Author Archives: Kevin Anderson

05.04.07
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Frontline Club: Politics and blogging

Last night, Suw and I went to a discussion on World Press Freedom Day at the Frontline Club here in London. I’ve tidied up my liveblog notes and added a little commentary as well as tried to link out to the sources that were mentioned.

The moderator, Richard Gizbet of Al Jazeera English’s Listening Post, started off this evening: “We’re here to talk aboout the blogosphere and the MSM: What it is good at and what it’s not good at.”

The panel:

Ben Hammersley, former multimedia correspondent at the Guardian

Kevin Marsh, BBC College of Journalism and former editor of the Today programme at Radio 4.

Ethan Zuckerman, with Global Voices Online, OpenNet Initiative (Ethan let me know that while he lends a hand at ONI, that he’s not actually on the project team).

Alaa Abd El-Fatah, Egyptian blogger at Manal and Alla’s bit bucket

Richard first talked about his fascination with the Egyptian blogosphere. It’s one of the least covered but most active in the Middle East. Alaa has used technology to help empower activists. More on that later.

Richard: I do a broadcast at Al Jazeera called the Listening Post. In the 18 months before we pitched this and we got on air, we had an idea of what this would look like. We thought it would be a multimedia look at the newspapers around the world. That has all changed, in large part what is going on in the blogosphere. They are pushing, pushing mainstream media.

Ben: Difficult to know where to start this. Key thing to talk about over the next half hour is the results of this revolution. Free tools to express yourself. For every blogger, there is a different style of blogging. There is not one blogging, there are 50,000 different kinds of blogging. There are free or cheap tools on the internet. There is no such thing as blogging (in the sense that there is one thing called blogging, not to put words in Ben’s mouth but to try to interpret), just blogging tools and lots of people are using them.

Kevin Marsh: I think if there is one point that I really want to emphasise this evening are the claims that are being made in mature democracies on its behalf of blogging to mend politics and mend political journalism. Those aims are unachievable. It is wrong to say that blogging fixes what is broken in politics and what is wrong with political journalism. It would be wrong on World Press Freedom day to say that people shouldn’t have freedom speech, but I don’t think blogging reconnects the political disconnect that exists in mature democracies. Politics and political journalism is broken, but I don’t think that blogging will fix that.

Ethan: One of the things that we’re interested in at Global Voices doesn’t address Kevin’s concerns about mature democracies, but it is about providing views and opinions from developing nations. In a lot of countries, the blogosphere is a lot less constrained than the press or the broadcast media. If you are in Zimbabwe, you can’t really get free views from the press or broadcast media that you can get from bloggers, some blogging anonymously. The openness in this space is closing quite rapidly. The number of countries filtering the internet is expanding.

Richard: Go to Alla in a few minutes This week there was another casualty in the Egyptian blogosphere. One of the bloggers, Sand Monkey, has decided to pack it in.

Sand Monkey said that he thought security was closing in on him and that soon his anonymity would be blown.

Alaa: Sand Monkey had some complaint with others in the blogosphere. It looks grim. There are two bloggers in jail. There have been several bloggers taken by security. This is not new. This is normal. It happens to journalists all the time. It happens to activitists all the time. We are now worried that the government is attacking the medium itself. With the religious taboos, there are many who are looking to limit freedom of speech. We see people who are being sent to jail. It is difficult to say if this is a trend that will continue. It is having a chilling effect at the moment.

Ethan: Let me jump in on this chilling effect. There are two ways gov’ts can constrain access. They can limit access technically. China, Ethiopia and Pakistan limiting access to blogger.com. The other way is to intimidate people to tell them that they are under surveillance. When you see Sand Monkey stop blogging, you see a chilling effect.

By threatening to arrest a few people, you can silence hundreds or thousands of people.

Ben: It’s very interesting to ask yourself, these gov’ts not technically sophisticated. Why is the blogosphere being targetted as bad speech? Bloggers are the ultimate boogeyman for authoritarian governments. It’s like the moral majority in the US or UK blaming video games for violence. Is it because bloggers so efficient at spreading political ideas or just because they are new?

Alaa: We are seeing a general crackdown. It affects bloggers less than mainstream media. Bloggers use the medium for journalism but also for activism. There is media interest.You hear more about bloggers being arrested than journalists being arrested.

