Chapter 7 through 9 were really interesting.  I think that chapter nine reinforced the views and disscussions from the previous two chapters.  Dan Gillmor was straight forward with his thoughts and ideas in these chapters.

With wiki anyone is able to edit and fix parts of information they find to be inaccurate or not accurate enough.  Making money on the web is getting a lot easier.  So I am not surprised that bloggers have found ways to get their audience to support them and pay them for the simplicity of blogging.  It reminds me of one of my favorite bands, Radiohead.  They were the first band to leave their record company and release their album on the web for free.  All they did was post it and ask for donations.  It ties in with the different Law’s discussed in Chapter 8.  Using the resources available on the net will continue to help it grow. Their profits sky rocketed and exceeded what they would have made through their record label.  This phenomena got other bands to follow.  Again, I don’t find it as a surprise that now bloggers are doing the same.

Now those “average” people sitting in front of a monitor who declare themselves as bloggers are taking a good business model from celebrities and using it to their advantage.  I think this is smart.  Although, there are those poser’s out there who will try and be something they are not.  I find this true especially for young people.  Blogging is not only a great advancement in a journalistic sense, except young people all over now want to be “blogging.”  I don’t think that being a journalist has developed into a career that only wants people to “blog” and express their feelings.  We still need reporting.  That’s what being a journalist is all about, reporting and find a good story.  If it’s becoming about expressing emotions, than we should consider them authors of english literature.

I guess if you don’t want to be fooled by what you see or read on the net.  Treat it all as if you were watching Fox news.

I spent part of yesterday and today in meetings at the Kettering Foundation thinking about media and democracy. These conversations still, to my chagrin, keep getting tangled up with the debate about old school journalism versus new media.  I’ve blogged about this debate before. But I keep coming back to these meetings because I think that something incredibly promising is happening in this new media environment.  But it won’t happen inevitably; it won’t happen because the new technology just makes it so; it won’t happen unless we discern and aim toward using these new media to create a better environment for democratic politics.

Here’s where I think we need to go next.

First we need to understand that publicly relevant journalism is not beholden to any particular medium — not print, radio, TV, or web.  Publicly relevant journalism is reportage that links information with value. By that I mean linking what the facts are on any given matter with what people’s and communities’ concerns and aspirations are.  Good journalism never just reported what happened.  It reported on how what happened matters to us.  Events matter to us because they impinge or constrain or open up possibilities for us achieving things we care for. This kind of journalism can happen in a newspaper as well as on a blog.

Second, we need to get over this distinction between professional journalism and citizen journalism. It was a twentieth century economic circumstance that gave rise to the penny press (see James Carey on this) and the very model of professional, disinterested journalism. In the last decade or so, two phenomena have converged: (1) the old business model for print journalism cratered and (2) digital media made analogue media obsolete.  Phenomenon 2 certainly exacerbated phenomenon 1.  But it didn’t cause it!  Well before web 1.0 or web 2.0, newspapers were in crisis.  Ten years ago we lamented that two newspaper towns were becoming one newspaper towns.  Now we lament that there are towns without any newspapers at all.  Old-school journalism wants to blame the web.  But the blame lies elsewhere.

Third, we need to understand what drives demand for good journalism.  In today’s meeting, Dan Gillmor made the good point that the old model of journalism was about manufacturing a product (a news article) and distributing it to the passive masses. The old model, which sent news out to people,  trained people to be passive consumers. Now with new media, Dan argues, we have plenty of content but poor demand for good quality since people are trained to wait and settle for whatever news comes at them.

That’s a good point.  But Rich Harwood and I countered that it is not a matter of ginning up demand for better news but creating conditions under which citizens can engage.  As I see it, people aren’t going to seek out good journalism unless they see their own connection to it.

The dominant political culture of the twentieth century trained citizens not to bother with matters of widespread, common concern.  Their officials would take care of it. If their officials didn’t, well then just bitch and moan until they did.  Nary was there a message that common problems call for common deliberation and action.  So we just started delegating it all to officialdom.  This is a recipe for apathy/outrage (two sides of one coin) not engagement.

In that kind of context, why should anyone bother reading the paper?  Why should I bother reading about matters of common concern when what I think about it doesn’t matter at all –  and when I have even less chance to make a difference?

Hence, fourth, and finally for this post, relevant journalism, whether it happens on the web or in print, needs to embedded in a culture — or help create a culture — that sees members of political communities as political agents.  One of or guests in today’s meeting, Jeremy Iggers, who helped found the Twin Cities Daily Planet, has been focused on creating a new platform with just this task. With him, we have to start treating people as actors rather than as consumers and audiences.  Good journalism calls for political transformation.  Not only that, sustainable journalism calls for this. Perhaps in another post I’ll document the places and cases in which media that actually connects with communities’ democratic capacities becomes economically sustainable. Folks will pay for news when it matters to them — and when the political culture considers that what they think does indeed matter.

In short, the future of journalism lies in creating conditions in which the people engage with the news because they think that it matters to them and because they think that their own take will matter back. Also, we need to realize that good journalism knows no particular medium, though I do think that digital media open up exponentially more opportunities and spaces than analogue media ever did.

I was unable last week to watch the unfolding coverage through Twitter and media web sites of the Fort Hood shooting.

I was traveling Thursday and teaching Friday, and simply couldn’t follow all the developments as the “facts” of the story kept changing. While I’d love to comment on the story and the coverage, I don’t like writing unless I am better informed. So I’ll just call your attention to some commentary I read on the the shootings and the coverage:

• Dan Gillmor noted how confusing and inaccurate the breaking coverage was and wished for some slow-news coverage.
• Newsosaur Alan Mutter criticized the “ugly ethnic profiling” of some of the coverage.
• Glenn Greenwald lamented the “media orgy of rumors, speculation and falsehoods.”
• Greg Marx in CJR noted that the confusion surrounding the tragedy did not prevent pundits of all stripes from claiming that it validated their opinions.

As John Robinson noted in a Twitter exchange yesterday, being right is better than being first. Journalists should hustle to be first with important developments in breaking news stories, but we should not sacrifice verification (and we should understand that sometimes we seek verification from official sources who have their facts wrong).

Other interesting things I’ve read the last day or so:

Mobile advertising. I have noted before that mobile revenue streams are an essential part of the future of media, and that news companies need to do more to develop the audience, the technology and the revenue streams. A post by Dan Butcher on Mobile Marketing reports that mobile advertising is three to five times more effective than online advertising.

Hyperlocal journalism. Mark Coddington of the Grand Island Independent wrote a thoughtful blog post on the challenge of hyperlocal journalism in rural areas.

Doing “more with less.” Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, correctly called out one of the big lies of today’s workplace, particularly today’s newsrooms. As reported by the Nieman Journalism Lab, Keller told his staff that you can’t do more with less, though lots of people making cuts will tell you that you can.

To do more with less, you have to change what you’re doing, usually by using technology smarter. Computer-assisted reporting let us do more with less. Pagination let us do more with less. Perhaps crowdsourcing and community engagement will help us do more with less, though I think we’re way too early in our experience with them to know that.

But when you just cut staff (and I’ve been involved before in making cuts), you’re going to do less with less. I’m pleased to see that Keller is having no part of this lie that too many bosses have told too many times. “What you can do with less, is less,” Keller told the Times staff.

In the final chapters of We the Media, Dan Gillmor discusses the impact of increased audience participation on news dissemination and trustworthiness. The influx of blogs and grassroots journalism is changing the traditional “top down” framework of news dissemination. Much like the shift from analog to digital, journalism is experiencing something similar. The traditional media is analog, processing information more or less in a continuous stream, and the new user-generated media is digital, an amalgam of disconnected sources tiled together to form a whole. This new disconnected source of information is exponentially rich in content, but with it comes with just as many problems.

Gillmor discusses the most obvious problem, that of source reliability. While he shows the web community’s amazing ability to correct itself, as demonstrated by the success of Wikipedia, errors, omissions, and blatant deceit are still easier to find online than in traditional print media. So how do you know that what you are reading is true?

Anonymity is a good indicator of someone who does not stand by what he or she is writing, with the exception of those who live in repressed regimes. But on the flip side, there are those who post under false identities, impersonating someone else entirely. This is a trend that has been apparent with the rise in popularity of Twitter. Politicians and celebrities who have come late to the game have to create profiles with names like “TheReal” or “IAm” before their names to differentiate themselves from the impostors. Earlier this year, someone created a Twitter account and posted as the Dalai Lama. After all, His Holiness has a website so it didn’t seem too far off that he would tweet too. After amassing nearly 20,000 followers, the account was busted, shut down, and the tweeter asked to leave the nest. But more concerning to me, than readers finding misleading content, is how easy it is for the content to be erased. Take Gillmor’s book as an example, We The Media was published nearly three years ago and is already dated. Many of the blogs he mentions are no longer online. How then will we be able to archive the current online discussions and campaigns for future generations to reference?

