Unhappy subjects discovered a decade ago that they could use their Web sites to correct the record or deconstruct articles to expose what they perceived as a journalist’s bias or wrongheaded narration.

But now they are going a step further. Subjects of newspaper articles and news broadcasts now fight back with the same methods reporters use to generate articles and broadcasts – taping interviews, gathering e-mail exchanges, taking notes on phone conversations – and publish them on their own Web sites. This new weapon in the media wars is shifting the center of gravity in the way that news is gathered and presented, and it carries implications for the future of journalism.

Too many journalists would have left it at that and this would have been one of the many articles that concentrate on the mechanistic ways blogs and the internet are influencing journalism. But Seelye goes further:

The printing of transcripts, e-mail messages and conversations, and the ability to pull up information from search engines like Google, have empowered those whom Jay Rosen, a blogger and journalism professor at New York University, calls “the people formerly known as the audience.”

“In this new world, the audience and sources are publishers,” Mr. Rosen said. “They are now saying to journalists, ‘We are producers, too. So the interview lies midpoint between us. You produce things from it, and we do, too.’ From now on, in a potentially hostile interview situation, this will be the norm.”

These processes are changing both journalism paradigms and journalism practices.

Journalists now realise that they have to be extra careful in their transactions with sources and some programs are posting their own full transcripts. It is also changing formal public relations practices with businesses incorporating blogs into their publicity strategies. But the revenge of the source is not just a utopic story about reform and empowerment.

Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org and a former producer at ABC News and CNN, said that while the active participation by so many readers was healthy for democracy and journalism, it had allowed partisanship to mask itself as media criticism and had given rise to a new level of vitriol.

“It’s now O.K. to demonize the messenger,” he said. “This has led to a very uncivil discourse in which it seems to be O.K. to shout down, discredit, delegitimize and denigrate the people who are reporting stories and to pick at their methodology and ascribe motives to them that are often unfair.”

Seelye gives one example where a creationist group used these techniques to dispute a Nightline piece on intelligent design.

Ultimately this process is part of the broader push towards “transparency” in news media:

Reporters say that these developments are forcing them to change how they do their jobs; some are asking themselves if they can justify how they are filtering information. “We’ve got to be more transparent about the news-gathering process,” said Craig Crawford, a columnist for Congressional Quarterly and author of “Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media.” “We’ve pretended to be like priests turning water to wine, like it’s a secret process. Those days are gone.”

Some news outlets are posting transcripts of their interviews with newsmakers, and some reporters are posting their own material. Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek, has posted not only transcripts from his interviews but also his own notes on his Web site, saying he likes to involve his readers in the journalistic process.

“Sometimes I say to my readers, Here’s my interview. What story would you have written?” said Mr. Baker, who writes about technology. Journalism, he added, used to be a clear-cut “before and after process,” much like making a meal; the cooking was done privately in the kitchen and then the meal was served. Now, he said, “every aspect of it is scrutinized.”

One of the difficulties with this is that it is forcing a simultaneous public and professional reevaluation of news gathering processes. But it is difficult and confusing to suddenly have a public conversation about news when so much of what journalists take for granted as routine story formation is seen as a quasi alchemical process by much of the public. We have sold the myth of objectivity for so long that it has become common wisdom: whereas once upon a time this provided a protective shield it is now being used as a weapon against us.

It’s classic blowback.

Chris Cillizza is the first person hired by Washingtonpost.com—based in Virginia—to spend most of his time in the downtown newsroom, accordin g to political editor John Harris. The Post may have found the crossover reporter to bridge the gap between its print newspaper and Internet site…..

He doesn’t mind being called a blogger: “Blogs can be news- and information-driven without opinion. I see it as real-time reporting with the ability for people to comment.” ….

In time, Cillizza’s brand of crossover reporting might be the norm at the Post. Says Harris: “Chris does represent a bridge between the Web newsroom in Arlington and the one here in DC. I have no doubt that the two operations will merge. It’s inevitable.”

Five years ago, Harris says, there was trepidation among reporters about the emergence of Washingtonpost.com: “Everybody’s gone through the stages of grief—from denial to acceptance to now when they’re competing for better play on the Web site.”

The debate here is still centered on “objectivity” with Cillizza noting he dosen’t vote and he wants to be “as objective as humanly possible.” As Jaffe comments: ” He’s got a politically monastic streak that must warm the heart of executive editor Len Downie”.

The welcome Cillizza has been given is in sharp contrast to the recent strife over web based Dan Froomkin’s White House briefing blog. WP Obudsman Deborah Howell ignited a controversy earlier this month when she wrote of “the two Washington Posts” – the paper and the web site:

Political reporters at The Post don’t like WPNI columnist Dan Froomkin’s “White House Briefing,” which is highly opinionated and liberal. They’re afraid that some readers think that Froomkin is a Post White House reporter.