Ethan: I think that governments being interested in controlling information that blogging is very interesting for activism. One thing that freaks out gov’ts is that this is an international space. Ethiopia is worried about what is being said by Ethiopians abroad. They are more strident than if they lived in Ethiopian. The internet is more open than other media.

Media enthusiasm can’t be discounted. Bloggers are arrested and they blog from jail, as Alaa did. Activists can get their message out to a wider audience. If bloggers can do this, it is not just for local activists but to get the message out to the rest of the world.

Richard: Broaden this out to Virginia Tech shootings. There was the discussion about the appropriateness of using video, but this was the first time mainstream media turned to blogosphere. Students blogging in real time on Live Journal, MySpace and Facebook. They were upset. Called it digital doorstepping. In the Guardian, Patrick Barkham said that bloggers didn’t understand the public space they were in. He said they need to grow up. (The full discussion on the Media Guardian between Patrick and blogger Jeff Jarvis) Kevin, is if fair for journalists to go there?

Kevin Marsh: I might be one of the few people who think it isn’t right to go there. It’s right to say that people who were filing stuff to MySpace or whatever that they should have known the rules. You go back to people uploading stuff, it wasn’t their intention that the media …

(I have to interrupt the liveblogging with a bit of a postscript: He compared it to someone who had written something in a diary. He said that a diary because it is written is now public. I couldn’t disagree with this analogy more strongly. I have a paper journal in addition to the blogs I write. When I die, I have instructed friends that my journals are to be burnt. Just because I wrote them on paper, I do not want them public under any circumstances. These are my private thoughts, my private musings, and I do not want them ever made public. Everyone compares blogging to keeping a diary. Yes, most people blog about their personal experiences, but I have levels of what I want public and private. I think this analogy stands up very poorly, and I do not consider my personal diaries as public record or in the public domain in any way. As a journalist, I reject the idea that my personal diaries are public in any way whatsoever.)

Kevin Marsh: At the first time in history, we have the ability to build up the richest picture in history. It makes me uneasy. I do wonder if there should have been a pause button. Where is the common humanity? Is it true that they filed to the globe that that was their intention?

Richard: Any thoughts from Cairo or US on digital doorsteping?

Ethan: Most bloggers most of the time are writing for a tiny audience. Most on LiveJournal are writing in public but only writing for a dozen people. But the same is true for most bloggers. What happened for Virginia Tech, they were writing for a very small group but what they were writing was interesting to a very large audience. People find themselves committing acts of journalism. What got tricky with Virginia Tech, they didn’t embrace that identity. They found themselves writing for a much larger audience. Journalists need to be sensitive that people may be writing in public but writing for a much smaller group of people.

Alaa: Most journalists assume that bloggers want to be journalists. Most bloggers don’t want to be journalists. Sometimes when journalists are telling your story or quoting you, you are being put in a different context. It is very common in Egypt that newspaper use comments from the blog. People are angry are about it. There is this idea that you are writing to smaller public and a public online. I don’t know what can be done. It is bound to happen.

Ben: One of the things that we have to deal with is the rapidly changing standards of media literacy. We’ve only had the internet for 10 years. We’ve only had blogging as a mass phenomenon for three or four years. I think it’s very interesting what Kevin was saying with LiveJournal stuff. If you say that you can’t use found letters, then documentarians would be out of a business. Ken Burns couldn’t have made the Civil War. The British Library said that they were starting to collect e-mails.

Richard: Too bad, we can’t get the White House to do the same.

Ben: We haven’t made the rules, but we have the old rules. The idea that it was written this morning and not hundreds of years ago. Does it really change anything?

Richard: When we were first confronted by the power of the idea, it was seeing as a panacea.

Kevin Marsh: You still see it. You go to a politician’s blog site. They say it is all about engaging with the public. But it’s no more engaging with the public than knocking on doors. David Milliband quite interesting guy because we thought he was standing for leadership. When he says he isn’t running, he doesn’t do it on his blog, it goes into the Observer. It is difficult to differentiate between Boris Johnson writing on his blog and Boris Johnson writing on his blog. He has links to his articles on the blog.

In order to pass first base, you have to have a civil conversation. It’s very humbling when you look at political journalism in the last 25 years. You see the political journalism and it’s very easy for bloggers or anyone to do it better. Political blogging in the States is more or less a running commentary on the failings of political journalism. Here, it is more or less political journalism. Guido Fawkes, it’s rumour. It’s supposition. It’s the same thing that alienates people from political journalism. There is nothing special about putting Tony Blair on YouTube.