What would future generations have to hold on to without the print newspapers commemorating President Obama’s historic election? How will we ensure that the world’s skepticism of the Bush presidency, published on blogs worldwide, will remain for generations to reflect on? I think rather than editors we need a way to create a record of what is being published online so that there is increased accountability.

Gillmor believes that we shouldn’t see the rising popularity of audience participation as a threat to journalism but as an opportunity and that despite the risks of deception online, quoting the wiki software creator Ward Cunningham, says “people are generally good.” But with all the good in the world, as newspapers continue to lose funding, along with that go reporters’ salaries and the resources to properly cover major news stories. It is interesting that despite the low cost associated with writing and maintaining a blog, Gillmor predicts that only those with personal wealth will be able to use the medium to its full potential. And I would have to agree, just to write this blog post  I had to put my day job on hold.

While I am critical of the Columbia University report, The Reconstruction of American Journalism, I am pleased that it has stirred debate about the future of journalism. Here are the most interesting takes I have seen on the report by Columbia journalism professor Michael Schudson and former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr:

Tom Grubisch ripped into Downie and Schudson in OJR: The Online Journalism Review, calling it the kind of “shallow analysis that typically informs newspaper editorials on big issues.” Be sure to read Robert Niles’ comment. He sees Downie and Schudson as speaking for news industry leaders who “chose to ignore, marginalize or even demonize voices who argued that the news industry must change its procedures, in both editorial and business operations, to compete online.” Now, Niles says, “top news company managers are working their way through the stages of grief.” The Downie/Schudson report, Niles said, represents the stages of anger and bargaining.

Dan Gillmor, a colleague of Downie’s at Arizona State University, warned: “Journalists get government help at some peril.”

Jeff Jarvis said Downie and Schudson reached faulty conclusions by starting with a mistaken ”dire assumption that journalism is dying with newspapers.”

C.W. Anderson, who helped in the research, wrote about the report for the Nieman Journalism Lab.

Steve Outing, speculated that the primary audience for Downie and Schudson might well be foundations and philanthropists.

Michael Rosenblum summarized the report as terrible, saying Downie and Schudson had proposed “a tin cup” for an industry that “has to rethink what it is and what it teaches.”

Alan Mutter wrote that the solutions in the report ”range from curiously impractical to startlingly unoriginal.”

Michele McLellan said the proposal for federal funding “sends us down a garden path of wishful thinking when we need to hit the highway of innovating business models.”

Ian Hill blogged that media operations would take huge amounts of government money and philanthropy, far more than would be realistic to expect. A second critical post, Hill noted that we need to take into account the needs of the market as we seek solutions. In a separate post, Hill said Downie and Schudson were right in saying there is no easy answer and that we need to market the news. He also responded to my Schudson’s and my remarks about social media (I’m not the only one writing a lot on this topic).

Rick Edmonds summarized the report for Poynter Online, not commenting at length but noting that government funding “may prove a tough sell politically or a flawed concept.”

Poynter’s Bill Mitchell looked at the reaction to the Downie/Schudson report (linking to me and others that I also link to here).

Joel Kramer, CEO of MinnPost, acknowledged some of the problems in federal funding of accountability journalism and proposed a way to insulate the journalism from political pressure.

Columbia Journalism Review compiled responses from Jan Schaffer (“mile-wide, inch-deep reportage”), Martin Langeveld (suggesting a public-service Report for America project) and others. Schudson responded to them in a single post.

Steve Yelvington called the report a good read for college journalism students, “But as a vision, well, don’t get your hopes up.”

Jim Barnett noted that as more interest groups undertake journalism, defining who would receive federal subsidies could become problematic.

For overviews of the report, without heavy commentary, try Mac Slocum or David Carr.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I have written about this issue myself (and posted Schudson’s responses to me):

• My initial criticism
• Schudson’s response
• My reply
• One more take from Schudson 

I’m sure I’m missing some. Please add them in the comments.

Update: Michael Schudson has responded to this post.

Whatever else it is, The Reconstruction of American Journalism is not comprehensive.

Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of the Washington Post, and Michael Schudson, authors of the Columbia University report, described their work in the Post today as a “comprehensive report.” They recommend federal subsidies for news organizations and changes in federal law to allow more philanthropic support for journalism. More on those topics later.

Here’s what the report does not address in any meaningful way:

• The role of social media in the future of journalism.
• The failure of media companies to develop new business models.
• The possibility of developing new business models that rely on the free market, rather than charity or taxpayers.

The first 70 pages or so of the 98-page report are basically an overview of the state of journalism today. Though touted by Dean Nicholas Lemann of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism for the “the breadth of their original research,” most of that overview is a rehash of conditions and developments that will be mostly familiar to people familiar with history and recent developments in the news media. As research, this is mostly what reporters call a “clip job,” rounding up the clippings (it’s a term dating to when these were actually clipped from papers, rather than read online) of other reporters who beat you to pieces of the story, and writing your own overview.

The overview did cover important issues, including the decline in reporting by newspapers, the state of broadcast reporting, new sources of independent news reporting, blogs, university reporting projects and public databases.

Clearly social media will play a huge role in the future of journalism — in the gathering and reporting of news and in the platforms on which people read the news. Social media and journalism are changing too swiftly for anyone to predict the future with much confidence or precision. But if you discuss the current state of journalism without considering social media, your work is not only not comprehensive, it’s shockingly inadequate.

I searched the text of the report after reading it, just to make sure I hadn’t missed. The term ”social media” does not appear.  Nor do such popular social platforms as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Flickr. The closest the authors could come are three passing references (on pages 13, 20 and 50) to social networks (in each case, social networks are part of a list; the report never discusses them specifically).

I wondered about whether Downie or Schudson even use social media. Neither has a Twitter account in his name. I couldn’t find Schudson on Facebook. Downie has an account and some friends (we have nine mutual friends), but doesn’t even have a profile photograph, so I’m going to guess he doesn’t use it a lot.

The report does discuss the paid-content controversy as well as some other efforts to develop business models, such as the range of new news organizations in San Diego. The report doesn’t mention the American Press Institute’s Newspaper Next project (in which I was involved), which spurred a round of innovative projects but did not, to my knowledge, fundamentally change the way any newspaper companies operate. The report does not mention proposals for new business models that wouldn’t depend on federal intervention, such as my own Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection, the City University of New York’s New Business Models for News project or Steve Outing’s suggestion of memberships. 

The truth is that media organizations are clinging stubbornly to their long-established business models. The most dramatic efforts at innovation have come from startups. The report describes a pretty vibrant ecosystem of small community journalism startups and investigative reporting projects without ever making a convincing case that they won’t provide the public-affairs journalism that our country and our communities need.

For the most part, the economic assumptions of this report are that advertising is in the tank and not likely to come back and advertising, donations or charging for content are the only possible meaningful, so we need help from the feds. The possibility of moving beyond advertising to becoming the digital marketplace for our communities gets only a passing mention on Page 75, quickly followed by the unsupported conclusion that efforts to find new business models “will no longer produce the kinds of revenues or profits that had subsidized large reporting staffs, regardless of what new business models they evolve.”

Case closed. We better put our hands out to the federal government.

While some of the specific recommendations that Downie and Schudson make have merit, the general thrust is that of a government bailout for journalism. As a First-Amendment purist who believes that independence ensures freedom, I cringe at the suggestion that we become that dependent on government (and government’s tax break for charity).

Admittedly, as Downie and Schudson recount in some detail, government intervention in the news media has been longstanding — postal subsidies, antitrust exemptions for jointly operated newspapers, heavy regulation of commercial broadcasting, heavy subsidy for public broadcasting.

We also should be careful what we ask for in seeking government help. Whatever journalists propose, the actual legislation will be written by Congress. The Senate version of the shield bill now in Congress, intended to protect journalists from having to disclose their sources, has a definition of journalist that excludes bloggers and freelancers. It would have excluded journalistic icon I.F. Stone. It may end up being worse than no shield law. 

The first recommendation in the Columbia report would have Congress or the Internal Revenue Service authorize public-affairs reporting as a purpose for Low-profit Limited Liability Corporations (L3C). That is worth exploring, though I haven’t studied it enough to have an informed opinion. The second recommendation is for philanthropists, foundations and community foundations to increase support for organizations committed to public affairs and accountability reporting. Again, I see merit. But I wonder how such organizations would perform their watchdog role on the foundations that provide their support.

The fourth and sixth recommendations I fully endorse: increased accountability reporting by university journalism programs and increased access to data from all levels of government.

The third recommendation calls for increased funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to support more local news reporting by public radio and television. With trillion-dollar deficits, that’s kind of hard to argue for, or to envision.

Perhaps the most troubling recommendation is the fifth one, which calls for a Fund for Local News, supported by a federal tax, collected by the Federal Communications Commission, on “telecom users, television and radio broadcast licensees, or Internet service providers.” This also calls for state “Local News Fund Councils.” Downie and Schudson liken this to public support for the arts, humanities and sciences. “We recognize that political pressure has played a role at times in the history of the arts and humanities endowments and public broadcasting. But these organizations have weathered those storms, and funding for the sciences and social sciences has generally been free of political pressure.”