John Harris, national political editor at the print Post, said, “The title invites confusion. It dilutes our only asset — our credibility” as objective news reporters. Froomkin writes the kind of column “that we would never allow a White House reporter to write. I wish it could be done with a different title and display.”

Harris is right; some readers do think Froomkin is a White House reporter. But Froomkin works only for the Web site and is very popular — and Brady is not going to fool with that, though he is considering changing the column title and supplementing it with a conservative blogger.

This is partly a territorial dispute, partly about new technology and partly about the nature of journalism. As Editor and Publisher reported WP politics editor John Harris and Froomkin have diferent interpretations of what is going on. Froomkin:

“My agenda, such as it is, is accountability and
transparency,” Froomkin wrote. “I believe that the president of the
United States, no matter what his party, should be subject to the most
intense journalistic scrutiny imaginable. And he should be able to
easily withstand that scrutiny. I was prepared to take the same
approach with John Kerry, had he become president.”

Froomkin, who does some original reporting himself, is
like a blogger in the way he points to other sources of news, offers
context to the day’s political reporting and points out themes in the
mainstream media’s reporting. “Regular readers know that my column is
first and foremost a daily anthology of works by other journalists and
bloggers,” Froomkin wrote on post.blog. “The omnipresent links make it
easy for readers to assess my credibility.

And Harris:

“The first issue is whether many readers believe
Dan’s column is written by one of the Washington Post’s three White
House reporters,” he wrote. “It seems to me–based on many, many
examples–beyond any doubt that a large share of readers do believe
that. No doubt there are some who enjoy the column for precisely this
reason. If I worked outside the paper, I might presume myself that a
feature titled ‘White House Briefing’ was written by one of the
newspaper’s White House reporters.

“Given that there is such confusion, the question is
whether this is a problem. For me it is a problem. I perceive a good
bit of his commentary on the news as coming through a liberal prism–or
at least not trying very hard to avoid such perceptions. Dan, as I
understand his position, says that his commentary is not ideologically
based, but he acknowledges it is written with a certain irreverence and
adversarial purpose. Dan does not address the main question in his
comments. He should. If he were a White House reporter for a major news
organization, would it be okay for him to write in the fashion he does?

“If the answer is yes, we have a legitimate
disagreement. If the answer is no, there is not really a debate:
washingtonpost.com should change the name of his column to more
accurately present the fact that this is Dan Froomkin’s take on the
news, not the observations of someone who is assigned by the paper to
cover the news.

The choice of words is interesting. Froomkin frames his work not in terms of objectivity but in terms of transparency – the term that Dan Gilmour suggest is a better contemporary motif for journalistic ideals.

If 2004 was the year blogs entered the language (so says Merriam-Webster), then 2005 was the year they found their voice. Mainstream media embraced blogs, corporations embraced blogs, spammers embraced blogs.

It was a time of great convergence, with indie blogs joining together to capture audience and advertising, as brand-name media shed their institutional voices to go unfiltered where the readers were.

I think it is this friction between the institutional adoption of blogs and their original independent impulse that is one of the most interesting things about the current evolution of the blogsphere. Lee Rainie, director of the Pew internet project makes the point that we are in a key transitional moment:

“The mainstream media opened its arms to bloggers in crisis moments in all sorts of ways,” Rainie says. “We have entered this melding stage of thinking… . We’ve been through anger and fighting. Now we are in the wary-embrace stage. At some point, it will be wholesale endorsement.”

The question becomes will it be endorsement of the form or endorsement of the ethos of the blogsphere.

The Sydney Morning Herald produced one of the earliest mainstream experiments with Margo Kingston’s webdiary. It was a genuine evolving space with a commitment to diversity and discussion that became a community for negotiated discussion not just a bullitedn board. For reasons that still remain unclear Kingston was shafted and had to go independent. She has now retired from the blogsphere, even though others have continued her project.

The Herald has replaced her with The Contrarian which like many mainstream media blogs is a traditional column with a comments facility

The real change will come when mainstream media realise that blogging is a new way of relating to content not just a new way of disseminating it.

In an memo to staff on Wednesday (first posted at LAObseved), Jon Landman, the paper’s deputy managing editor, promised a real estate blog by Damon Darlin in a few days and said more blogs were in the works. Even more “are at the idea stage,” he said. Noting that the paper has “come late to blogging” (trailing the Washington Post at a great distance, for example), he nevertheless declared, “Nothing is more important to the future of our web ambitions than to engage our sophisticated readers. Blogs are one way to do it.”