(Again, I have to interrupt. In holding up David Milliband, Boris Johnson and Tony Blair’s laughable efforts to publish content in an interactive space, I have to ask this questions: Is it a failing of blogging or vlogging, or a failure of politicians to grasp the idea, the opportunity that they could interact directly with their constituents in a new way? This is not a failure of blogging. This is a failure of mainstream politicians to truly engage, and I would say not only to engage via blogging but even through more traditional methods of political engagement. Later, Kevin Marsh will talk about authenticity. The problem with politicians moving into this space is similar to the failings of traditional media often in this space, they simply use a new tool in a traditional way. They use blogs as broadcast and publishing and forget the return channel. That’s not a failure of the technology. It’s a failure of vision and a failure to understand not only the technology of engagement, but engagement itself.)

Richard: I wondered why British political blogosphere such a quiter space. I think the blogosphere fills a vacuum where ever it is. It’s different in Belarus. The British blogopshere represents a tribute to mainstream British journalism. You felt like there were voices that spoke to you.

(I would disagree here as well. I think it’s a success in mainstream British journalism to marginalise voices that they find threatening. I think it’s a shame, not something that should be celebrated. I find unanimity, homogeneity and predicatability in the mediated conversation.

I also find a contradiction. The media here mourns a lack of civic participation, but then as some choose to participate via blogs, they attack and belittle bloggers’ contributions. And the only bloggers that get to play in the media space are those that are familiar and fit in current political alignments.

The US media is no better, using bloggers to reinforce a traditional political agenda. They highlight bloggers to perpetuate the right-left shouting match that has debased popular political discourse and leaves most people disinclined to participate out of frustration and alienation.)

Ben: The thing with the American blogosphere was that it was not to fill a void. It was to find a scapegoat. It rose with election of George Bush. America woke up day after election and recoiled up in horror at the other 50% of their country. They all blamed the media. left said Fox. Right said Hollywood. It became a meta conversation about the media.

Ethan: I am going to respectfully disagree with Ben on issue of timing. I saw a rise of political blogosphere in the lead up to ’04, not a follow up. People were desperately finding a way to participate. What came out of that was the Howard Dean campaign. It is very easy to get Americans active in online medium, but very difficult to get them helpful.

Bloggers very effective at raising money but what was less clear whether we created policy dialogue. It was the laziness of people wanting to be active without leaving their machines but feeling that things are quite off kilter in our country.

Kevin Marsh: I think that is really important. What is the most disappointing thing is seeing video of Joe Trippi on PrezVid. What did that achieve other than to campaign online? It ended no where. What was really disappointing, it was the relish Joe Trippi had that social networking sites would reveal more Macaca moments. What disturbed me was the relish he had in delivering more Macaca moments. That was the problem with traditional moment finding off guarded moment.

Alaa: I don’t know any about what you guys are talking about. If we think about blogging and fill a gap in journalism, in Egypt, we have not seen any coverage of local issues of local stories. When I looked at Lebanon, the way that bloggers see the world, it was very different than mainstream media sees the world. There is very little political blogging than goes beyond sectarian debates. There are black spots that aren’t being covered by bloggers as being covered by mainstream media.

Suw Charman: Why focus so tightly on political commentary bloggers? There are bloggers that talk about issues but not in a political world. There are bloggers talking about the ambulance service or NHS, or like the NGO I founded to talk about digital rights.

(Suw makes an excellent point, and I think one of the problems is that most people relate to governance and policy differently than politician and journalists.)

Richard: To be fair, Alaa not replicating political commentary

Kevin Marsh: The distinction of civic conversation what is connection behind sites that you are talking. What I don’t see is connection between that conversation and the political parties. I don’t see that connection. Political groups say look at all this conversation going on.

Ben: Massive class of blogs written by ambulance drivers, teachers and soldiers saying that this is broken.Their’s isn’t the failure. The failure is the political class. That is where poltics is broken. Used to say, politicians never meet nurse. If you’re in politics and dealing with health care why should you wait for Polly Toynbee to tell you that the health care system is broken.

In America, they are trying to ban military bloggers. It absolutely shows that it is broken, because you’re not listening to people you are serving. (Talked about here on Captain’s Quarters, here on Black Five or on Wired.)

Journalist with Japanese online newspaper: In Japan blogging is so huge, grown out of alternative media. Is there distrust of blogging in Britain?