The view that science funding, particularly, has been free from political pressure is not universally held.

Here’s my central point on Downie’s and Schudson’s dismissal of the notion that funding for accountability journalism could be insulated from political pressure: It’s hard to believe these two men could be so naïve as to think that public funding for news media would be no more controversial than funding for the arts. The news media are under vigorous attack now, and you can be sure that a federal tax to fund accountability journalism would be highly politicized, especially with 50 state councils in which media critics could apply pressure.

Dan Gillmor and Jeff Jarvis have already blogged critically about this report, and both offer more insight on these topics than Downie and Schudson. David Carr reported on it for the New York Times. I will add more links as I find them. Rick Edmonds of Poynter was more positive, but didn’t endorse the Downie/Schudson recommendations. C.W. Anderson, who helped in the research, wrote about the report for the Nieman Journalism Lab.

Given the stature of Downie and Columbia, I expect this report to be taken seriously. I would be surprised, though, if it changes much or anything. I hope the authors catch up sometime on the world of social media and the private-sector possibilities for developing new business models.

Dopo gli 11 punti di Dan Gillmor è la volta dei 12 consigli di Seth Godin.

La scorsa settimana è stato pubblicato un articolo dal titolo “Il problema riguardante l’attitudine mentale delle notizie via cavo”, ennesima brillante rappresentazione dell’autore che riguarda da vicino il mondo dei media e le imprese editoriali.

A beneficio di una migliore comprensione e diffusione dei concetti espressi dal testo originale, azzardo una traduzione dello stesso, ed alcune note [link] minime a margine.

Quando ero ragazzo, Eyewitness News trovava sempre un a casa in fiamme a South Buffalo. La notizia del giorno, intonava Irv Weinstein, ….un incendio a South Buffalo. Ogni sera, se scorrevi le notizie da fuori città, saresti stato sicuro che il comune era stato completamente raso al suolo dalle fiamme.

L’attitudine mentale delle notizie via cavo non ha nulla a che fare con gli incendi o con la politica. Amplifica, invece, i peggiori elementi delle reazioni emotive:

1. Concentrare l’attenzione sull’urgente anziché sull’importante – vedi

2. Emozioni vivide ed immagini di supporto selezionate appositamente per manipolare l’opinione – vedi -

3. Porre l’enfasi sul rumore invece che sull’analisi ragionata – vedi -

4. Mancanza di buona volontà di invertire il corso degli eventi – vedi -

5. Reazioni xenofobe e scioviniste [paura degli outsider]- vedi -

6. Difesa della status quo incoraggiata da un audience selezionata per essere uniforme – vedi -

7. Attribuzione dell’importanza delle cose solo perchè altri hanno deciso che lo sono – vedi -

8. Modalità di comunicazione top down ed incoraggiamento dell’amplificazione del messaggio [siate d'accordo con questo “editto” o cambiate canale] – vedi -

9. Male informati rispetto alla vicenda generale ed all’ argomento specifico – vedi -

10. Confondere le opinioni con i fatti -vedi -

11. Distorcere i fatti per adattarli al proprio punto di vista – vedi – +

12. Nessuna volontà di rivedere gli errori del passato alla luce dei fatti per trarne un insegnamento. – vedi -

Se volessi mettere le pastoie ad una organizzazione o persino ad una nazione, vorrei che adottasse questi dodici punti. Mi domando se tutto ciò vi appare come il resoconto dell’ultima riunione del consiglio di amministrazione a cui siete andati….

At the opposite end of the spectrum to Andrew Keen there are numerous influential media commentators and academics who are accentuating the positives of this new online era. In this interview Dan Gillmor, author of ” We the Media: Grassroots journalism for the People, by the People” discusses how we amateur or citizen journalists must take hold of these new technologies to create our own future.

Earlier this year I realised the uncertainty of this industry’s  future.  I started to panic. When I finish my studies will I be able to get a job or will society have evolved, leaving behind the profession that was once known as journalism?

But then it hit me. It is up to us to ensure the survival of the journalist species,  as the environment changes we must adapt and create new ways of reporting and expressing ourselves. Although for the moment I have chosen to one day become a ‘professional’ journalist, I believe that citizen journalism in its many varied forms is the way of the future.

Questions of objectivity, facts and the truth of this alternative journalism still need to be answered. There are still many challenges that need to be tackled. Even so, this revolution could lead us to that “no place” that Thomas More once described. That place where you can have a say, where you can express yourself in whatever way you choose.  A youtopia.

Journalists have never been able to keep our opinions and biases out of our work. Nor should we.

Our job is to report the important, interesting and relevant news of the nation, the world or our communities. And, if we’re honest, we have to admit that important, interesting and relevant are matters of opinion.

We work hard to find and report the facts. But finding and reporting those facts requires an endless series of decisions: Which tips to pursue and which to ignore; when we have enough verification to confirm a fact;  how reliable a source is; which facts to include in a story and which to leave out; which facts come first and which come last; which stories lead the newscast or run on Page One ; which stories to keep following and which are worth one shot. Each of these decisions reflects an opinion. Only we don’t call them opinions; we call them news judgments.

As the ethics of journalism have evolved, journalists and our critics have debated the proper place for opinion. When the First Amendment was written, protecting freedom of the press, newspapers in our newly independent country were vigorously partisan, freely spouting opinions about the events and issues of the day.

More recently, we have tried to separate our opinions from our factual reporting. Opinions are OK in editorials or columns, but news stories are supposed to be all fact, completely “objective.” And journalists who don’t write editorials or columns are supposed to keep our opinions to ourselves, or even to pretend we don’t have them.

For much of my career, the ethics of journalism have called on us to practice what many journalists call objectivity or neutrality. We make the judgments I described above based on what we think will be most important or interesting to the reader. We try to establish objective criteria by which to make the decisions, such as whether something is local or how recently it happened. But even in applying objective criteria, many judgments come down to a matter of opinion.

For a long time, I have felt that journalists have gone too far in elevating objectivity as a supreme journalism value, especially when objectivity became to some synonymous with “fair and balanced.” I was growing increasingly doubtful of that view even before the most partisan TV news network adopted that phrase as its tongue-in-cheek slogan.

Equating balance with fairness and objectivity too often results in a false balance that produces inaccurate stories. At some extremes we know that, understanding that there is nothing fair or accurate about balancing a story about the Holocaust with the opinions of anti-Semites who deny historic fact. But too often, we “balance” stories about the scientific facts of climate change with quotes from politicians who deny scientific fact. That’s not objective, it’s inaccurate.

The words “objective” and “objectivity” never actually appear in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. The first major point of the code  is “Seek truth and report it.” Sometimes the truth is not balanced.

The Washington Post last month issued social media guidelines for its staff that, among, other things, forbid staff members from stating opinions or exposing biases in statements on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

In two blog posts last weekend, I criticized the Post guidelines. I won’t repeat those points here, but my criticism mostly skirted the issue of opinion, which was a heavy emphasis of the guidelines. I did note that Post journalists frequently state opinions on television and that David Broder’s opinion columns have not kept him from being a respected and credible political reporter. I said the Post shouldn’t be more restrictive in social media.

Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander, who disclosed the guidelines in his blog Sept. 25, wrote about the controversy over them for his Sunday column. Alexander interviewed me before writing the column and quoted my blog.

The column focused heavily on the issue of expressing opinions. “It’s been consistently shown in our readership [surveys] that people value us for our independence,” Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in Alexander’s column. “We shouldn’t lean in one direction or another direction. Our central tenet is that we don’t let our personal views influence or guide our presentation of information or coverage of the issues.”

Alexander agreed, saying he hears far more complaints from readers about bias than any other topic: “They often measure partiality against their own point of view, of course. Still, they typically demand coverage that is unfailingly neutral.”

Brauchli’s predecessor, Len Downie, famously took neutrality to the point of stating that he did not vote in elections.

I respect that point of view and have maintained neutrality for much of my career (though I always voted). I covered the issue of abortion for several years for the Omaha World-Herald. I never stated an opinion about abortion to any source on either side of the issue or to a colleague in the newsroom.

People at both extremes of that issue generally don’t trust the press. Opponents of abortion tend to regard the press as liberal. Defenders of abortion tend to think that press coverage of abortion protests encourages the protests. Abortion providers tend not to want any press coverage, thinking that just invites more protests and possibly even danger.

I know my neutrality on the issue was critical to achieving detailed and candid interviews with people on both extremes. One of the best stories of my career profiled six women, three on each side of the issue, who had been pregnant under unhappy circumstances. Four of them had abortions; two decided to give birth.

My neutrality on the issue was critical to gaining the trust of activists on both extremes, who helped me arrange the interviews. And my neutrality was essential to gaining the trust of the women, who eventually agreed to go on the record and be quoted by name, five of them with photographs.