Still, he added, they “make some newspaper people nuts; they’re partisan, the thinking goes, and unfair and mean-spirited and sloppy about facts. Newspapers make some bloggers nuts; they think we’re dull and slow and pompous and jealous guardians of unearned ‘authority.’”

The new blog is Carpetbagger and it’s a temporary affair:

The Carpetbagger is a daily blog designed to run the length of the Oscar season. The gesture is one of a bulletin board about Oscar coverage and will not be in the handicapping business, in part because you would be well advised to listen closely to any of my predictions and then go the other way as fast as possible. (If no one knows anything in Hollywood, that must mean I know less.) The Academy Awards are preceded by a campaign that everyone pretends is not a campaign: screenings, mentions, and minor awards are all major elements of an ineffable process that can lead to over-the-top speeches and riches beyond imagination, or at least enough legs for robust DVD sales. The Carpetbagger is designed to examine those glitzy folkways as they unfurl, and to have some laughs along the way.

It seems pretty light and breezy but does manage a bit of investigation of its own from time to time. On Spielberg’s Munich exclusive with Time:

Pesky cynics have suggested that director Steven Spielberg granted Time the one and only interview in what has been a stealth campaign on behalf of the movie in return for cover placement and some editorial love. The Carpetbagger reached Time magazine managing editor Jim Kelly in Dubai – don’t ask; well okay, we sent him an email, but still – and he said it went like this: “I’d been hearing great buzz, but I hear great buzz about a lot of films. In this case, I had great interest in the topic, and was very curious how Spielberg would handle it,” he wrote. “We pushed to see it early, and the folks who saw it thought it was terrific, so I decided we should make it the cover.” The lavish licking of Mr. Spielberg’s legacy (alliteration is the crutch of the uninspired writer) could bring plenty of normal human beings in those middle places into the theater, but that is not what puts one’s grasping hands around the base of a golden artifact. However, many folks in the Academy in Los Angeles saw “Munich” this weekend at dedicated screenings, and there were second-hand reports of weeping, which is always a hopeful sign when it comes to statues.

Of course the problem with a mainstream newspaper blogger covering a topic like this is their willingness or ability to link to other mainstream competitors. I haven’t read it all but on a quick once over there are few links to TV show sites but I didn’t noticed any to the LA TImes or Washington Post! It’s early days.

Technorati Tags: blogging and journalism

Bogs fall under the same defamation and other laws that regulate all media organisations in the country.

While US bloggers are protected by a freedom of speech clause in the US Bill of Rights, new sedition laws passed by Australian authorities may make life even tougher for bloggers.

Local bloggers, even without the new laws, must be very careful about what they write.

“Bloggers may be liable for what’s on their website as the publisher of the information,” says Stephen James, a specialist in Technology Law and partner at TressCox.
“I think they need to be more cautious. There is no exception in the law for internet conversations.”

There have been only a few cases involving internet bloggers, but James expects more cases involving breaches of other laws.

His golden rule for bloggers is: “Don’t post any comment about any person that you wouldn’t be happy to see about yourself.”

“Remember all laws, including defamation, legal obligations to keep some information confidential, providing negligent advice and even the new sedition laws may apply to bloggers,” says James.

In our blogs are we supposed to have opinions? With our particular topics is it OK to comment on all different stories or do we have to stick to a particular theme (within our topic)? Thanks I’m just a little scared to post anything incase I’m doing the wrong thing

I thought some others might also be feeling trepidatious! So here’s my reply:

Don’t be scared!

The great thing about blogging is that it is an experiment – an evolving form – so there are no right or wrong ways of doing things. I have given you some pointers in class and you can look over them on the web site:

• go to assignments in the main menu click on the blogging assignment section in the left sidebar
• read the task description
• then for more information explore the articles in the righthand sidebar for tips and advice

The short answer is: in some blog posts you will be expressing an opinion – about either the issue or the media coverage in others you will be just noting that something new has happened or that you found an interesting article.

The thing about blogging is that the effect is cumulative. What I am interested in seeing is not the perfect blog post but the evolution of a vibrant set of ideas, notes and connections over the whole period that you keep the blog.

Regarding themes: As I said in class I suspect that during the first few weeks of posting your reach will be quite wide. This is the period in which you will be surveying your area and identifying:

• what are the key issues currently under discussion?
• what approaches are the media adopting?
• what are some examples of really excellent analysis?
• what are the resources available for reporters covering this beat?
• what are experts saying in other parts of the web?
• are the issues the same in the Australian media and UK or US ( or if you speak another language find out what is happening in non-english speaking media)?