Ben: Certainly, there was a distrust. Ben outs me as the Guardian blogs editor, as he says that it is entering the mainstream.

Ethan: I want to respond to Suw. I do think that we limit when we just talk about the political blogs. We show you the blogs talking about life and everyday issues. What are the issues of everyday life in Cambodia? I think that Ben’s point on milbloggers is spot on. What life is like for a soldier in Ramadi is critical for us. Bloggers that are taking a specific journalistic function.

Kevin Marsh: The trust element. The mainstream media is finding in blogs something difficult to find: Authenticity. Not out for out and out verification, but trying to find authentic voice. There is another thing. The BBC reported a story about riots two years ago. Thought it came out of nowhere. Look at Where I Live sites on the BBC, you could see tensions between West Indian and Asian communities. The precise elements pulling out there.

Ben: World Press Freedom day. Censorship doesn’t work. All of insurgents in Iraq are blogging themselves themselves silly. If you want to see US soldiers being shot, go to YouTube, on al Qaeda blogs. For Department of Defence to shut their side of the story down is silly.

Richard: The Department of Defence is outposting Iraqi bloggers 10 to 1. They are not stopping.

Ethan: This is the same mistake that the US government made with Radio Sawa. US government sees that YouTube is being used and think that to have US government video on YouTube is the answer.

Jonathan Charles, BBC Correspodent: While I think that this provides a slice of life, but I wonder whether bloggers’ lack of restraint harms their own case. Watch news, and I see that it is dissected by right and left. It is still a cacophony of voices. Do they discount themselves by their lack of restraint?

Kevin Marsh: I think it’s hard to talk about standards. I think you have to live with it. It feels a bit like journalism.

Jonathan Charles: Let me give you an example. I received an e-mail by someone. I responded and then it was posted on someone’s blog.

Alaa: It is precisely not a mature conversation not following norms and laws that it is important. If we chose to follow libel laws in Egypt, we would not be unable to talk about torture, unable to talk about corruption. You remove barriers that journalists have been unable to break through.

Member of audience: Blogs change standards of media literacy. I do question pilfering comments on MySpace for Virginia Tech. The second question is most influential political blogs. Philadelphia, Dan Rubin, Blink blog, tackles politics in very dispasssionate way.

Ben: The question about media literacy and privacy on MySpace answers itself. The social norms in MySpace and Live Journal are really only understand by people under 25. If you are the AP national reporter who discovered Google a couple of months ago, then they don’t understand the medium. We have to wait for everybody to catch up.

In US political blogs, there are people very good. In American political sites, you can always tell which side they are on. The non-mainstream blogs, you can always tell what side they are on.

Richard: My kids are on MySpace and Facebook, and my wife calls it MyFace.

Member of audience: Ask Alaa, if you see blogs as the new political opposition.

Alaa: I don’t think that blogs can go anywhere on their own. It is not what you can do on the internet, it is the network on the ground. When you add the blogosphere and SMS and e-mail to a thriving community of opposition, it can become very powerful. But if you don’t use these tools on the ground, you don’t have anything but debate. You see the rise of the new generation of activitists. It is being reflected in the blogs and empowered with technology. But it is turning out very easy to intimidate the activist bloggers.

Ethan: There are a wealth of other tools. You can’t neglect mobile phones or e-mail. What is great about the blogosphere, it is an international space.

Question from woman from Moscow human rights group: Several speakers have spoken about ethical limitations of blogging. To me, blogging is private, it has no ethical limits. It is about people getting on web and writing their private diaries. If there are politicians, it is public. If not public, how to apply ethical standards.

Ben: The ethics come in when you publish it in a public space like the internet. If you want it private, write it down in a book and put it under your bed.

Question in Russian: Director of journalism from Moscow. I wanted to draw attention that very important in Russia to situation of journalists to the rest of the world. Number of demonstrations around the world, police would arrest journalists. It is very important to have bloggers. Because of state control of internet, very hard to get information.

Ethan: Tremendously active Russian blogging scene. One of really interesting things is that Russian bloggers have attached themselves to LiveJournal because it makes it possible to constrain posts to certain audience. Some LiveJournal posts only limited to certain group. Different than in US where writing for a global audience.

Bill from Greece: What I feel from countries like the Middle East not as free as Greece, Europe or the US, feel like more free than working at BBC or Fox News. How are we going to protect this? How can we talk about these restrictions? Should we journalists put this on first level of information.

