Thinking Back to J-School Again

This morning, I'm remembering a discussion we had back in journalism school. We were talking about how the media convey credibility - not necessarily when something is reported on the television news, but when something is mentioned on television in general. One thing that sticks in my head to this day was Professor Brian Richardson momentarily adopting a southern drawl in imitation of Joe Sixpack, saying "It's true...I seen it on the teevee" to illustrate his point. Lots of people, in their consumption of mass media, attribute legitimacy to things they get through the mainstream, regardless of the credibility of the source. I assume the presumption is that if what was presented wasn't true, it wouldn't be broadcast over the airwaves, printed in the paper, etc. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and I think one of the big pain points concerning the mass media these days is that credibility is fluid, and many people aren't used to that. I remember watching the first Gulf War on CNN and pretty much believing everything I saw. But that's certainly not the case with war coverage these days (or pretty much anything that's reported in the mass media).

While it's true that plenty of news organizations have terrific credibility, increased transparency brought about by blogs, a new influx of new media outlets and increased criticism of the mainstream news media have shown many news consumers that institutions previously believed to be beyond reproach often get it wrong. But this is far from a "black or white" concept. Jayson Blair's fabrication of news stories didn't destroy the credibility of the New York Times forever - it damaged it to an extent, but the credibility is still there.

That's why we can have situations like this. A story can be broken by bloggers, but achieve added legitimacy by being re-reported in newspapers.

The idea that credibility is constantly in a state of flux jives with my prior assertions that we're in an interactive "Marketplace of Ideas" era where truth rarely exists in black and white, but rather in shades of grey. The driver behind moving something closer to black or white on the truth scale is the infrastructure for supporting conversations. We're in a period where that infrastructure is still emerging, thus the pain we're all feeling. Asking someone to make truth judgments in this evolving marketplace is like dropping someone off at a giant mall in a foreign country where the shopper has never heard of many of the stores and doesn't yet know who to trust with their business.

What many news consumers are looking for, subconsciously, is a stable of trusted sources for news and opinion. And it's less a question of whether they'll eventually find those sources, and more a question of what will fill that vacuum today and in the future.

More choice is a good thing, but we can't expect a huge shift in the way people consume news without a good deal of pain along the way.

Reaction: Reuters Blogging Panel

First off, let me say thanks to Sophie Brendel over at Reuters. She went out of her way to accommodate my request for a LAN connection so I could blog live from the panel. She's great and went out of her way to make me feel welcome. Secondly, let me say that the LiveBlogging thing didn't work out as well as I would have liked. One thing I didn't realize was that in my journalism days, I'd have plenty of time to snag quotes and make tape recordings and then come back to my computer and think about things for a bit before I started to write my lede and write a compelling story. It's very difficult to sit at an event like this and try to write something meaningful while key quotes are whizzing by.

That said, I've had a few minutes on the train and on my walk over to the office to think about what I just witnessed. In many ways, the panel discussion was very surprising to me. I expected that the mainstream journalists in the room wouldn't "get" blogging, but by the end of the event, I got the impression that most of the journalists in the room understood a lot more about blogging than I thought they would.

Having said that, I definitely got the impression that quite a few people in the room were journalists who, in one way or another, resented bloggers on their turf. I wouldn't say it was a jealousy thing, but rather an acknowledgement that journalists have played by an established set of rules for a long time. Now, here comes a bunch of "citizen journalists" who may or may not play by those same rules. I can understand the concern and even a bit of resentment. For me, the most interesting parts of the panel centered around identifying real problems that concern the blogosphere that I hadn't considered before. For instance, John Fund talked a bit about how sometimes, a big benefit of working for a news organization is that objective reporters and editors can step in when they believe that an individual journalist has stepped over the line ethically or through editorializing. I hadn't considered that before. And in thinking about it further, I came to realize that the blogosphere itself could one day serve as that check on individual bloggers. As blogging becomes more popular, not just in terms of the number of bloggers involved, but insofar as the number of people critiquing ideas and stories increases, mechanisms like comments and trackbacks will help keep individual bloggers in line from an ethics perspective.

I also particularly liked the comments Jeff Jarvis made about blogging taking off in foreign countries that have greater restrictions on political speech than the U.S. does. He mentioned Iranian, Saudi and Ukrainian bloggers conversing about their political systems, with bloggers seemingly cropping up overnight to fill the vacuum in those places insofar as political speech is concerned. I don't think anyone in the room would disagree with the notion that this is a good thing.

To be honest, I expected some knockdown dragouts at this panel, given the friction between bloggers and journalists in the recent past. But it was a largely civil discussion. I think the closest it got to the line was a minor dust-up over the circumstances of the Eason Jordan case. Things got a bit heated for a minute or two between panelist Bryan Keefer and someone in the audience. Let's just say there was some disagreement over the true impact of what happened there.