I respect journalists who maintain their neutrality and I have firsthand experience with its value.

On the other hand, I view objectivity as a myth. Journalists are people, not objects. My humanity helped me win the trust of those women and to tell their stories and stories of hundreds of other people I have written about.

As I have written before, I faced a similar situation to Broder when I was religion reporter for the Des Moines Register – writing straight news stories as well as opinion columns. And when sources asked me about my faith – as they often did – I told them about my personal experiences and affiliations. I turned the conversations back quickly to the stories I was pursuing, but I knew I was covering a topic where neutrality doesn’t exist. I decided transparency was more important.

I heard from people of different faiths and perspectives that my disclosures in columns and in personal interviews strengthened my credibility. And I didn’t hear any more criticism of bias from readers than I did covering abortion or politics or any of the other topics I’ve covered through the years as an editor and a reporter.

I’m not suggesting that we should abandon efforts to maintain neutrality as journalists. But I am saying that neutrality is not sacred and not the only way for ethical journalists to operate.

Neutrality is not infallible.

However much Post journalists try to be neutral, they exercised their opinions when they wrote more stories lending credibility to reports that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction than they wrote about people in the intelligence community who saw serious flaws in those reports. They exercised their opinions again when they played the stories on Page One that supported the Bush administration’s position and buried the stories about flawed intelligence.

Post journalists showed better judgment when they acted on their opinion that tips about poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital deserved investigation and when they decided that their outstanding reporting on the hospital deserved lots of space and Page-One play.

Dan Gillmor, now director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, wrote in 2005: “Maybe it’s time to say a fond farewell to an old canon of journalism: objectivity. But it will never be time to kiss off the values and principles that undergird the idea.”

Gillmor (who worked for me as a reporter for the Kansas City Times in the 1980s) suggested that the combination of thoroughness, fairness, accuracy and transparency would ensure credibility better than trying to achieve and maintain objectivity.

That approach is worth consideration. If we are thorough in examination of an issue, fair in considering all points of view, diligent in reporting facts accurately and transparent about what we know, what we don’t know and about our opinions, will our reporting be more believable?

An excellent example of how journalism is changing is PolitiFact, the fact-checking database of the St. Petersburg Times. PolitiFact doesn’t pursue neutrality or false balance. It check facts. It examines political statements and examines the facts in great detail. Then the journalists of PolitiFact reach a conclusion. Is that an opinion? No more so than deciding whom to interview for a story or whom to quote or what goes in the story. But the conclusions are based on thorough analysis of the facts.

As communication and society change, we must consider how journalism should change. Two other major points of the SPJ Code of Ethics come into play here: “Act independently” and “Be accountable.”

We can have opinions; all people do, even those who pretend not to. But we should remain independent of all groups that we might cover and independent of advertisers. As with the conclusions in PolitiFact, our opinions should be based in facts, not affiliations or ideology. And we can be more accountable if we are more transparent, even about our opinions.

While I am critical of the Post’s social media guidelines on many counts, I do respect the sincere desire to protect the credibility of an important and outstanding journalism organization.

Good, ethical journalists can disagree about how to handle opinions and how to maintain and protect our credibility. Alexander reported that the Post will be discussing these issues at length. That’s a discussion that should be repeated in many newsrooms, conferences, blogs and columns and throughout our profession.

My copy of the New York Times Magazine arrived this this morning with an editor’s note at the end of the “On Language” column, letting us know that Jack Rosenthal, president of the Times Company Foundation, was pinch-hitting for William Safire, “who is on hiatus for a few weeks.” In fact, Safire had for some time been in a hospice and died this weekend from pancreatic cancer. He was 79. The Times reported his passing, and told the story of his career as a speech writer for Richard Nixon and his longer career as an award-winning political columnist and author of the famous “On Language” column that has long fascinated readers and inspired journalists. Robert D. McFadden described Safire in this way: “He was hardly the image of a button-down Times man: The shoes needed a shine, the gray hair a trim. Back in the days of suits, his jacket was rumpled, the shirt collar open, the tie askew. He was tall but bent — a man walking into the wind. He slouched and banged a keyboard, talked as fast as any newyawka and looked a bit gloomy, like a man with a toothache coming on.” That is a lovely paragraph.

Safire was a student of the English language. He loved words and word play, and reminded us every time he banged the keyboard that journalism is a business that we learn over a lifetime. He was the consummate professional writer, and his passing comes at a time when newspapers are in decline (even the great New York Times is struggling) and many of us are worried about what the future holds for those who wish to pursue Safire’s profession.

There is a school of thought, popular on university campuses, that the demise of newspapers presents an opportunity to reform a flawed profession. Former newspaperman turned new media guru Dan Gillmor recently posted a list he called “Eleven Things I’d do if I Ran a News Organization.” For the past few years, Gillmor has been travelling the world, speaking about the future of the business and something he calls “grassroots journalism.” His eleven-step plan is a reflection of this “we the people can be journalists” vision. Gillmor makes good points: He writes of the need for journalists to be more than stenographers and to strive for precision in the use of language (although his argument that writing “hotel guests” is poor usage is a question that I wish I could forward to Safire). My problem with Gillmor’s vision is that the mission of his newsroom would not be focussed on what journalists are supposed to, which is to tell stories that are true.

For example, consider number 2 on his list: “We would invite our audience to participate in the journalism process, in a variety of ways that included crowdsourcing, audience blogging, wikis and many other techniques. We’d make it clear that we’re not looking for free labor — and will work to create a system that rewards contributors beyond a pat on the back — but want above all to promote a multi-directional flow of news and information in which the audience plays a vital role.” I think Gillmor is missing the real crisis facing the profession: How do we find an economic model that will pay professional journalists, to allow them to become writers, and have long careers during which time they develop into artists? I don’t think we have a problem with encouraging the public to talk to each other online, or to be engaged with media and pop culture. Just take a look at your morning Facebook newsfeed. In my experience, good newspapers never had a problem with public engagement. A vibrant newspaper always has more letters to the editor than it has space to print.

Why is it that we so willingly dismiss the art of journalism and the value of professional writers? I doubt that there would be much public support for “grassroots dentistry?” Or “grassroots law?” Or how about “grassroots university professors?” Who cares about all these advanced degrees. We’ll just pull some people in off the streets and let them run our classrooms or attend conferences and deliver papers.

There is a future for journalism. I think the remaking of journalism will demand that journalists aspire to become a William Safire, to write well, and produce stories and columns that people will pay to read. We need to stop giving away our content and use circulation revenue (physical or electronic) to pay professionals to do their jobs.

It’s all about the words, Safire reminded us again and again: “Remember to never split an infinitive. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. Avoid clichés like the plague. And don’t overuse exclamation marks!!”

When you’re choosing tools to help journalists make ethical decisions, conversations work better than rules.

Washington Post co-managing editor Raju Narisetti probably wasn’t exercising good judgment recently when he tweeted opinions* about health care and term limits. But he really exercised bad judgment when he closed his Twitter account. And it appears that his boss and colleagues have compounded that error with more bad judgment. 

Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander blogged Friday night about the Post’s new social media guidelines.

I have looked online for a copy of the guidelines, which apparently have not been posted yet (Alexander did not link to them). So I will hedge this post by saying it’s a reaction to Alexander’s blog and a few tweets about the blog. I have emailed Alexander and will email other Post staff members and leaders, asking for a copy. I also tweeted asking if anyone had seen it (apparently not). I will comment further after I see the policy. But Alexander’s blog described a misguided process that deserves immediate comment while I’m waiting to learn more. 

Heather Harris of the Post marketing department tweeted at New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, “If you wish you knew more, perhaps you should wait before you say something…” I do wish I knew more, but I know enough from Alexander’s blog to discuss the serious problems I see here.

(Update: Staci Kramer of paidcontent.org has published the full guidelines. I have posted them here and blogged about them separately.)

I’ll start by agreeing that Narisetti’s public statements of opinion on Twitter are a valid concern for the Post’s editors. As I noted in an earlier post about the Wall Street Journal’s misguided social-media ethics policy, traditional newspapers can be too uptight about personal expression of opinions. Still, when I was editor of The Gazette and a member of the editorial board, I avoided expressing political opinions (I still voiced strong opinions about journalism and media-business issues) in tweets, feeling my column was the appropriate place for any political opinions.

I disagree, though, with the notion that you need a detailed policy to address these concerns. I disagree with the solution that one of the few senior editors using Twitter would stop because of the policy and the concerns. I am amazed that editors who don’t use Twitter would make decisions about how their staff should use it. And if the result of this policy is less use of Twitter by Post editors and staff, rather than more, I am quite sure it will harm, rather than help, the Post’s journalism.

Here are the only excerpts from the policy that Alexander quoted:

“When using these networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment. We never abandon the guidelines that govern the separation of news from opinion, the importance of fact and objectivity, the appropriate use of language and tone, and other hallmarks of our brand of journalism.”

