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July 28, 2006
Some Problems with NewAssignment.NetPart Two of my Q and A. "Every time I have explained the site to journalists the first objection has been the same. It's a prediction. If people do step forward to fund these New Assignments, they will be interests with an agenda who only want results that support that agenda."Background: see part one, Introducing NewAssignment.Net (July 25) plus the podcast with Craig Newmark and Jay Rosen, this Q and A with USNews.com and an audio interview with Jon Gordon’s Future Tense. In part two, we want to examine some of the problems with NewAssignment.Net, as explained in your first post, introducing the idea. In your mind, where do they start? Let’s start with the mind of the American press. Every time I have explained the site to journalists the first objection has been the same. It’s a prediction. If people do step forward to fund these New Assignments, they will be interests with an agenda who only want results that support that agenda. Or they will be passionate believers in a cause who know the truth and won’t accept an account that differs. By taking their money you’re asking for trouble. To which your answer is? Editors. Good editors. That’s it? What else do I need? Editors are the barrier between donors and journalists, the guarantors of New Assignment’s independence, the guardians of quality. End of system. Not unlike a traditional newsroom. Guidelines at New Assignment will make it clear what is and is not kosher in accepting donations. But mostly it would be common sense. If you take money from someone who knows what the story is—before the reporting—and who only wants validation… expect problems. Scott Rosenberg of Salon had an example from his own operation. Farhad Manjoo checked into complaints that Ohio was stolen in the ‘04 election. The finding: “There is no evidence that Bush won because of voter fraud.” Scott said, “It wasn’t what many of our readers wanted to hear.” Isn’t that likely to happen with NewAssignment? I’m sure it will happen. But how did Salon react? “We can’t publish this, it will anger our base.” No, they had the same solution I have: good editors. Like Scott! Editors of all agendas and genders need cojones. I’m sure Salon didn’t consider for a moment killing Manjoo’s report. For New Assignment to work, donors can’t have an editorial say greater than anyone else’s. They explicitly sign it away as a condition of giving the money. Those who expect outsized influence will be disappointed after one experience. Would they return for more? Besides, management has a policy: no refunds. You said “not unlike a traditional newsroom,” but you’re talking about editors who operate differently. Yours are directly involved in extracting (some would say clawing) money from people who can afford to part with it to get the reporting they want. Editors, you said in part one, have to “cultivate a network of reliable supporters.” It would be awfully hard to say “screw off” to someone who’s funding three of your biggest investigations, wouldn’t it? Sometimes, readers know more than I do. I’m going to let one of them, Daniel Conover , blogger and editor, answer that. “If a traditional city editor suspects that a story about an environmental fine has been hellboxed because the violator is a golfing buddy of the publisher, he really has no way of proving that suspicion. He’s got no way of communicating to the readers about the pressure, so he can’t solicit their support or help. And since there are probably layers of management between him and the publisher, there may be huge penalities for a city editor who tries to get a meaningful answer as to why a legitimate story got spiked. “City editors fight those battles sometimes, but many times they save their ammo. “In a system like what Jay proposes, a NewAssignment editor would be in constant communication with the participants. Rather than being neutered by an opaque hierarchy, this editor would be empowered by the broad base of integrity-seeking NewAssignment participants. How are those participants going to react if the editor reports a pressuring phone call from a wealthy donor? “The trick is, for the editor to draw power from that base, the editor has to stay in constant contact with its interests. Assuming that the larger NewAssignment community will often be in various levels of conflict and competition, we’re talking about some very heady relationships, being acted out in the Great Wide Open.” He’s got it. And when I say “good editors” I mean people who get it. If “Donors balk at an inconvenient truth” is the first warning, what’s the second? The site will only fund projects that bring in the donor clicks. So the perceived availability of funding, not the intrinsic newsworthiness of a story, will come to rule the editorial roost. To which your answer is? Good editors. With reserve funds. That’s exactly why the reserve funds are there. To un-enslave the editors. Still, I think this is something