Richard: Not a plug for Al Jazeera. Egyptian blogosphere is a big story. We need to amplify the blogosphere where it is being shut down.

Kevin Marsh: I think that broadcasters do have a duty here. It comes back to the point of authenticity to take that point and amplify it. I think that blogging needs protection from a whole host of things. Mature democracies need protection as politicians look to social networking sites and they think that will solve their problems. You overlook at your peril of western politicians that these networks represent what is on the ground. This is free civic conversation but it isn’t politics.

Ben: Yes, there is a lot of nasty uncivil stuff on the blogosphere. If you want to see nasty comments, write a post about Israel-Palestine or read Richard Fisk’s e-mail. Free speech is a bitch, and the blogosphere needs to be defended even though at times you don’t want to look at it.

Member of audience: On one hand, we’re told we missed the story by not reading blogs in Birmingham, but we can’t go into blogs for Virginia Tech. But it is OK to send in large number of cameras to Virginia. Isn’t it less invasive to use found comments?

Kevin Marsh: Intrusion is part and parcel of journalism. This is a new phenomenon, a new medium. I agree with you rushing into a campus with a large number of cameras. that’s the nature of news. I’m much more equivocal about dipping into blogs and exchanged messages. I don’t think we have the etiquette sorted out. If you’re posting in what is your mind is half a private space or a public space.

Ben: A lot of people assume that they are writing under Chatham House rules.

Richard: Ethan, last comment from you.

Ethan: I think that a lot of this is learning how to read in this new medium. There are questions of how to read blogs. Look not just at post but through history of what they have written. Look back at who they writing for. Are they writing for the wider world or for just a few friends? It’s a new medium. We are learning not only how to write in this space but also how to read in this space.

05.04.07
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links for 2007-05-04

05.03.07
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Never travel with The Man’s computer

Suw and I have had this conversation more times than I can remember lately: When did IT become the enemy? How many times can journalists not do their jobs because they’re locked out of their own laptops? In my previous job, I often travelled with two computers. A clean one that I could configure to my heart’s content, and the one provided by the company where I couldn’t configure the comms to file stories and couldn’t add software needed to use mobile modems or other hardware. I only bring this up because I’m at an event where a fellow journalist can’t configure his WiFi because he doesn’t have administrative right on his computer and therefore can’t post to his blog and can’t do his job.

05.01.07
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Internet World: Lulu’s model for self-publishing

I started my day off at the Internet World 2007 conference because I wanted to chat with the folks at LinkedIn for a story I’m working on about online business social networks. The first keynote was by Bob Young, one of the founders of the self-publishing site Lulu.com. In 1993, he co-founded ACC Corporation that went on to merge with RedHat, which has grown into a Fortune 500 company.

“I thought I’d talk about three things: 1) Web 2.0 and what it means in Europe. 2) What it means in the UK. 3) What it means to you.”

How I got to Lulu from this RedHat thing. Those of you familiar with software, know that it was built on a proprietary model. (Well, I might quibble with him on that one seeing as Bill Gates actually stirred up the young software world when he suggested that it should be proprietary and that people should charge for it. That’s ancient history in the software world, in the days of the Altair. But I know where he’s going with this.)

They gave you the binaries, not the source code. If you don’t know the difference, you should. In a very digital economy, in a digital society, if you only get the proprietary model, it’s like buying a car with the bonnet locked shut, and the dealer has the only key. Why would you want to open the hood the car? If you can open the bonnet, you have control of your car. You can take it to the dealer or any other garage. That is what took RedHat from startup in my wife’s sewing closett to a Fortune 500 company with half a billion dollars in revenue.

The control that gives you is that you don’t have to become a programmer but you can you hire someone to add the features you want.

Fast forward, and we’re now in the age of Web 2.0. For those of you who have difficulty understanding how Web 2.0 is different from web that you have used for the last 10 years. The companies no longer provide any value to you. We simply build an infrastructure and you the users add value. If you go to MySpace, you aren’t going there to use things that MySpace developed, you are going there for what users add.

The possibility has been there since the beginning of the internet. eBay is my favourite web 2.0 company. Everything of value has been added by users. I go back to Adam Smith. Businessmen in their own self interest create value for society. Yeah, you can trust the government to develop what you need, or Pierre Omidyar (founder of eBay) can create what you need.