“What you do on social networks should be presumed to be publicly available to anyone, even if you have created a private account. It is possible to use privacy controls online to limit access to sensitive information. But such controls are only a deterrent, not an absolute insulator. Reality is simple: If you don’t want something to be found online, don’t put it there.”

“Post journalists must refrain from writing, tweeting or posting anything – including photographs or video – that could be perceived as reflecting political racial, sexist, religious or other bias or favoritism that could be used to tarnish our journalistic credibility.”

Those are sound statements of journalistic principles. But they tell more what you shouldn’t do than what you should do. And Washington Post editors and staff should use Twitter a lot more and a lot smarter than they do. Each of those principles could be handled in conversations and workshops about using Twitter more to gather information and engage the community, rather than set in stone in a policy that will come off to too many staff (as it did to Narisetti) as: “Don’t use Twitter.”

What’s most egregious about the policy is that Milton Coleman, senior editor, has been working on it since May, but not till this week had anyone discussed the issue of opinionated tweets with Narisetti. Peter Perl, the editor who oversees newsroom personnel, told Narisetti this week about that concern. Narisetti discussed the issue with Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli. The guidelines were announced to the staff Friday by Brauchli. Here’s the amazing thing: With Narisetti’s withdrawal from Twitter, none of those four editors has so much as a Twitter profile (unless they’re not using their real names, which would raise another ethical issue). And the only one who knows anything about Twitter from firsthand experience apparently didn’t contribute at all to the policy. (I will presume that Coleman and Brauchli, who appear to be the decison-makers here, have read Twitter on occasion, but you don’t truly understand Twitter as a spectator.)

The Post has lost several outstanding leaders and journalists from its once-great digital operation in the past couple years. It can’t afford to be making decisions in ignorance in the important field of social media. It’s mystifying that the Post ignored all the reaction to the Wall Street Journal’s ill-advised social media policy earlier this year. If Coleman started working on this policy in May, he had an opportunity to learn from the feedback many journalists gave to that policy.

Twitter is a conversation that the Post should engage more fully. Perhaps Narisetti should have been encouraged to be careful about voicing opinion. And certainly he should have been disabused of his notion that his tweets were private (apparently, though Alexander doesn’t say this explicitly, he tried to keep his tweets private, rather than opening them to anyone to read).  But the discussion with Narisetti should have encouraged him to open his tweets and to seriously engage the community.

Brauchli and Coleman should start using Twitter and lead a conversation with staff members who are experienced in Twitter. They can address these concerns in the discussions, while also learning about the value of interacation and the importance of using Twitter in covering breaking news. If guidelines are necessary, they should flow from the consensus in those discussions, instead of coming down in such imperial fashion from editors who don’t understand social media.

Post staff reaction

Howard Kurtz, Post media reporter/columnist, and an active Twitter user, gave no indication he had any input on the new policy. In fact, his second tweet on the subject seemed to indicate, with humor, that he expected the new policy to result in bland tweeting by Post staff:

Under new WP guidelines on tweeting, I will now hold forth only on the weather and dessert recipes.

Kurtz’s next tweet was more serious:

Actually, I always assumed you shouldn’t tweet anything you wouldn’t say in print or on the air. Diff betw having thoughts and being biased.

Columnist Gene Weingarten, who has poked fun at Twitter in his columns (but also uses it), posted a humorous tweet about the new guidelines.  

Chris Cillizza vowed to not to be deterred:

Also, lots of question about the Fix Twitter feed in light of new Post policy. This feed will KEEP ON ROCKING

Twitter reaction

John McQuaid, journalist and Path of Destruction author:

The NYT has a far more engaged and lively Twitter presence than the WaPo & it hasn’t compromised NYT credibility. Why crack down?

Jeff Sonderman, metro editor and online editor for the Scranton (Pa.) Times-Tribune:

Did anyone at WaPo use Twitter well before the new ban? NYT is good. Who are the @brianstelter and @carr2n of WaPo?

Jeff Jarvis, City University of New York professor, What Would Google Do? author and a sharp critic of print media bungling in digital media:

How dare an editor have an opinion? Outlawed at the Post (at least in public): Objectivity or merely opaqueness?

Washington Post turns journalists into antisocial mannequins. So much for new connections to the community.

For bigger reasons than Twitter, I now fear for the future of the Washington Post. 

Jay Rosen, another critic of print media’s use of social media (I don’t use “critic” negatively in describing Jarvis and Rosen; clearly I am also a critic of print media efforts, or lack of effort, with social media):

Looks like the Washington Post came out with new Twittering rules and didn’t go public with them http://jr.ly/uby9 If I’m wrong, lemme know.

Something is seriously “off” at the Washington Post; I wish I knew more about the culture to know what it is. For now: “the print guys won.”

I often check my perceptions against people who work there or used to, @dcgrrl. Perhaps you should push the Post to drop the Fortress thing.

Q. for Posties: On July 19 ombud said the Editor agreed to make the Post’s revised newsroom policies public http://jr.ly/ug4v Is that dead?

No, @Chanders, there is no known link to the Washington Post’s new social media policy, which tells you something about the policy, I fear. 

Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy:

I would tweak WashPost Twitter policy: staffers can resume tweeting after taking advantage of company-paid lobotomy. http://bit.ly/3oVpdh

Hard to believe that WP was the leader in big-paper online innovation just a few years ago.

Jason Fry, Reinventing the Newsroom blogger:

Not sharing anger over WaPo Twitter flap. Policies against mixing personal, professional are foolish, but IMHO it’s wise to eschew politics.

Kennedy, responding to Fry:

How about, “We’re glad you’re tweeting, it’s good for WP, but don’t indulge your political views”? Doesn’t sound too hard.

Fry, answering Kennedy:

I’d be all for that. “Leave politics and religion out of it. Otherwise, we’re happy you’re interacting, full speed ahead.”

Freelance writer Alan Mairson:

WaPo Twitter policy sounds like journo equiv of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Bizarre for people paid to ask & tell.

Howard Owens, publisher of The Batavian:

The more the “newspaper people” take control of Washington Post’s digital efforts, the more retrograde it becomes. Sad. Tragic, really.

If post reporters must refrain from any expression that reflects opinion or bias, what will editors do to fill the news hole?

Dan Gillmor, Arizona State University journalism professor and author of We the Media:

More evidence that the old-style print folks have completely taken over WashPost editorial ops http://bit.ly/NRH1o what a waste

henceforth, editors who dislike the weather (or like it, for that matter) may not supervise reporting about it.

Disclosure

I have had dealings with four of the Post staff members mentioned in this blog post. When Andy Alexander was Washington bureau chief for Cox Newspapers, he hired me to speak to an editors’ meeting when I was at the American Press Institute. While we aren’t close friends, we have stayed in contact since then and I think I recall sending him a congratulatory email when he was named ombudsman for the Post. We serve together on a committee of the American Society of News Editors.

Peter Perl and I have interacted on multiple occasions. He was a discussion leader for a seminar I led at the American Press Institute. We attended a conference for newsroom trainers at the Poynter Institute. We have emailed each other on several occasions and we’re Facebook friends.

Gene Weingarten and I have never met, but I have frequently cited his Pulitzer-winning feature Pearls Before Breakfast as a creative use of video and text together in storytelling. Gene connected with me on Twitter last year and has consulted me (though not quoted me by name) on two columns he has written about Twitter and one that I believe is in the works (we exchanged some direct messages last week). He sent me a thoughtful personal message earlier this month after the death of my nephew, Patrick Devlin.

I have encountered Milton Coleman at meetings of ASNE and we serve together on an ASNE committee (meeting by conference call), but we don’t really know each other.

I have followed Howard Kurtz on Twitter for a long time. He doesn’t follow me, and we have never met each other. Marcus Brauchli, Raju Narisetti and Chris Cillizzi have not had any dealings with me that I recall.

*What Narisetti tweeted

I didn’t want to slow the flow of my comments above by quoting Narisetti’s actual tweets. But here are the two Alexander quoted in his blog:

We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not. But we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad.

Sen Byrd (91) in hospital after he falls from “standing up too quickly.” How about term limits. Or retirement age. Or commonsense to prevail.

I found it interesting that Alexander cited concern that the health-care tweet might fuel accusations of liberal bias (and that comments on the blog said it proves the Post’s liberal bias, as if one editor could prove any sort of institutional bias). Worth noting: Byrd’s a Democrat.

One final point

Alexander’s blog says that the new guidelines cover “using Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks.” Twitter was the only social tool he discussed specifically in his blog and Twitter is the usual lightning rod for people who are uncomfortable with or ignorant about social media, so I focused on it here. Clearly, the Post should be discussing use of other social platforms as well as Twitter.

Dan Gillmor ha redatto una lista di 11 punti che ho tradotto per facilitarne la lettura.

Si consiglia a baristi e muratori dell’ editoria di stamparsene diverse copie – in formato A3 o superiore – con le quali tappezzare l’ufficio così da averne sempre visione e ricordo.