to watch out for. And who will be watching out for it? As Conover said, the broad base of participants. If it grows New Assignment will have an editor-in-chief I suppose, and probably an editorial board. But it should be uncomplicated. Even so, the availability of donor dollars—clicks, if you will—will affect the work. It has to. If nobody gives money for stories about the social problems of Native Americans, you aren’t going to see a lot of New Assignment journalism about the social problems of Native Americans, right? That’s probably right. Unless we fix that somehow. On the other hand if there’s huge user interest, and great knowledge collection, and some of your best correspondents are itching to get involved, but no one donates, the pressure is on the editors to find a way to do that story. What other objections have you heard? Local stories won’t play well at New Assignment because the fundraising part demands a big national market to draw donors from. I’m not sure that’s true. (See Will Bunch and Columbia PhD student, Chris Anderson.) It only takes one donor. Local “swarms” have an advantage in getting started and staying focused. Many other concerns I’ve heard come down to fear of mob behavior or mass judgment. I’m not quite sure how to reply to those. I’ve seen ugly mob behavior online, who hasn’t? I’m afraid of it too. I’m afraid of it when I see it at the train station or the sports arena. I’ve also seen journalists act like mob a few times. My guess is there will be “junk” areas, where you can always raise money but the stories are crap knowledge, they’re utterly lame. Keep going down that road and soon you’ll be doing UFOs. By adding those dollars you are subtracting from your reputation, which ultimately affects your ability to raise money. I don’t think that’s hard to figure out. Good editors will see it in a second. What else do journalists say? It hasn’t been negative at all. Many are quite interested in the possibility that some hybrid, pro-am form will work. I think a good cross section of “traditional” journalists want something like this to be proven viable. Maybe they’re not ready to jump ship. They would like to know there’s another fleet sailing. But their experience also teaches them to be wary. Often times, they doubt that the people formerly known as the audience can be reliable judges or informants. Kevin Many, tech writer for USA Today, said you left out a lot in your first sketch, “like how good stories often come from a talented writer’s or editor’s unique vision, and whether non-fiction stories essentially researched and written by crowds will be as good as a novel or screenplay written by crowds — i.e. not very good.” What do you say to Kevin? An editor skilled in the network style can propose a story idea and argue for it with his crowd of users. It’s persuasion. Even with a user’s veto and the passions of the crowd, editors would find many ways of making sure their own sensibility comes through. I would expect the majority of subscribers would be to editors’ feeds. If they were regular visitors to NewAssignment.Net, they would visit their favorite editors’ blogs, where there is always something going on. Think blogger with a war chest and a loyal readership that knows a lot stuff. They’re networked together in the way the site works. They read the news together and react to what’s missing. Okay. Like what kind of blogger? One of my favorite independent bloggers is Susie Madrak. (I haven’t asked her about any of this, but she likes NewAssignment.) She has a site called Suburban Guerilla. It’s linking and thinking on Left politics and culture with equal parts anger, beauty and wit. A New Assignment editor might be someone like Susie. Except that it’s Suburban Guerilla with a war chest: Funds to spend on checking into stuff. She’s got a user friendly site that can handle big feats of collaboration. She’s got her network of correspondents who kick butt, get paid, and love what they do. She’s got a smart mob of users. She herself is being paid as an editor at NewAssignment.Net. It’s her party and every day she’s ready to journalize with you. Yes, I’m rhapsodizing. Point is there’s no way Susie Madrak checks her vision or sensibility at the door, if she becomes a New Assignment editor. It’s the opposite, Kevin. Her unique angle on the world expands. What about the covert interest group or disciplined gang of disruptors who feed you bad information during the assignment stage? I don’t know. We’ll have to figure that out. But it brings up a good point. Need a reputation system for users as suppliers of fact. If who’s a reliable seller? can be solved at E-bay—more or less—then who’s a reliable source of information can be solved at New Assignment. The history of rating systems on the Web will tell us something there. When is the first live test? I don’t know that, either. But it won’t be this summer. We need to get more in place before we can do that. Like set up a temporary page at NewAssignment.Net. What makes you think it can