One other thing - I really liked Halley Suitt's comments on what her various audiences expected of her as she blogged in different online publications. She mentioned that people who read "Halley's Comment" expect to be entertained by her comments and she'll write in a different voice about topics ranging from sex to politics to her son. Compare this to some of the writing she does for Tom Peters' site and the voice and expectation of the audience is completely different. I think that's one of the most interesting dynamics of blogging and I want to give that some more thought over the next few days. After all, I'm in much the same boat with regard to many of the things I write. My "Online Spin" voice is completely distinct from my Hespos.com voice, which is worlds away from what I write in newspaper columns, guest blogging gigs and other public forums. I think this demonstrates that different audiences can have different expectations of the same writer in different situations and venues. And when you think about how that plays in a world where people are expecting more transparency from journalists and writers, maybe it doesn't hurt to be able to write in a voice on your own personal blog that's more frank and human than business-oriented or hardcore news writing. I think it helps transparency along by showing readers that the writers they follow are real human beings.

Anyway, I loved the event and thank Reuters for putting it on. I have but one regret - once again, I was at an event where Jeff Jarvis was speaking and I didn't come up and introduce myself to him. My bad. I kind of had to rush out at the end of the event so I could come back to the office and post my thoughts.

Reuters LiveBlog (continued)

Some interesting nuggets from the Reuters event: Halley Suitt, who blogs at Halley's Comment (and in many other places) says RSS is one key to levelling the playing field with regard to blogs and the mainstream media. Feed aggregators can present information from established MSM outlets along with posts from personal blogs. Guess what? They look the same.

John Fund, who writes a column for OpinionJournal.com, said many of the same rules apply to bloggers that apply to journalists and that the values of "accuracy, fairness, fair play and responding to criticism rather than ignoring it" are critical to being taken seriously in either arena.

Steven Baker, a writer at BusinessWeek, seemed to have some interesting thoughts about parallels between the blog world and the world of mainstream journalism. He thinks bloggers and journalists alike can be "respected or not respected according to how they act, and I think that applies to both worlds." In other words, reputation is key. I get the feeling he believes what I believe - that whether you're a journalist or a blogger doesn't matter. What matters is your credibility. Suitt talked a bit about how blog voices are different from MSM voices. She said she often covers current events and issues while applying a personal lens (just like most bloggers do). "I might write about social security and my headline might be 'Is my mom going to eat cat food?'" She later pointed out that her readers at her own blog are "going to want entertainment from me as well as facts."

I thought the first dust-up of the evening might come about when the panel was discussing the need for journalists to maintain objectivity and speak in the third person rather than the first person. Someone on the panel referred to this as a veneer of objectivity." At this point, Jeff Jarvis jumped in and said, "Too often it's just a veneer." I thought that would get a stronger reaction, but people on the panel and in the audience seemed to agree.

Bryan Keffer, assistant managing editori of CJR Daily, discussed how the impact of blogging is largely driven by the tools and not the writing style. "What is novel here is the technology and not the voice," he said, noting that pundits certainly existed in the mainstream media before they existed in the blogosphere.

Here's another interesting thing Fund brought up - He pointed out one way that an individual blogger may be at a disadvantage publishing as an individual rather than with an organization behind him. "There are some things that are better done in the collective," he said, noting that it often requires having an objective member of a news organization step in during the reporting process to let a writer know when they've gone too far or stepped over the line.

There was an interesting exchange concerning the comparative abilities of mainsteam journalists and bloggers to avoid accountability for what they publish. John Fund related an anecdote about how a blogger published some untrue things about him stealing access to a laptop at an event. The blogger was later proved wrong, but he never corrected what he published. Evidently, the story took off, because the original poster had 546 responses in comments.

"If you choose to be an individual blogger, you can escape all responsibility and accountability," Fund said.

Suitt was quick to point out that bloggers tend to refute untrue facts. "If there's an error in a blog very often people will show up to say 'this isn't true.'" she said.

A bit later, Jeff Jarvis brough up an interesting point about how blogging has taken off in foreign countries not typically known for their press freedom, mentioning growing blogging communities in Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Ukraine. "This is a tool where people can speak where they couldn't speak," he said.

Fund mentioned that most bloggers don't make their primary paycheck from blogging, whereas journalists tend to rely on the money they make from writing as a primary source of income. He suggested this might keep journalists more honest. "Even if I want to slander...everyone in sight, I still want to keep my paycheck," he said.

Jarvis was quick to point out, however, that "people are earning real money" at blogging.

I'll post some additional stuff on this later.

At The Reuters Panel

I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow here until later. Reuters gave a handout here that says they'll be posting video of the panel at this URL. So you can watch it yourself.