Feb. 18 reading

I think Jeff Howe hit a few important points in his Nieman article about citizen journalism. It was interesting to read that a former city editor at the Cincinnati Enquirer was now reduced to posting what she said were basically press releases to the Web. The first disturbing part of that prospect is that a city editor has essentially become a community blog monitor. The second disturbing part is that the paper is content to publish public relations-like fodder and pass it off as news. This is the problem with citizen journalism but I know that's not something that's surprising to anyone. In fact, I found most of this article to be repetitive to others we've read in the Nieman Report and elsewhere, though it was nice to see Howe's use of real examples rather than hypothetical situations.

What I liked about Howe's article, though, was the detail about the Cincinnati Enqurier changing the link asking for citizen contributions on its Web site from "Be a Citizen Journalist" to "Get Published" and eventually discussing that really, the public just wants to "Share." I found that to be a key piece of information for planning the news sites we'll build in class. I think instead of relying on reader-generated content for news, we need to keep the contributions within a small radius of topics. I think to assume a news organization can get by without some sort of interactive or community element these days will lead to failure - but you have to be clear on what part of your organization is going to be community run and keep control of the rest. You want your readers to feel involved, so you give them a spot on the Web page - maybe even in the print section, to be really daring. But you have to take reader contributions for what they are - people just wanting to connect with others, share a part of their lives. I don't see any reason why a newspaper can't serve as that outlet, but it shouldn't confuse the motive. I think Businessweek got it right, according to the article by John Byrne. I love the idea of a separate part of the Web site where the content is determined by reader input and interest with results from trusted sources all over the Web and provided by Businessweek. This way, readers still have that connection with Businessweek as a publication that cares about what they care about, but they also have the comfort of knowing that they aren't missing out on any information out there by sticking to businessweek.com. It's a brillant model.

I liked the Bradshaw and Adee articles on journalists who blog and use other social media because it goes to show that the tools that are successful, journalistically, are written by professionals. Communicating with your audience, seeking out sources and information and updating readers are all intelligent, useful, effective and ethical ways for someone to utilize a blog. But as Bradshaw revealed in the example he used of a newspaper using the blog to get the story about a company that had gone bankrupt - only someone with a journalists sense of responsibility would know what to publish, what not to publish and how to go about verifying what he's finding. Bradshaw also points out that bloggers are held more accountable for their mistakes and because of that they are fixed more often and more quickly. Because the sites we are developing in class will most likely have open commenting and community sections, it will be important for us to remember this aspect of responsibility in reporting and commenting ourselves.

These articles were the perfect introduction to the one on ethics by Bob Steele. I don't think that the dilemmas that editors, in particular, face today can be overlooked. It's hard not to give credit to the blogosphere when that's where people are looking for their news - which might also often be called gossip. But, of course, if they thought of it as gossip, the information would never be considered by an editor as a valid source. Is it ethical to report this information then try to balance it with adverse opinions? I with about a million other editors who aren't sure. I think that what's important for editors is to just hold strong to the same basic standards of journalism that have been practiced for years. Yes, it's a new age of journalism. Yes, news gathering and reporting has changed drastically. And yes, there will be certain elements of our standards that will have to evolve with the times. But in general, I think all basic journalism ethics withstand the changes, and editors keep a clear head when presented with new situations to be able to see that.