work? You mean the live test? No, I mean the whole thing: New Assignment.Net-— open sourcing the assignments, funding it the way you fund it, the editors and their areas, the users and their role. Obviously you think it can work. Why? Part of it is the example now being set by liberal journalist and blogger Josh Marshall. His Talking Points Memo blog is invaluable if you follow national politics; he’s widely read on Capital Hill. During the 2004 campaign he raised money for a trip to New Hampshire to hear and question the candidates. He told readers why he wanted to go, what he thought he could accomplish. The essential transaction I’m counting on is right there. Users fund an act of journalism because they have confidence—a lot-—in who’s doing it and why; the chances of getting something really good back seem pretty good. Marshall recently raised money from his contributors to fund two investigative reporters, Paul Kiel and Justin Rood, who run a new site, TPMmuckraker.com, linked to Talking Points Memo and TPM Café, Marshall’s forum site. He had to explain why he wanted to do more investigations. Enough users agreed with his pitch. More than 2,000 came forward to hire these two guys, who investigate things that Marshall and his crew at TMP Café are buzzing about. (See this post and that one.) Isn’t that vulnerable to the objection that there’s only one Josh Marshall? Maybe what works is him, Josh. Maybe. He’s an unusually talented guy who is open to users. But transpose Josh over to New Assignment. TPMmuckrucker is like an editor’s area of influence. Josh Marshall is behaving like a NewAsssignment-style editor, proposing to readers of his blog, who trust in his editorial judgment and political savvy, that they donate to works of investigative journalism—- his brand of left liberal muckraking and commentary on national politics. Potential donors read Josh; they know what Talking Points Memo is about. They know what kind of investigations he does. He gives the project a price tag, creates a description, undertakes a campaign with a deadline, updating supporters on how much has been gotten. All as anticipated in New Assignment. That’s pretty close, but yet several steps away from what I propose. What kind of things does he do that you would call “collaborative?” I wrote about one of his more inspired gambits: His attempt to get publicly recorded a voice vote the Republicans took behind closed doors to change their ethics rule in anticipation that Tom Delay could one day be indicted. In a very clever (and transparent) way, Marshall got TPM users to help him get lots of House Republicans on the record about the vote, a vote which they later regreted. To me it was a great work of collaborating with users, and yet only partially successful. Okay, so Marshall’s a blogging editor who raises money. I’m having more trouble imagining how reporting in the networked style works. Second to Chris Allbritton in the DNA of NewAssignment is Doug McGill, former business reporter for the New York Times. He moved back to his home state, Minnesota, and set up his own site, the McGill Report. In 2003 he uncovered a genocide in Ethiopia and told the world. It was him and a social network of immigrants using the Net and cell phones. They established that something genocidal happened half a world away. (His new project is a citizen’s journalism manual. See also his essay for PressThink, Our Code is Falling to Pieces.) Here’s what I wrote in PressThink, Feb. 18, 2005. “It started, according to the McGill Report, when ‘hundreds of Anuak refugees living in Minnesota reported receiving frantic telephone calls from their relatives living in Gambella state in Ethiopia.’ A local story. McGill heard about it. He interviewed the relatives of survivors who had witnessed the killings. They became his eyes and ears on the ground in Ethiopia. He became their link to the Internet, and to the possibility of world attention.” I hope that makes it a little more vivid. After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… I’m in San Francisco this week (Aug 1-6) attending the AEJMC convention. Susie Madrak: “Apparently Jay was reading my mind.” Scott Rosenberg with a crucial observation about New Assignment editors: Note that in this new world being a “good editor” involves some significantly greater political leadership, by which I don’t mean “involvement in parties and elections” but the more generic, abstract kind of politics — the mustering and deployment of power through the creation of consensus among competing interests and diverse people. “The editor’s job at New Assignment is going to be as much about managing online community as about assigning stories, editing copy and mentoring reporters,” Scott writes. “That’s a demanding, but certainly not impossible, pile of responsibilities.” What’s different about NewAssignment.Net, to me, is that it is public-spirited from the start. It’s an obvious point, I suppose, but worth highlighting if only to once again remind ourselves that the very idea of journalism as a public service is what’s most in danger today. That’s what we could lose completely, and NewAssignnment.Net is a project designed to ensure that this idea flourishes in the new forms of cyber-journalism that are being created – and just as quickly being eyed for lunch by commercial forces. His concerns are worth highlighting:
Will Femia at MSNBC’s blog column, Clicked: If you were skeptical about Jay Rosen’s new participatory journalism project, some of your criticisms are likely addressed here. The part I must have missed somewhere along the way is why the only money at play has to come from donors. The site doesn’t even exist yet and it’s already got a good buzz around it. Surely someone can get some ad dollars moving to pay for those stories that don’t motivate donors. If the editors are protecting the content from the corrupting influence of donors, why not let them also protect the content from the corrupting influence of advertisers? Mark Glaser takes a look at New Assignment for his Media Shift blog at PBS.org. The one possible weakness in this idea is the reliance on paid editors. If NewAssignment wants to capture the “wisdom of crowds,” it will have to tread lightly on the issue of paid vs. free contributors. Rosen would do well to follow the recent brouhaha over Netscape paying social bookmarkers from Digg and Reddit. Can a two-tier method of compensation work, with editors being paid and contributors donating time and money to help? Perhaps. See Glaser’s able summary, Should Community-Edited News Sites Pay Top Editors? Jason Calacanis of Netscape and AOL explains why he wants to pay the top users on the major social news and bookmarking sites: “Talent wins, and talent needs to get paid. I love paying talented people so they can sleep well at night doing what they love. That’s my biggest joy in business: gettin’ people paid.” Over at Rhetorica, Andrew Cline has some concerns about part two: “The model he’s proposing leaves journalists, including those good editors, somewhat at the mercy of the very thing that challenges them ethically when they practice journalism for commercial institutions—money.” Glaser asked me why I decided to publish these questions and answers “before they had even hatched a placeholder website for New Assignment.” My answer: I borrowed the idea for doing it this way from [open source software advocate] Eric Raymond’s Release Early, Release Often. I’m aware that this approach has sometimes worked and sometimes flopped in the tech industry. It got oversold as a method there, I’m told. But I thought it might work well here because, frankly, NewAssignment isn’t in good enough shape to work yet. And if there’s no site to look at readers have to conjure it up. There are certain advantages to that. CJR Daily’s Gal Beckerman: “Let’s give it a whirl.” Lots of doubts and replies in the comments at Buzzmachine. Mark Hamilton reflects on part one: “The elegance of Jay’s proposal is in bringing together ideas from a number of sources and fitting them together into a solid, workable whole.” NewsAssignment.net is not the model for remaking journalism, although it stands to become a significant part of that new mediascape without the need to become The New York Times of “new media.” It also stands to become significant in showing that a mixed model (distributed journalism, networked journalism, whatever you want to call it) makes sense, works and delivers quality journalism. It stands to become significant as that success is ripped, mixed and burned by others, including mainstream media, and extended to areas of journalism other than unreported or underreported stories. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News responds at his blog Attytood: Let’s face it, the current system of investigative reporting has broken down. Too many news organizations have make the same bizarre decision to slash in-depth, long-term reporting first, while keeping coverage of “headline news” that readers can get from six other sources. Paid journalists increasingly must focus on the big picture — U.S. policy in Iraq, for example — whereas the best investigative work is the “micro,” like who are the small contractors getting fat on corruption because of U.S. policy in Iraq. Jon Gordon of American Public Media (the national production and distribution arm of Minnesota Public Radio) did a well-produced audio interview with me about New Assignment. I am on the advisory board for their Center for Innovation in Journalism (announcement). Even for bloggers who use their own names, all the compulsive linking—to a degree, linking is the new logrolling—is a way never to say anything provocative without nervously assuring the reader that someone else said it first. Maybe the blogosphere is in such danger of slipping into the status quo because a lot of bloggers have the mainstream editors’ very same social reflexes, but in reverse. See if you can figure it out. Here’s another one. Can’t make sense of what he’s saying. Can you?
