Day to day in many news organizations there’s no real encouragement for reporters and editors to do the best job they can. Instead, it’s just the opposite: The message sent by cuts in staff, cuts in news hole and focus on easy features, not hard news, is loud and clear and very, very disheartening and cynical.Making things worse is the confusion spread by organized, high-level disinformation campaigns and lies, unending attacks on press credibility and news organizations’ own repeated bumbling and lack of concern. No one expects perfection but, as the gossip columnist used to say, “Where are standards?”

Amid such surroundings it seems to us that it could be important, even vital, to have sympathetic, knowledgeable, respected writers offer a little guidance and commentary and, every now and then, show us how our work is supposed to be done.

We took NiemanWatchdog.org online in May 2004 with a focus on having experts from Harvard and elsewhere pose questions the press should ask. Since then we’ve had more than 130 contributors and 440 or so items. We are of course continuing that.

Today we launch the Watchdog Blog, to supplement those efforts. We have a strong lineup of writers — some have already weighed in with their first items; for some it may be a few weeks before they can contribute. At least three are finishing books right now. [Click here for bios of the bloggers.]

We intend to add more writers as we go along, including some from outside the United States.

The blog format makes it easy for readers to post comments. We’d love nothing more than to host a rich, continuing discussion of how to do better reporting and editing—and in the end, possibly, to help bring about to some excellent journalism.