journalism

I'm in Paris at the conference "New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension," organized by the World Press Freedom Committee at UNESCO headquarters. It's been a humbling experience to be on stage with people talking about real barriers to Web publishing: government repression, censorship, arrests and outright poverty. And here I am discussing our interactive community efforts in a couple of cushy upscale suburban markets in the United States. Nevertheless, the audience seemed genuinely engaged and there was quite a line of people wanting to exchange cards and ask questions afterward.

In 1999 I declared that journalists must accept a new social role as guides, not gatekeepers. Today's New York Times has an excellent example of that principle in action, eviscerating the wingnut political online magazine Insight for publishing a stream of falsehoods.

A few weeks ago the word was that the Los Angeles Times' "Manhattan project" (renamed "Spring Street") report had disappeared into the bureaucracy, never to be seen again. But it resurfaced today full of fury in a major shakeup outlined by Staci Kramer at paidContent.org. This is a big deal, and is especially remarkable considering the conditions under which it's happening. Ordinarily, when a company is on the auction block, paralysis ensues -- not radical change.

I was on the road all last week, and I didn't live-blog a remarkable seminar in Los Angeles for two reasons. One: the usual annoyingly bad hotel wifi connection in the conference rooms. Two: I didn't want to invade the privacy of the participants. In the prep work, one of the editors quipped that he was reluctant to document his vision because these days his memo would immediately wind up on Romenesko. Sometimes we need to talk privately in order to work publicly.

Jonathan Dube points out that the Washington Post, CBS News and Newsweek all have added comment capabilities to story pages. I don't think comments are the best way to build community, comments are infinitely better than no conversation at all. We've come quite a way from the days when editors would look at you and say, in all seriousness: "You mean you let them say anything they want?"

The Pulitzer Prize rules have been changed again to open the door a bit wider to online content, although the contest continues to be limited to "newspapers published daily, Sunday, or at least once a week during the calendar year." The contest now will consider "a full array of online material -- such as databases, interactive graphics, and streaming video -- in nearly all of its journalism categories."

Ben Compaine cites a National Science Foundation-funded study showing that it's the marketplace, not the ownership, that drives "slant" in news media. This makes perfect sense in a Darwinian way. Iconoclasts and polemicists may have their audiences, but you can't drift too far from the consensus and still maintain a big audience. So writers write and editors edit to the expectations of the community.