Sono 11 preziosi consigli per orientarsi ed affrontare la situazione:

• Non pubblicherei storie e commenti sulle commemorazioni [gli anniversari] se non in rarissime occasioni; poiché sono il rifugio di giornalisti pigri e senza immaginazione.

• Inviterei la nostra utenza [i lettori] a partecipare con tutti i modi e gli strumenti possibili; crowdsourcing, blog dei lettori, wiki…etc. Chiarirei che non si tratta di lavoro gratuito – e lavorerei per creare un sistema di ricompensa che vada oltre la classica pacca sulla spalla – desiderando prima di ogni altra cosa promuovere un flusso multidirezionale di notizie nel quale l’utenza giochi un ruolo determinante

• La trasparenza sarebbe un elemento chiave del giornalismo. Ogni articolo sulla stampa avrebbe un box che segnala a cosa il giornalista non è riuscito a rispondere. Qualunque fosse il media, il sito web conterrebbe un invito esplicito ai lettori a contribuire nel riempire le falle che esistono in ogni articolo.

• Creerei un servizio on line, per coloro che volessero sottoscriverlo, per segnalare ai lettori gli errori da noi commessi dei quali ci siamo successivamente resi conto.

• Farei della conversazione un elemento essenziale della nostra mission. In particolare:

  • Se fossimo un giornale locale, l’editoriale e la pagina d’apertura sarebbero dedicate al “meglio di”, e sarebbero di guida alla conversazione che la comunità stessa sta avendo on line, ospitata che sia dall’organizzazione editoriale stessa o meno.

  • Gli editoriali sarebbe presentati sotto forma di blog, così come le lettere all’editore.

  • Incoraggeremmo commenti e forum, in spazi soggetti a moderazione che (a) incoraggino l’utilizzo dei nomi reali (b) incoraggino [o costringano] l’educazione.

  • I commenti inseriti da persone che utilizzino il proprio nome reale sarebbero inseriti per primi.

• Ci rifiuteremmo di fare stenografia e chiamarla giornalismo. Se una parte, una fazione, stesse mentendo lo diremmo, supportandolo con prove. Se verificassimo che una parte consistente della nostra comunità credesse in delle menzogne su fatti o persone, ci faremmo carico di far comprendere la vera verità.

• Rimpiazzeremmo alcune espressioni Orwelliane delle PR, con parole ed espressioni più precise e neutrali. [seguono esemplificazioni nel testo originale di Gillmor].

• Utilizzeremmo gli hyperlink in ogni maniera possibile. Il nostro sito web conterrebbe il maggior numero possibile di media della nostra comunità di appartenenza, sia geografica che di interesse. “Linkeremmo” ogni rilevante blog, foto, video, database ed ogni altro materiale che potessimo incontrare, utilizzando il nostro giudizio editoriale per evidenziare quelli che consideriamo i migliori per la nostra comunità. “Linkeremmo” liberamente il nostro lavoro giornalistico ad altre fonti e materiali rilevanti rispetto all’argomento di discussione, riconoscendo che non siamo oracoli ma guide.

• I nostri archivi sarebbero liberamente consultabili, con link permanenti a quanto abbiamo pubblicato, con le API affinché altri possano utilizzare il nostro lavoro giornalistico in modi che noi non abbiamo considerato/immaginato.

• La mission principale del nostro lavoro sarebbe quella di aiutare le persone della nostra comunità a divenire utilizzatori informati dei media e non consumatori passivi – a comprendere perchè e come possono farlo.

• Non pubblicheremmo mai una lista di dieci punti. Esse sono il carburante di persone pigre e senza fantasia.

I consigli di Gillmor riprendono ed amplificano i concetti espressi nelle linee guida, nei principi, anch’essi tutti da leggere, che hanno costituito il fondamento, i pilastri, del progetto di Gillmor.

A scettici e conservatori sui consigli e principi enunciati da Gillmor, mi preme, infine, ricordare come si sia delineata – da tempo ormai – una situazione competitiva generale che mi piace definire da tapis roulant: se corri resti fermo, se resti fermo scivoli all’indietro. Il comparto editoriale, come è dinnanzi gli occhi di tutti, non fa eccezione ovviamente; non tenerne conto sarebbe l’ennesimo tragico errore.

Update: Sono stati redatti ieri Eleven More Things I’d Do if I Ran a News Organization - se qualcuno vollese prendersi cura di tradurli….[via]

Last week I watched a webinar held at the Poynter Kent State University. There were several sessions on, and we were asked to choose one to watch, twitter about as the session was going on, and then blog about it later. You can watch the videos here:

Before I begin talking about the webinar, there are a few things I’d like to point out. I have never done anything like this. Before joining this class I did not have a twitter account, or a blog account. Before joining this class I had solemnly sworn never to get a twitter account, or a blog account. I didn’t understand the whole blog and twitter craze that’s still going on. A few of my friends had twitter, even less had blogs. I never checked them. I didn’t understand why people would bother reading about what someone they may or may not know had to say.

Now, having said that, I understand that journalism is heading in a new direction, and it’s important to take these things on board, and learn with them as I  will most likely be dealing with them when I leave University and get a real job. But all the same, the whole twitter experience terrified me. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be twittering about, and I felt ridiculous. If you want to see the four comments I made – I haven’t been on twitter since the webinar – please go here.

So, the webinar I watched was with Josh Marshall and Dan Gillmor. They started off talking about the 4th and 5th Estates of Journalism. I was interested in this, as I’ve never heard these terms before. The 4th Estate refers to professional, traditional journalists, and the 5th Estate refers to journalists who are less defined, and fill in the gaps – they come up behind the 4th Estate. Dan Gillmor was saying that he believes we are ‘heading back to the free for all style of journalism’. I agree with this, as now there are so many non-traditional forms of journalism cropping up thanks to the internet. Twitters, blogging, and facebook all provide opportunities for anyone to write about what is happening in their world, in an unmoderated way.

The topic of conversation I found most interesting was about how journalism should become interactive. Yes, we do have comment boxes at the end of articles, but how often do you honestly think that the journalist reads them? And generally speaking, these comment streams just become an abusive face-off between people arguing about something that may or may not be even relevant to the article. You only need to look at any popular youtube video to see this in action. “Passive consumers need to become active users.” This comment stuck with me. Dan Gilmor also said that “reader comments is like inviting people into your living room. The first rule of commenting should be civility.” This seems fairly obvious, but it’s ridiculous how many people hide behind the internet, and use it as a tool to argue and insult. You wouldn’t go into someone’s house, and start swearing, spitting and throwing things around – or at least, you shouldn’t. If there is to be more interactivity between journalists and readers, there need to be rules and moderation.

About 6 a.m. Monday, Steve Burns, a freelance journalist near Atlanta, sent out a note on Twitter:

“WSB: Boil water advisory in Douglas County. #atlfloods”

An hour later, Atlanta blogger Grayson Hurst Daughters tweeted from her @spaceyg account:

“Atlanta commuters: use the hashtag #atlflood for Atlanta flood condition notices.”

She followed up quickly with a note to a local TV outlet:

“@11AliveNews, please consider using the hashtag #atlflood in your Tweets! That way all the notices can be indexed/RSS’d. Tx!”

The tag set the tone for an organized, findable stream of aggregated content that helped Atlantans and their friends stay informed as the rain kept falling, killing at least 6 people, swamping interstates and causing major delays at the airport. The Georgia governor declared a state of emergency in 17 counties.

We’ve all read posts about how Twitter provides immediate coverage of earthquakes or bloody election fallout. But this moment showed how a social media tool enabled aggregation of all local news coverage through one search, quickly, in a large city, for breaking news.

Individuals shared links to stories from the established local news outlets quickly throughout the day. And a picture on Twitpic of flooding on Atlanta’s downtown connector received more than 60,000 views in about 10 hours.

Considering it a victory for untrained “citizen journalism” might be a bit misleading. Burns has newspaper experience from California, Georgia and Florida, and Daughters is a writer and corporate communication professional who worked for ABC News for six years. Also heavily involved was Tessa Horehled, a strategic marketer who advises companies about social media plans. Tweeting at @driveafastercar, she braved the rain with a video camera numerous times throughout the day from her neighborhood, and posted pictures late into the evening as a creek approached her front door.

She also created the tag #atlgas, used extensively during a gas shortage in the fall of 2008 in the Atlanta area. That tag was featured in a TED presentation by Twitter founder Evan Williams.

Certainly many other people were posting on Twitter, and local media outlets covered the story well. Ajc.com linked to a Twitter search of the tag. But because individuals used the tag while pointing to established media stories as well as posting their own observations, the tag itself served as a way of aggregating all media into one search.

But yes, there’s a drawback, in counting on the crowd to control the content of a tag for aggregation: As soon as the hashtag hit the Top 10 trending terms on Twitter, opportunistic usurpers crowded the stream and made it much less valuable. That gaming of the system shows that a tag is most useful when it’s NOT in the top 10 trending list.