Posted by Jay Rosen at July 28, 2006 3:22 PM
Comments
Practical question: How do you get enough in the kitty to pay for the health insurance of the editors? Plus regular salary/draw, 401K, paid vacation days and all the other stuff that goed along with even a modest fulltime job. Or are you envisioning this as a freelance gig? Which would be fine, but would significantly limit the pool of potential editors/producers...? Posted by: Jeffrey Weiss at July 28, 2006 5:38 PM | Permalink Right now my plan is to raise the money to pay salary and benefits to the editors and hope they earn back their weight in new funds. Of course what's going to be spell success is not that but the journalism. One possibility would be to tax each story funded so they pay for the editor's salaries. I'm not sure if that's wise or not. It may be my imagination, but it's beginning to seem a little left-of-center as far as politics go. Will there be room for opposing points of view? Posted by: Trudy W. Schuett at July 28, 2006 5:52 PM | Permalink My examples are mostly left of center. Michael Yon is not. NewAssignment's methods are not, except in so far as we have evidence that comments and community participation play a much larger role in the Left blogosphere than they do on the Right. Well, I don't think I can agree there. I'd like to see what evidence you have, since most of the rightwing bloggers I know generally have a robust community of comments and discussion. I really think it would be a mistake to discount any group. After all, isn't that what mainstream media is all about, and the thing we're trying to change? Posted by: Trudy W. Schuett at July 29, 2006 7:38 AM | Permalink I don't think you read my reply very carefully. In any case we agree that it would be a mistake to discount any group. Jay Rosen: "... except in so far as we have evidence that comments and community participation play a much larger role in the Left blogosphere than they do on the Right." What do you consider a community and how will that kind of community vision impact who particpates and doesn't on New Assignment? The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog 84% of conservative blogs link to at least one other blog, and 82% receive a link. In contrast, 74% of liberal blogs link to another blog, while only 67% are linked to by another blog. So overall, we see a slightly higher tendency for conservative blogs to link. Liberal blogs linked to 13.6 blogs on average, while conservative blogs linked to an average of 15.1, and this difference is almost entirely due to the higher proportion of liberal blogs with no links at all.Kevin Drum: The primary finding of the study (or at least the finding I think is the most interesting) is that conservative blogs have a stronger sense of community than liberal blogs — a quality that I often wish liberals could emulate.How will New Assignment be similar, or different, from Amazon's Mechanical Turk? Is there a way to contribute besides writing stories and $? For example, collecting background research via links? A recent exchange as an analogy: Jay Rosen: Donald Rumsfeld is clearly the Administration official in charge of the Iraq War; he has operational authority and Bush has executive authority. Who is in charge of the war on terror? Who has operational authority? I have no idea. Do you know? One suspects it is Cheney. Was it ever announced? Tim Schmoyer: National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism, New Plans Foresee Fighting Terrorism Beyond War Zones Posted by: Tim Schmoyer at July 29, 2006 2:27 PM | Permalink Will there be a separate post in which you solicit story ideas? Batting around an assortment of real-life scenarios might make for some good 'dry run' tests and tunings. A dissection: the standard objection, 1. Is there a large enough market of reader/funders who want journalism and not PR? Re the financial conflict-of-interest objection - > "Editors. Good editors... are the barrier between donors and journalists, the guarantors of New Assignment’s independence, the guardians of quality. End of system." except it does sound like the financial pressures will bear more directly on the editor than they would in a traditional newsroom - so it's not like you're removing the pressure, by "removing" the 'publisher' layer that previously lay between money and editor. What can we learn/adopt from other fields in which the 'producer' experiences financial pressure to shape the 'product' in ways that don't serve the original intent? Beyond the grassroots funding and involvement, what's special about NewAssignment is that we're designing it for journalism, not for profit (or for pandering). You might want to pull in more people with passion for journalism who have had the 'hard knocks' experience - and you have a supreme advantage in doing this, in a milieu where geography no longer matters. (Would someone like former Point Reyes Light owner Dave Mitchell have useful insight into (or involvement in) this project?) Posted by: Anna Haynes at July 29, 2006 7:58 PM | Permalink I give NewAssignment.Net a standing O for its audacity and for Jay’s courage in imagining and putting the idea out there. Props to Craig Newmark, too. I see NewAssignment.Net as standing in distinction to many instances where bloggers-who-call themselves-journalists are now beginning to solve the "who will pay?" question. Most of these are merging indistinguishably into a form of media that is technologically different, while in content and ethics virtually identical, to the mainstream media they once crowed they would soon conquer. This afternoon for instance I watched a 20-year-old named Brian Stelter interviewed on C-SPAN about his TVNewser.com blog, now a must-read in the television news industry. Stelter is paid a salary by When the C-SPAN guy asked Stelter where he thought blogging was headed, he answered “It’s going to become more and more like the mainstream.” I think