David Carr discusses the “gap in reporting,” or niche media sources that do not cover explosive, breaking news stories like the Fort Hood shooting. One of the strengths of this kind of journalism is the ability to build up a fan base. If you are a reader looking for a specific kind of news, you will know what this website (in this case, www.texastribune.org) is offering. Since they run on donations, they are guaranteed to have some sponsorship. A weakness, however, as Carr points out, is the scarcity of such media outlets. A quote from a Texas Tribune writer acknowledged the risks of entering into such an unstable journalistic field.
One problem I find with this article is that Carr only focuses on one of these kinds of sources, the Texas Tribune. If he is trying to make the case that this is a kind of media that is growing, there should have been more examples of this in the article. The background of this type of journalism is not thoroughly explored in the article; not only does it only focus on one publication, it only focuses on one area of coverage, politics. Carr does acknowledge that other businesses like this exist, covering news in “crime, gossip or entertainment,” but he does not delve any further into these differences.
I found bias in the fact that Carr opened the article with the fact that the Texas Tribune did not cover the story of the Ford Hood shooting. If you were to only read the beginning of the article and not go on, you would naturally think less of this website, since the Fort Hood shooting was such a shocking and nationally important event.