What Lulu is trying to do – based on Adam Smith – is that companies working in their own self interest make the world a better place. This is not to make Lulu successful but make our users successful. YouTube created a lot of traffic but that was based on you guys. How do we encourage people to make video when you didn’t get paid for the last one? Web 3.0 will be based on what eBay, Lulu and Revver are doing. It allows you to get paid for what you are doing.

With the internet, geography ends. It doesn’t matter if you are based in Europe. There is no competitive advantage being based in US. The UK has one competitive advantage: English. English is the lingua franca of the modern world. It is the French of the modern world. You guys can build sites with as global of a reach as any company.

Question from audience: Isn’t this about enabling users? Such as one click purchasing for iTunes or Amazon?

Answer: The great technologies of the internet in ten years are not going to be the great companies of today. Internet is in its infancy. We still have not created the great applications. It’s a lot like the PC industry in 1985. In 1985, they were Ashton-Tate, WordPerfect. Dell not even founded or possibly founded in 1985. (I checked. Dell was founded in 1984, but shipped the first computer of its own design in 1985.)

Question: How do you monetise Lulu?

Answer: It’s all about our authors. Lulu allows you to publish in one of three ways. Either electronically, a book or soon as a CD or DVD. Think of Harry Potter, you can either read, listen to as an audio book or watch as a DVD. We charge for printing. We do the reverse of the publishing model. You keep 80% of the revenue you make.

Question: How does Lulu assess whether these are unknown authors whether they are of some quality?

Answer: Ahh, the quality question. We sell 160,000 books a month. We’re adding 5000 authors a week. What is interesting to us is that concern (about quality). We probably have the world’s largest collection of bad poetry. Early on, the Washington Post newspaper ran a story. The literary editor thought he had come across the worst novel in the English language and was asking how can self publishing create good novels? We encouraged (the author) to come to Lulu, and we sent out a press release saying the worst writer in the English language had come to Lulu.

There shouldn’t be a group of editors who decides what is good enough or relevant. It should be the marketplace.

We are working on social networking and recommendation tools, to allow readers to decide quality.

From the musical Gypsy Rose, there is a song that says you have to have a gimmick. You have to do something different. If you do a different detective story, you have to do something different, like base it in your home town.

We don’t think we compete with Random House or Penguin. They think they have succeeded if they get their authors down to 10 and sell a million books each. Our model is the reverse. On a single copy, on Lulu, you make money and Lulu makes money.

04.26.07
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Sky responds to my mini-rant

A few weeks back, I posted what I called a mini-rant after watching Sky business editor Michael Wilson on air and then was directed to go to the Sky News site to respond on their blog. It took me a while on their old-look site to actually find the blog, but I wasn’t impressed at what I found.

I have to give the Sky News website team some points in responding to my rant. Julian March sets out their blogging goals on their Editor’s blog. And business producer Peter Hoskins left a comment and calls me out for having the sound turned down on that day. I will admit that, although I’ve heard them promoting their blogs on air several times since then and haven’t really felt compelled to look at their blogs because I don’t think they are doing a good job of framing a debate that really encourages me to take part. Mostly it still feels like traditional on-air promotion of their website. I think they could do a better job of setting up a conversation, a way that makes people want to join in. It’s still too much of a traditional news piece with “What do you think?” tossed on at the end.

I’ve responded to both Julian and Peter, on their blogs and here on Strange. It did hit a nerve that day, but again, I do give them credit in responding. It definitely walks the talk of transparency.

It made me think though about what is the difference between a blog post and a traditional article with comments. As comments become more common as a general feature on news sites, I hear some say that blogs on news sites will disappear. I think that blogs will evolve, and I believe that as ways for people to participate and contribute online proliferates comments will become a lowest common denominator as far as community features. But I don’t believe that blogs, in the context of news sites, are simply articles with a comment box and will therefore disappear as comment functionality becomes universal. I think there is a different editorial approach to blogging than writing news articles. As I put it to Sewell Chan of the New York Times over lunch, a news article is meant to tie up as many threads on the subject as possible, whereas a good blog posts weaves the threads of a good conversation together but leaves a few loose as an invitation to comment.

In a sidenote, Sewell is working on a new project called City Room. Intriguing. New York magazine has an internal memo about the project with a little snark about Sewell. I wish him luck.

