Friday, January 21, 2005

Interesting day in a room full of smart people. More tk. Time for a drink and some dinner... ...but first, I posted some email about the conference. I didn't identify the writer, but now he has outed himself as Hugh Hewitt. And he's mad that I posted his email without asking him. But I said it was for publication in my original query, and in the follow-up (which is included in the post) I make it clear that I'm asking as a blogger and journalist. So I am a little confused. In general, when someone sends you a query asking for public comment and you don't want your reply to be public, you should say so. I certainly didn't mean to betray a confidence, or disrespect a private communication, which I would never knowingly do to anyone -- source, colleague, friend or stranger. I apologize to Hugh for the misunderstanding. And if he wants me to delete the post, I will. If it makes Hugh feel any better, they were giving out copies of his book at the conference today. UPDATE: Hugh graciously accepts my apology for the misunderstanding, and says the matter is closed. 6:34:17 PM    comment []

Frigid temps in Boston. Single digits. Fortunately this conference is right across the street from my hotel. Yesterday was not bad, though, I had a nice walk through snowy Harvard Yard and a mildly excessive evening involving oysters and martinis with my old Haverford buddy Rob, who is apparently some sort of digital marketing muckety-muck by day but still his old self at other times. 9:07:07 AM    comment []

The BizJournal continues to own the story of the meltdown at Bostic Construction. Big company, big names, big problems. But not of interest to other local media, apparently. 8:59:59 AM    comment []

Sam Hieb covers last night's Guilford County commissioners meeting. So does the N&R s Matt Williams. Hard to believe they were in the same room -- two interesting reports, on very different things. Combined, the newspaper and the weblog provide a lot more info than either one alone. Hieb follows the work of Rhino Times reporter Scott Yost, who is digging into the legality of the termination agreement between the Board of Health and former County Health Director Ramesh Krishnaraj, who began his term by getting arrested for DWI and ended it with a deal that Yost says was at best inadequately vetted. (Unfortunately the Rhino doesn't post its articles until Monday.) Yost: "(T)he money is being paid out based on a contract that was never voted on by the Board of Health...some -- and probably all -- of the members of the current Board of Health didn't even know the agreement existed until it was reported in The Rhino." 8:51:18 AM    comment []

One very well-known conservative blogger (not Glenn Reynolds, who as a friend of this page might be a prime suspect) emails in response to my request for comment on BloJoCred Con: "It is a hopelessly biased group of center-left academics/journalists who are once again getting overwhelmed by the marketplace." I emailed back: "What a curious response." He said: "Curious?  I don't think any serious academic would mail in an univited paper/statement, or invite debate over his or her position when he or she wasn't in attendance.  I have done a lot of conferences in my day, and have never heard of such a thing.  The group is a non-representative collection of academics/journalists talking about a new media dominated by the center-right.  I think it is curious that you would find my response curious." And I replied: "I was thinking as a blogger and a journalist, not an academic, of which I am not one. "I see this as a conference at Harvard, not an academic confab, and I see it as a chance for a handful of bloggers who get journalism and journos who get blogging (not a definitive list, just a few of us) to explain this real slow to the journos who don't get it yet. "I think Dan Gillmor, Jay Rosen, and Jeff Jarvis understand and represent the confluence of blogging and journalism pretty well. Dave Winer gets it. I think I get it, and I've got a perspective (local blogging in NC) that will be news to many in this crowd. "In terms of the politics of those on the conference list, the lefties are screaming that there's no Kos, Atrios, Marshall et al. I don't know that politics is the lens through which I'd focus this conversation -- although some here might. Not sure I agree that the new media is 'dominated' by the center-right. "I guess I'll know more tomorrow." Which is now today. 7:45:35 AM    comment []

