Monday, September 29, 2003

Who Edits Blogs (or Should)? Both Bloggercon and The New York Times (below) have that general question on the agenda, thanks in part to the Sacramento Bee's decision to screen blog entries by Daniel Weintraub, a Bee columnists. The topic seems headed toward a double discussion of what is "the true nature of a weblog" and what is "the true nature of journalism." Mark Glaser at Online Journalism Review and Jay Rosen's PressThink blog at NYU tell the story, and provide a month's worth of links. Personally, I think there is room for many kinds of weblogs and various kinds of journalism, in print, online and on the air. The differences involve definitions of purpose, practice, style, standards, reponsibility, accountability, trust and reputation. Online, you can browse through a blogger's archives to see how the blog evolved and who the author or authors are. Some publications used to publish a "platform" summarizing their basic stands on issues. Online, I'd like to see more introspective FAQ files addressing the approach of a publications I'm reading -- whether a weblog by an individual or a media empire's home page. Perhaps I'll even get around to writing my own someday... or at least linking together bits and pieces I've already written. Meanwhile, here's today's Times: The Role of the Delete Key in Blog. A recent policy change at The Sacramento Bee has raised questions about whether taking an editor's pen to a Web log before it is published detracts from very nature of "blogs." By Michael Falcone. [New York Times: Technology] Other sources: For discussions and news in professional journalism, see SPJ, RTNDA, Poynter, OJR, AJR, CJR etc. For historical perspective on professional reputation and authority, some of my favorite slightly-older books are Timothy Crouse's The Boys on the Bus (about campaign coverage), Philip Knightly's The First Casualty (war coverage), Gay Talese's The Kingdom & The Power (about the culture of an older Times) and Herbert Gans's Deciding What's News (CBS, NBC, Newsweek and TIme). Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs has plenty to say about establishing trust and relability online, and his OJR piece last summer takes a good stab at the "when is it journalism?" question: ... the most important remaining ingredient of a truly democratized electronic newsgathering is neither a kind of hardware nor a variety of software, but a species of literacy -- widespread knowledge of how to use these tools to produce news stories that are attention-getting, non-trivial, and credible. Journalism, if it is to deserve the name, is not about the quality of the camera, but about the journalist's intuition, integrity, courage, inquisitiveness, analytic and expressive capabilities, and above all, the trust the journalist has earned among readers. (more...) 12:29:13 PM

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