About 8 p.m., one person on Twitter from Cambridge expressed frustration to Dan Gillmor, author of “We the Media,” that no national media outlets were covering the story, and he repeated the tweet. About 9 p.m., the L.A. Times sent out a tweet pointing to its story, with a dateline “Reporting from Atlanta.”

But throughout the day, the best place for aggregated coverage from both established local media and from individuals came from searching Twitter for the #atlflood tag.

Until it hit the “trending” list.

Found at http://www.conversationagent.com/2009/09/journalists-like-businesses-must-adapt-to-new-media.html

To be continued at http://www.conversationagent.com/2009/09/journalists-like-businesses-must-adapt-to-new-media.html

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Dan Gillmor was right when he said that new books and media would be replacing his own within a matter of time. Isn’t it evident how new media is growing? The people in and out of the media are the actual sources impacting its growth.

For example, just look at our class. Instead of our professor asking us to buy the book he has given us the link to read it online. The book itself has become its own blog or RSS. Students like me can just look it up and read it for free. My access to information is endless.

I can’t help, but be somewhat jealous of those who were first linked to these new sources of media. Journalists, and professionals alike have been freely exposing information for years. Not until recently, did I understand the concept of a blogger and start searching the web more frequently. Well, except for social networks. Which is just inescapable for most.

It’s all new to me. The entire class and readings from chapter 1 to 3, I feel like I’ve been living in a box. Honestly, I just do not spend enough time on my computer. Not to mention, I do not really spend enough time on the web exploring all of its properties and capabilities. So much is repeat from other classes I have taken, but Gillmor does a good job of going back in time and to the present with new media.

I especially had no idea how extreme new media was impacting the field of work I am trying to become a part of. I understand why this class is so important now. I need to stay on top of my blog and learn the features it has available to offer.

I know I keep rambling about blogs, but out of the chapters I read, blogs are the only thing I find myself constantly active with. I’m not the person to wiki, or the person to really use live web cams and I’m definitely not the person who like I mentioned early spend much time on the web.

As a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson, I do not think he would approve of the isolation I have had from new media. In exchange to what I read, I am going to make a huge effort to update my blog as soon as possible.

As far as Gillmor, I think his book is was written in style that is new and relevant to our new media savvy society.

I’ve just found the set of radical ideas for improving journalism published by veteran Silicon Valley journalist Dan Gillmor last week.

If adopted, they’d truly create a very different-looking news experience.

One of the weird things about the  existential angst that’s currently afflicting journalism is how easily it’s become a debate about trying to save as much as we can of the old system — without acknowledging how the old system really hasn’t been serving readers as well as it can.

New technology is allowing news to be delivered in new ways.  If these new methods serve people better, I don’t see why they won’t pay for it.  And that, I think, suggests that we need to get away from the currently-dominant debate about how newspapers can survive in a world where people read their stories online for free and think more about how starting with a clean slate can create next-generation news organizations that serve us better than ever.

The solution won’t be simple.  Many of the changes Gillmor suggests would be easier to implement (and have more impact on readership and therefore revenue) at a local rather than a national level, for example.

But it will be people thinking like Gillmor, I suspect, who will be running the best and most successful news operations a decade from now.

“No he tomado un curso de periodismo en mi vida [...] pero una buena formación periodística es valiosa para la gente que realmente quiere dedicarse a esto. Puede ayudarte a entender cómo funcionan los medios [...] cómo ser una persona insaciablemente curiosa acerca de las cosas, cómo hacer las preguntas adecuadas y a ver el mundo en un contexto más amplio [...] ¿Es un requisito? No. Pero puede ser muy útil.”

Dan Gillmor (Padre del Periodismo Ciudadano)

http://www.periodismociudadano.com/2009/09/10/dan-gillmor-nunca-he-recibido-un-curso-de-periodismo-en-toda-mi-vida/

I was busy enough in June that I didn’t take time to blog about an interesting social-media experience. But when a similar thing happened this week, I decided it was time to take note.

I can’t recall how I first learned about TripIt, though it probably was from Mark Briggs, who was my first TripIt contact. I had already joined Dopplr, a travel-oriented social tool co-founded by my friend Dan Gillmor (who was a reporter assigned to me at the Kansas City Times before he became a new-media star). I travel a lot, so I figured I would try them both out and see which one I liked better.

Frankly, I was too busy to really dig into either. But I tried to plug my travel itineraries into both of them. I forgot to add a few trips and wasn’t finding much use from them, though I could see intriguing possibilities. I added the LinkedIn application for TripIt (Dopplr doesn’t have an application, at least not one listed on LinkedIn’s applications page).

Out of the blue in June, I received an email from a friend in Washington, Deborah Gump, who noticed I was going to be in Reno (doing a presentation about innovation for Swift Communications). She saw it on LinkedIn. Debbie was going to be working at the University of Nevada Reno in a Maynard Institute program with another Washington friend, Evelyn Hsu, and a New York friend, Merrill Perlman.

I never would have thought of looking up any of those three friends in Reno. But because Debbie saw I was going to be there, I was able to spend an afternoon at UNR, sitting in on their program and visiting a little with three friends.

That wasn’t the only connection I made that week as a result of social media. On my way to Reno, or perhaps before leaving, I tweeted something about the plans and Donica Mensing, a UNR journalism professor I had met at an American Press Institute seminar, direct-messaged me, asking if I might be able to swing by UNR. Turns out the Maynard program was just down the hall from Donica’s office and we had a nice chat.

I wasn’t able to make a fifth in-person connection from a social-media contact who also noted my trip to Reno that week. Mike Higdon, whom I had never met but we were following each other for a while, asked if I’d have time to make it to Carson City on the trip. I didn’t, but we had a nice phone conversation later.

Well, since then, I’ve become much more interested in using TripIt. I’m not sure whether they added a new feature or whether I just finally noticed it. (Either way, it shows how social-media work: a good-enough start that gets better as the developers add features, or a tool with lots of possibilities that the users learn gradually as they take the time and grow comfortable.)

The feature that made me an avid TripIt user is the ability to forward an email itinerary to TripIt. The program creates an itinerary in my profile in seconds or adds the new reservation to an existing itinerary. I have forwarded airline reservations (from Expedia, two airlines and a travel agent), hotel reservations, shuttle reservations and a rental-car reservation. Each of them has gone into my TripIt travel schedule accurately.

I can forward an itinerary to Mimi (or allow her to see it on my profile) or to a client or colleague who might be meeting my flight or meeting later for dinner. And I have the whole itinerary on my iPhone to guide me to the right places as soon as I land (I can’t tell you how often I have forgotten to print out a rental-car or hotel reservation and didn’t know where I was staying or whose car I was renting).

I should add here that Dopplr offers the same opportunity to email itineraries, and I sent most of the same itineraries there. Most were not accurately created. For instance, on a trip to Lexington, Ky., connecting through O’Hare, Dopplr shows that as a trip to Chicago. I could edit that trip in Dopplr to correct it, but I like the ease of just sending the itinerary to TripIt. On the other hand, Dopplr offers more in terms of guides and reviews of attractions, lodging and dining at destinations. So if it works out its problems in reading emails and adds a LinkedIn app, it could be a strong competitor.

I don’t know how hot TripIt might become in the social media world. Though traveling is a niche, it’s a big niche of people who spend money and appreciate convenience and value. I can see TripIt becoming an essential aid for frequent travelers or fighting fiercely with Dopplr (and perhaps another contender or two I haven’t heard of yet) for audience in the travel niche.

I don’t know how big TripIt is and whether it’s bigger than Dopplr or trying to catch up. It’s not big enough in the social-media world yet to earn mention in Jeremiah Owyang’s Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009 or Adam Singer’s Social Media, Web 2.0 and Internet Stats. But it was favorably reviewed in PC World by Susan Hanley and has earned several mentions from Mashable. Time this week named TripIt one of the 50 best web sites of 2009.

And I’m starting to see results. Again this week, another LinkedIn contact saw that I was going to be in his area. We’re trying to work out whether we can get together.

This is how social media work. You read about a service or hear about it from a friend. You try it out and see some value. You dig in and learn some more and see more value. Then it surprises you and helps in some way you never expected.

Picked up a few good tips at AEJMC in Boston last week from some smart folks on how to better prepare journalism students to be entrepreneurs.

This is something we in the academy are increasingly (or should be) interested in.  Journalism students should be prepared not only to launch their own enterprises, but also to have a more entrepreneurial mindset even in traditional news organizations, as my last post explained.

Web developer and founder of Placeblogger.com Lisa Williams discussed the importance of learning to pitch your idea over Indian food with some  Web-interested professors one night. If you can’t pitch your idea, not only are you unlikely to get others interested, you also may not have enough clarity yourself about your core purpose.

Your pitch must be concise, compelling, and clear.  If you can’t get them in under 30 seconds, you won’t be able to get them in an hour. Practice it over and over, get honest feedback, and keep cutting the fat.