John Robinson sends some thoughts on BloJoCredCon: It befuddles me to some extent. Part of me wants to say: All the debate that is going on in the blogosphere about this conference is off base. As far as this editor of a small daily can tell, the discussion of whether to blog or not blog, whether to adopt open source journalism or to maintain a gatekeeper role is moot. The gates have been breached and no amount of workers are going to rebuild them. The only viable option for a news organization that values its readers time and tendencies is to go online, solicit and encourage citizen journalism, and enable the process in which citizens get the information they need to govern themselves, to paraphrase Bill Kovach. How? Tell the truth, be independent, be transparent, tell the truth, put your readers needs first, be proportional, tell the truth, and monitor the powerful. I didn't make that up, of course. It's common journalistic parlance that I think Kovach and Rosenstiel articulated. (I don't have the book by my side here.) Do bloggers do that? My observation is that some do and some don't, just like some traditional newspaper journalists do and don't. (Don't get me started on broadcast journalists.) So, where does that leave us. You open the doors and talk to readers. They, in fact, know more than we do. I listen to the conversations around me when I'm outside of the newsroom. Do they talk about the inauguration? Hell, no. They talk about their children being transferred from Aycock to Lincoln Middle School. Do they talk about cancer now edging out heart attacks as the No. 1 killer? For God's sakes, no. They talk about their daughter's soccer game, the new coffee shop downtown, the best pizza in town (uh, I stole that from your wife). Imagine if they talked with the newspaper -- and by newspaper, I mean all of the platforms we use -- about that. Think of the value of a newspaper that talks to readers, listens to readers, lets readers in the door to tell other readers that, dammit, the best pizza is at Vito's and, by the way, did you know that Terry Grier is interviewing in Dallas? That here's is this interesting plan to develop the north end of downtown? That here's the story of an American GI from Greensboro who was almost killed in Iraq, in his own words. News is a conversation, not a lecture. My readers know more than I do. Journalism is a function; blogging is a form. Look, we're going to continue to pay staff members to "cover the community," to monitor the powerful, to give voice to the voiceless, to shine light in dark place, to do all those things that people like me got into the business to do. That's journalism. That's giving citizens the information they need to self-govern. Readers are smart enough to believe us. If we're good, if we blog wisely, if we let readers in the door and help us, if we tell their stories and let them tell their stories, they will trust us. It's all good. Everything else is BS. 7:35:59 AM    comment []

Chris Nolan sends some thoughts on BloJoCredCon: There's certainly a great deal of irony - intentional or not - in Ed Cone's so graciously asking me to comment for this conference on credibility and journalism. And, as I hinted in my long web site post on this issue, given what The New York Times would undoubtedly be tempted to call  "a career both colorful and controversial" I write with no small sense of trepidation. See, my professional credibility within the business has never been very secure. As far as establishment journalism is concerned, I've done a pretty good job racking up the demerits. As a "gossip columnist" during Silicon Valley's bubble, there was a lot of silly blather about how I did my job, the main allegation being that I relied on eavesdropping at parties to get my stories. Oh, that it were that easy! Getting into what can charitably be called a knock-down, drag-out fight with my former employer didn't help burnish my image. Nor did an affiliation with the much-maligned but thoroughly read New York Post. There have been few more painful interchanges than the one I had with a national business editor who told me that hiring me would be "like stepping on a rake." Or another who said that his big East Coast paper probably wouldn't welcome "the kind of reporting you like to do." Well, the kind of reporting I like to do includes a regular delivery of hard news scoops, ranging from Conde Nast's purchase of Wired magazine to the heavy lifting that led to banker Frank Quattrone's indictment for obstruction of justice. If you know my work, you know I am credible. That's why I see conferences like the one being held at Harvard as somewhat beside the point. Look, the newsroom has left the building. Fact gathering - which leads to fact-checking - can now be an individual undertaking. So can news judgment. Readers can judge us - please forgive my use of the plural - the way we judge ourselves. Only better. Never shy about public self-reflection, Big Media seems to be searching for ways to reassure themselves that "those people" on the web aren't gaining on them. But they are, of course. Why else would so many popular bloggers feel they could skip this conference? Because they already have credibility. And they have it where it counts. With their readers. They earn it every day, with every post. Site meters - not editors - tell us how well we're doing. In this new world, it doesn't matter where you work. It matters what you say and how you say it. That's why I call what I do "stand alone journalism." Those of us who chose to use the inexpensive tools available to us on the World Wide Web will live or die by our professional skills, our judgment and our readers' often harsh opinions of what we're doing and how we're doing it. They evaluate our work on its merits, not on our affiliations and as tough and brutal as this sounds, there will be more and more of us every day. 7:31:35 AM    comment []

If WZTK did start running Air America, where would they put the show(s)? I like Brad and Britt, it's great to have a local program on the air. After that it's a mixed bag at best. The ones I'd can immediately are Clark Howard, an audio dishrag, and Jim Cramer, who brays like a donkey and makes me change the station even if he's about to tell me something I want to hear. Maybe their shows are full of useful info, I'm not listening to find out. I can listen to small doses of Boortz, although his sneering tone grates quickly, because he's a talented radio guy and I like to disagree with the radio sometimes. Savage is a freak show and a self-parody, not even worth reacting to most of the time.  Mitch Albom is like the light jazz they play on the weekends -- hard to get worked up about, impossible to defend -- and Alan Colmes, well, bless his heart. So there you go, lots of places to run something different like AA. Please? 7:21:35 AM    comment []