04.25.07
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links for 2007-04-25

04.24.07
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Sensitivity and social media during disasters

Like many journalists, I was caught up in the coverage of the shootings at Virginia Tech last week. I played a very minor role looking for stories in social networks and on blogs. The coverage generated a lot of questions about how the media should or shouldn’t engage with social networks online.

I’ve been doing newsgathering through blogs and social networks for two years now, but I’ve never seen the media rush into these online spaces as they did last week. I’ve been mulling it over ever since, but I’ve still got more questions than answers. The BBC’s Robin Hamman has been asking many questions in the wake of his own role in the coverage. He wondered on his personal blog whether he really needed to confirm the quotes, or it would have been enough to link and disclaim. And on the BBC’s Manchester blog, he is now asking: When is a Blog in Public Meant to Remain Private?

That’s an interesting question and one I’ve run up against before. Last autumn, Guardian journalists asked me to find people struggling with alcoholism who were blogging. It wasn’t easy in the UK, but I found a couple of blogs including one person who wrote eloquently about his struggles with alcohol. We linked to his blog. He called us after seeing Guardian URLs in his trackbacks. He was furious and said we had no right to link to his blog, even though it was public. In retrospect, I probably should have contacted him considering the sensitivity of this issue, but -not only as a journalist, but also as a long-time internet user – I had difficulty understanding his outrage over a perceived transgression of privacy when he had written his thoughts on one of the least private of spaces: a blog.

So how can one tell when a public blog is meant to be private? Does the responsibility lie with me to interpret whether someone who publishes something in public wishes to remain private? Again, in retrospect, I should have tried to clear the link with this particular author because the subject matter was sensitive, but as Robin says in his post, if he had to clear every link with every blogger, he would spend a lot of time clearing links and precious little time writing posts.

Yet linking is not just a part of blogging, it is essential to it. A good blogger links to other bloggers – it’s how we make blogs a part of a distributed conversation. Linking is a well established online behaviour, and both net etiquette and the law say that permission is not required to link. Indeed, it would be damaging to the net if we had to ask permission every time we wanted to link. But this doesn’t mean that everything has to be done in public where it can be linked. If someone wants a private or semi-private blog, there are plenty of services that allow your writings to be only seen by friends and family, or by those to whom you give a password.

Now, in the case of Virginia Tech, it wasn’t one journalist linking, but several – possibly hundreds – of journalists asking questions of bloggers or members of social networks. One journalist and LiveJournaler, Adam Tinworth, called this “digital doorstepping“, a reference to media’s previous practice of going to the doorstep of family members and asking them questions such as: “How do you feel?”

But is it more invasive to leave a question in a comment or send an e-mail than to turn up on a family’s doorstep uninvited? Comments on your blog or LiveJournal are very easy to ignore in a time of crisis, as are emails. Instant messages are a bit more intrusive, but electronic forms of communicate are far less intrusive than phone calls or camping out on someone’s front lawn. Doorstepping is insensitive and reflects badly on journalists, but I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to equate leaving a comment with doorstepping.

I agree with Craig McGinty that journalists are still finding their way in this new space and I’d echo his concern:

One thing I think a journalist has to consider is that if they see messages previously left by other news organisations do they really think their request is going to make any difference?

But as Adam says, this isn’t new. The question has always been one of sensitivity. I’ve covered more accidents, tragedies and disasters than I care to think about, most not from behind a computer but on the ground. There are some journalists who get caught up in the rush for a story, but many of the journalists I know do not fit the caricature of the exclusive-hungry hack focused on the story and oblivious to the pain of the people involved.

Robin linked to a LiveJournaler who was livid over the coverage and asked what business the US national or international media had in covering this story. He suggested that outlets outside of the area rely on the local media, who know the area better. I’d agree with the LJer that the student journalists did an amazing job, but if I were still in based in Washington, there is no way that I could tell my editor that I won’t go to cover the story because the local and student media are doing the job. The LJer said he would quit rather than “go sticking a microphone in the face of someone who’s just experienced a tragedy”. Well, he wouldn’t have to quit. He’d be fired.

But there is an underlying assumption in not only his post, but also many other anti-media comments, that covering tragedy is de facto invasive and that it cannot be done with sensitivity and humanity. I reject that idea. It creates a false dichotomy between no or very little coverage and overly invasive, insensitive coverage when it’s clear there are miles between those two poles.