She added more specific classroom ideas via Twitter:  One way to start – and I plan on doing this – is having students practice pitching their stories (which should have the added benefit of improving leads & nut grafs). Ask the class if the pitch is clear, and ask them to paraphrase it to test.  Then ask:  Is it compelling? Why would someone both reading/paying attention to this?

For example, here’s Williams’ pitch for her site Placeblogger:  “Placeblogger is the largest searchable index of local weblogs.”

Also, never pitch unless asked, Williams says. Nothing worse than irritating the people you need to impress.

Dan Gillmor, author of the well-known book We The Media and the director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State, also spoke at a panel on student entrepreneurship.  Gillmor co-teaches a hands-on course that guides students through the process of online media development, entrepreneurship and business. Here’s the syllabus.

Gillmor said emphatically that “I have an idea for a Web site!” is not going to fly in his course.  Instead, students must first identify a need or a void in the community they could fill. This is an important and, I think, often overlooked aspect of building a successful site or tool; researchers Esther Thorson and Margaret Duffy of the University of Missouri have developed a model for helping news organizations identify needs prior to building fancy features.

Gillmor also said that he teaches his students not to fear failure.  Their course projects are not a chin-stroking academic thought exercise – this is about “demos not memos” (not sure who to credit that phrase to, but I love it).  Not everything is going to work, and even a project that ultimately fails may be worthy of an A – the value lies in being willing to experiment. It is important to own both the process and the outcomes.

It’s also important to develop ideas quickly, launch them before you are fully satisfied, and then fix what is broken. Embrace the chaotic process, he said. It’s okay to be embarrassed when you first launch a site – you will learn from your mistakes.

I was happily browsing the Internet the other day when I happened to come upon an interesting article from ninemsn news about how Logies host, Gretel Killeen, was being tear down via twitter (article here). As it happens, celebrities at the ceremony were twittering away in real-time, their opinions and views, about the host when the ceremony hasn’t even been officially broadcasted. This is a perfect example that could be used to explain this rising trend of citizen journalism or otherwise known as grassroots journalism or participatory journalism.

Citizen journalism is defined by Bowman and Willis (2003) as ‘the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analy[s]ing and disseminating news and information’. Citizen journalism like produsage is able to give voices to those who originally were only given the options to take it or leave it. Dan Gillmor gives a very good insight to Citizen Journalism in his lecture given at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2007), ‘traditional forms of journalism is like a lecture – journalists say ‘here’s the news’, then we buy it, read it, might send in a letter with our opinions and they might decide to publish it.’ It was really only a one way process as the consumers were only able to accept or reject what was given to them. Citizen Journalism, however, is different in that it provides news in a more interactive manner – more like that of a seminar of a conversation.

With the rise of the Internet and the ease at which news and information can now be obtained and distributed, audiences are now seeking an alternative to the perfectly digested, regurgitated and often decorated version of events by professional journalists (Bruns 2008). Audiences are now produsers who wants to have an active role in the production of news and information. It is this new culture where people are not afraid to speak their minds and would actively seek to correct or disagree with the ‘Big Media’ if they deem it necessary.

Another thing that could have also contributed to the popularity of citizen journalism is this idea of having news in real-time and often in first hand. Like how we saw in the case of Gretel Killeen, the news of what was happening at the ceremony was out before most people even got to see the ceremony! Another great example of citizen journalism at work was after September 11. In the days that followed there were better reports on the event online than through the news channel on television. People within New York were blogging about the event first-hand. What they saw, heard, felt, smelt and not only so, it was the events in either real-time or near real-time. Other people from other parts of the world were able to go online and see exactly what’s happening through these blogs right then.

Some interesting examples of citizen Journalism:

OhMyNews – http://english.ohmynews.com/

Malaysiakini.com – http://www.malaysiakini.com/

Action Network initiative – http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork

Crikey – http://www.crikey.com.au/

New Matilda – http://newmatilda.com/

On Line Opinion – http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/

Indymedia network – http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml

Huffington Post – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

The Uptake – http://theuptake.org/

iReport – http://www.ireport.com/

References:

Bowman, S. and C. Willis. 2003. WeMedia: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information. Reston: The Media Center at The American Press Institute.

Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, second life, and beyond: from production to produsage. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.

Dan Gillmor Lecture. 2007. Streaming video recording. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghns_WJ-e90 (accessed May 5, 2009).

Davies, S. 2009. Twitterati tear down Gretel Killeen. Ninemsn News. May 4.

Claro, cualquiera puede coger un bisturí y extirparle a un ser querido un quiste de grasa, y así se ahorra listas de espera. Es posible que la cirugía ciudadana se extienda en la sociedad en cualquier momento, del mismo modo que ha sucedido con el periodismo ciudadano. Puede ser que un cirujano prestigioso publique un libro en el que dé unos consejos prácticos y sencillos para que todo el mundo pueda operar. Todo ciudadano que se precie iría con un bisturí en el bolsillo, junto al teléfono móvil y las llaves de casa. Pero, ¿quién se prestaría a jugar con su salud? ¿quién sería voluntario para que cualquier persona le operara?

¿Cirugía ciudadana?

Esto mismo sucede con el periodismo 3.0. ¿Quién va a confiar en la información que publique alguien que no es titulado en periodismo? ¿Dónde queda la selección de fuentes, el rigor, la búsqueda de la verdad etc.? El término periodismo ciudadano puede ser malinterpretado y se puede pensar que la profesión periodística corre el peligro de desaparecer. Sin embargo, la necesidad de la existencia de un profesional que organice, filtre y contraste las informaciones se contrapone a esto último.

"Nosotros el medio", libro de Dan Gillmor sobre periodismo ciudadano

El periodismo 3.0 es positivo en el sentido de que la información puede provenir desde cualquier rincón del mundo, y además el periodo de reflexión informativa se reduciría a los mínimos. Los ciudadanos adquieren la posibilidad de relatar unos hechos que hayan presenciado, pero siempre bajo el auspicio de un periodista profesional. No podemos colgar el cartel de periodista a todo el mundo de la misma manera que no lo podemos hacer en el caso de los cirujanos.

En definitiva, el periodismo ciudadano es un concepto perverso por su ambigüedad. Por ello, es mejor hablar de participación ciudadana en la prensa que de un periodismo propio como tal. Hay que tener en cuenta que el término sólo puede tener cabida en la red, puesto que lo que le otorga valor es la inmediatez; que una persona pueda enviar un vídeo o una foto de los acontecimientos que acaban de suceder carecería de sentido para la edición escrita de un periódico, que tendría que esperar a la edición del día siguiente.

Para obtener más datos esta entrevista con el padre del periodismo ciudadano, Dan Gillmor, puede arrojar luz sobre el asunto:

Dan Gillmor and Arizona State University journalism students used the power of GPS, smart phones and Flickr to assemble a map (in real time) of Phoenix’s “First Friday Art Walk.”

Gillmor explains how easy it was to put together what looks like a valuable community resource, using technology that offers opportunities for civic journalism and crowdsourcing:

Putting this together was absurdly simple: We combined the capabilities of the Google/T-Mobile G1 smart-phones and services provided by the photo-sharing site Flickr. (Note: Google provided us with the phones and its carrier partner, T-Mobile, gave us airtime.)

News is going digital and it is hitting traditional media organisations hard. But for regional news outlets, which have felt the worst of the media downturn – a study release last month by Princeton university found that only 15 US cities have competing local papers compare to 689 a century ago – web 2.0 is offering a glimmer of hope for the future.

Linda Preston, creator of local news site Darwenreporter.com, believes that the wealth of information created by web 2.0 means that many beleaguered journalists unable to find work are starting their own local websites to fill the vacuum left by the decline in local papers.

 “I’ve found that many journalists facing redundancy are considering following my example and using their skills and long experience to work their own postcode.”

Even for local papers struggling to survive, the web if offering new possibilities. Elaine Helm, new media editor at the Herald in Everett, Washington state, believes that the power of social media is creating a new golden age for online local news outlets. She says:

“For individual and small groups of journalists, there hasn’t been a better time to be doing what we’re doing and getting it out there.”

During the latest “hundred-year storms to hit Washington state, Helm used social networking to keep local residents informed of the latest developments. She sent out a tweet asking people to use a common hashtag – a metadata naming convention – for all information relating to the storm: #waflood.  

Within minutes, a network of journalists from the area were all using the common tag and soon other contributors from the region were joining in. The information was then picked up by federal and state agencies and soon a mass co-ordination of effort by the state, journalists and locals was providing real-time information on the floods.

For Helm, the wealth of information instantly available on the internet means journalists must stop seeing themselves as the gatekeepers of knowledge, but rather the curators. “There’s a role to play for journalists in sorting through all the stuff that’s out there,” she says.

It was hailed as a resounding success. Mayhill Fowler, a 61-year-old failed novelist with no journalism training, broke two of the most memorable stories of the election: Barack Obama’s “guns and religion” blunder and Bill Clinton’s fuming at a public rally.