Out of all this initial research you will find some things that you are interested in more than others and you may decide to specialise by covering one issue in greater depth, or you might decide to keep covering a few of them. Even at this stage it is good to keep an eye on the general field and report new developments that you find interesting.

You should also use the blog to post reflections about class discussions and the readings and how they relate to the media stories that you are finding.

This may seem a little overwhelming at first but you don’t have to do all of these things at once.

Blogging is all about bite size pieces and letting your discoveries lead you in new directions through creating links.

Start simply and see what happens.

Having sponsored a $10,000 prize for “Australia’s best blog”, Razor can’t blame SmartyHost for wanting to get as much mileage as possible out of the event. It describes the winner, Australian artist Jodi Rose’s Bridge Girl Travelling Diary as “an excellent example of the unlimited nature of blogs”.It’s a highly original site. But is it Australia’s best blog? Razor was on the judging panel, and while it was in our top three, it didn’t get our No. 1 vote. In fact, only two members of the judging panel voted it No. 1. It took the prize only because one of the judges gave it a total of 40 points – by far the most generous award by any judge – and the other 35 points. And both those judges marked between six and seven of the final 11 sites much lower than the other judges. …In our opinion, there should have been some effort to standardise the points. If that had happened, the probable winner would have been Looby Lu or Trollhattansaab.We were the only judge who gave our top award to Karen Cheng’s blog. That was five more than the highest points awarded by any of the other judges.

These are great blogs – more personal and quirky than the type we are engaging with but lovely creations none-the-less.

]]> http://nacaf.edublogs.org/2005/12/06/australias-best-blog/feed/ 0 http://nacaf.edublogs.org/2005/12/06/a-categories-work-around-for-blogger/ http://nacaf.edublogs.org/2005/12/06/a-categories-work-around-for-blogger/#comments Tue, 06 Dec 2005 00:50:28 +0000 Marcus O'Donnell http://nacaf.edublogs.org/2005/12/06/a-categories-work-around-for-blogger/ Paul has come up with a good solution for developing categories in Blogger.

He is using a system called del.icio.us which is a web based bookmark system. It was originally developed so that you could collect links and house them on an accessible web server rather than store them in your browser. That way you can access them anywhere from any computer. But Paul has set up a set of del.icio.us “tags” for his blog and added a set of links to his toolbar.

 

del.icio.us is one of a number of web based systems of “social software” that help people organise information and communicate on the internet.

]]> http://nacaf.edublogs.org/2005/12/06/a-categories-work-around-for-blogger/feed/ 0 http://nacaf.edublogs.org/2005/12/05/blogging-dramas/ http://nacaf.edublogs.org/2005/12/05/blogging-dramas/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2005 14:02:09 +0000 Marcus O'Donnell http://nacaf.edublogs.org/2005/12/05/blogging-dramas/ Blogging was meant to be easy. But the browser wars and MAC/PC compatibility issues will always get in the way.

So to some solutions.

For those of you who primarily use PCs then the best solution is Uniblogs. A quick simple set-up procedure will give you a fully functional Word Press blog with some easy editing tools that

• allow you to add links to your posts really easily
• allow you to create a blogroll set of links down the side bar without delving into the mysterious code
• best of all it allows you to create and set categories for your posts

You can also create extra pages on specific topics that are listed in your sidebar and that sit outside your reverse chronology blog listings. These are good for detailed pieces on a topic. See how I have added a page called Course Outline at the top of the sidebar.

For those of you who use Macs the solution is probably persevering with blogsome which will give you all the same functionality if you use Firefox as your browser. The only problem with blogsome is that, as we saw today, it is a very busy site and is often quite slow to load – this can be even worse if you are on dial-up.

If you are on a Mac and you find blogsome too slow you can stick with blogger – but as we saw today creating sidebar links can be a bit tricky and it does not offer the category function. Blogsource is similar to blogger – no categories but it gives you much easier sidebar links creation – only works in Firefox not Safari.

There is one other solution that some of you might want to explore. You can set up a blog in any of the free services and then you can post from your computer using a “desktop blogging client” such as ecto which allows you to manage everything outside your browser and avoid all the issues of what tools show up on what browsers. I am posting this using ecto, on a mac to a uniblogs site. However if I went to the control panel with a browser the links tool would not be working! It is not free but it’s pretty cheap and you can trial it for 14 days free. It also has a nifty tool that you can add to your browser toolbar which will allow you to post highlighted text to your blog directly from any browser with a simple click.

For those of you who think you might get serious about blogging it is worth checking out some of the paid services that offer a little more functionality. Typepad is probably the best and at the moment you can get 30 days free.

If you want to look at some blogs to get an idea of what blogging is all about check some of the bloggers that I have added to the sidebar links section

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