Ironically, when it comes to approaching people online, I think it’s difficult to get the tone right in an e-mail, an IM message or a blog comment because you don’t have benefit of non-verbal cues, of body language. Perhaps the clumsiness of electronic communication might have amplified the sense of intrusion in this case. Certainly I’ve winced at fellow journalists, who are not digital natives, as they stumble into online communities: they never modify their tone or pitch from a standard cut-and-paste interview request, and it sounds corporate, impersonal and frankly, uninviting. But again, that’s a slightly separate issue. I know many journalists who can’t or won’t modify their approach when dealing with a member of the public as opposed to dealing with politicians and public figures.

I think it’s important for me to leave the best impression possible with any member of the public. That’s part of my job. I remember speaking to a colleague at a previous employer who said that one of the biggest parts of his job was doing damage control after rude journalists had gone into a community to cover a story. Ouch. I may be the only contact a person has with my company, and how I conduct myself in public will leave a lasting impression about my publication, network or station. I don’t understand how some journalists can’t turn off the aggressive investigative journalism mode when it’s not required or appropriate. I’m not advocating saccharine, overly-emotional coverage, just respect for members of the public, especially when they are caught up in tragic events. It’s not their fault that suddenly their lives are of public interest because of disaster or tragedy. That’s the same online or off.

In the end, I think the best way for journalists to work with members of social networks is actually to join them and actively participate early on, whether it’s blogs, NewsVine, Facebook or any other community. They won’t need to be so invasive when news breaks because they’ll already be known to the community and, hopefully, will understand the netiquette, and if they are recognised as journalists, they may even find that they are approached by those wanting to tell their own stories. Sometimes, people do want to share their stories with the media, and if journalists make themselves more approachable then they may find that their eyewitnesses come to them.

It’s never easy to cover tragedies or disasters. For people who think that journalists are all ‘maggots’, ‘vultures’ or ‘scum’, all I’d say that it’s wrong when journalists generalise or oversimplify a story, and it’s just as wrong to generalise about journalists.

Postscript: A lot of my thinking for this post was informed by the great roundup of criticism Martin Stabe provided on Fleet Street 2.0 and Chris Vallance’s excellent post. (He covered the story for 5Live’s Pods and Blogs, a programme we used to work on together.)

04.24.07
by

links for 2007-04-24

04.24.07
by

RIP: Tribune Corp

In the fine tradition of catching up on posts, including Andy Dickinson’s recently, I’m getting back to blogging after a busy week last week that included following the Virginia Tech story, a full schedule of speaking and more work on my paper for XTech.

Tribune Co: Who does their numbers?

As I’ve often said, I grew up 90 miles west of Chicago and I have friends and former colleagues who work (or probably worked, past tense, at this stage) at the Chicago Tribune. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Trib because, in my opinion, they have never really covered the City very well and instead catered to the conservative suburbs. But it’s been sad to watch such a great newspaper lose its way. Now it would seem that the people running the show have lost their minds, or at least their sense of fiscal prudence. The Trib, like so many other newspaper groups (see Knight-Ridder), has been trying to figure a way to sell itself for a while now, but the deal it finally settled on is so insane that it makes the maniacs who fueled the recently bust housing bubble look like a paragon of financial prudence. You don’t bet the farm on what amounts to a gamble that everything will go well, in fact not only well, but better than it’s going right now.

Alan Mutter does the colour by numbers, and the primary colour is red:

To fund the planned buyout, Tribune Co. will raise its debt load by 167% to a formidable $13.4 billion from the present $5 billion, according to analyst Alexia Quadrani of Bear Stearns. The new debt, which will be 9.2 times the company’s operating earnings, will make Tribune the second most leveraged of the 20 largest public media companies, as illustrated in the graph below.

Alan not only lays out the grim terms, but he also puts this in context of other newspaper companies and other media groups. It’s a good post, and as things get tight in the UK market, it’s a good object lesson in how not to survive.

Mark Potts said the Trib is living on a ‘razor’s edge’. The company will be able to pay down its massive debt if, and it’s a big if, they can just keep their cash flow at 2006 levels, $1.4 billion.

There are some real red flags in this story. Not only is revenue declining, but cash flow “fell much more precipitously,” because high-profit-margin pieces of the business such as real estate and auto classifieds are being particularly hard hit. Uh-oh. “Analysts said there was no evidence the company has hit bottom.” Yikes.

It’s sad to see, but I wish the company, and more importantly, its employees, good luck.