Earlier today I and a lot of other folks got an email from Vikki Porter, who's leading a Knight Digital Media Center conference for editorial page editors. "We are urging them to build credibility with their users by having the courage to send users elsewhere for info when they can't meet the need. As expected they are appalled. They want hard data to take home to convince their legacy managers this is a good idea."
George Bernard Shaw died too early to enjoy the fruits of 24-hour TV news channels, but his famous condemnation of newspaper journalism would apply: "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." Tonight's election coverage is sure to provide plenty of fresh examples.
Somebody at CNN.com should have his/her tail kicked for being dumb enough to launch an online poll asking: "Does Barack Obama show the proper patriotism for someone who wants to be president of the United States?" Ben Smith at Politico.com is reporting that CNN ran that poll.
I can't find it online right now. Perhaps someone woke up over there.
Here's another item I wasn't going to touch: The uproar at Northwestern University, where Medill Dean John Lavine is being raked over the coals for writing a letter promoting the school in which he used an anonymous quote that he can't back up. But I am inspired by Gawker firing both barrels of double-ought snark into the middle of it:
I wasn't going to comment on the McCain story, but my friend Howard Owens has pulled my chain by dismissing it as "nothing but gossip from either unnamed sources or pure speculation." He aims that charge at the lead, but implies that there isn't any substance to the story. There is.
I am as puzzled as anyone by the construction of the NYT story. The focus on the Iseman anecdote obscured the point for many people instead of illustrating it.
The nut graf is here:
Now that Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo political blog has won a George Polk Award for legal reporting, can we please officially bury the tired old nonsense about blogging not being real journalism?
Martin Stabe recaps the ongoing debate about whether simple tools like Dreamweaver -- which no professional journalist is likely to ever use -- have a role in journalism education.