he’s right. What’s different about NewAssignment.Net, to me, is that it is public-spirited from the start. It’s an obvious point, I suppose, but worth highlighting if only to once again remind ourselves that the very idea of journalism as a public service is what's most in danger today. That’s what we could lose completely, and NewAssignnment.Net is a project designed to ensure that this idea flourishes in the new forms of cyber-journalism that are being created – and just as quickly being eyed for lunch by commercial forces -- as we speak. NewAssignment.Net reminds us that journalism needs to stay connected to good ideas that serve society; that those ideas are obviously most likely to bubble up from society; and it is bold in proposing that we should test to see whether society will pay for journalism that it declares it wants. Some precedents suggest that funding streams could develop. Here in Minnesota, where I live, the listener-funded Minnesota Public Radio has built the second-highest radio audience in the country after NPR. Though they struggle, outfits like the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting raise funds from private entities, sometimes to pay for specific stories, which entities offer their funds for no other reason than they believe such stories must be told. The MPR example suggests, perhaps, that despite NewAssignment.Net’s potentially global reach, it may actually find funding on a regional basis, i.e. in parts of the country where audiences have been developed over many years so that they value and understand public service news, appreciate the low-key and serious tone of such news, and are accustomed to paying for it. 1. Can a mob be smart? Possibly this is not just a semantic quibble. History is rife with brilliant people who turned horribly, dangerously stupid when they gathered in groups of three or more. From time to time, entire countries filled with good people go insane, as per, say, in China during the Cultural Revolution, or in Japan during World War II. Some part of me fears such a mob on the Internet. Naturally I want large networks of smart people to gather for good in cyberspace. But part of me expects and fears the rise of cyber-mobs, too. 2. The plan as presently outlined looks possibly vulnerable to commercial co-optation, to me. What is to prevent a drug company, such as the one that makes the hypothetical Zorflexe, from organizing paid user groups of the drug to approach NewAssignment.Net incognito, as citizens, who would shape their story suggestions in such a way that Zorflexe would come out smelling like a rose – or Zorflexe competitors to look like rats? I know good editors make a good firewall, but cash makes a good battering ram. Of course, it’s rarely as obvious as that. Most consumer products are mild poisons (not strong ones like tobacco or heroin or meth), and therefore are open to “on the one hand, on the other hand” newsroom discussions about story assignments. These types of discussions make it easy for assignments to be made based on “lesser evil” decisions, especially when serious cash beckons, which in turns puts the whole enterprise back on the slippery moral slope. Again, good editors are a solid individual moral check. Where’s the institutional check? 3. An allied concern is whether NewAssignment.Net will have the institutional heft to back up investigative reporters when the shit hits the fan. Having the law on your side is never good enough when that happens – only expensive lawyers will do. Besides defense lawyers, where will the money come from to pay lawyers to vet stories ahead of publication? This is one area where I genuinely fear the weakening of institutional journalism. Courageous reporters will always exist, but society owes them, and itself, more protection than even today’s weakening newspapers, and already spineless and vacuous television, can provide. Can NewAssignment.Net, even when it becomes successful, develop not only that kind of heft, but influence society in such a way that public consciousness finally recognizes that journalists too rush into burning superstructures and need protection? Just some ideas, if not for the boardroom, then for the coffeeshops where NewAssignment.Net will take further substance and shape. Posted by: Doug McGill at July 30, 2006 1:13 AM | Permalink Eureka! I have found it. The solution to the problem of crusading donors. You can all thank me later. If the problem is that donors might be motivated by personal agendas, and that that motivation could produce a bias in reporting or in the selection process, then why not just take the donors out of editorial entirely? The community at large could participate in both the collaborative development of stories and their ranking on the editorial docket. But the donors would be modelled after those in community theater. They fund the enterprise because they believe in it and because it enhances their social environment. They do not get to select the plays, the authors, the directors, the cast, etc. An Executive Director with an independent board would serve those functions. The twist for NewAssignment is that the ED and the board (of editors) would also rely on the community's input in their decision making. If the community is large enough, it would be difficult for special interests to corrupt it. This would preserve the wisdom of the crowd and prevent the tyranny of the sugar daddies. (btw, I have already copyrighted "Tyranny of the Sugar Daddies," so I better not see any of youse guys using it ;-) I'm sure this solution creates new problems I haven't thought of, but I'm also sure y'all will bring it to my attention. Posted by: Mark Howard @ News Corpse at July 30, 2006 4:09 AM | Permalink I disagree with the idea that the "very thing that challenges them [journalists] ethically when they practice journalism for commercial institutions — [is] money.” (quote from Andrew Cline above.) What often challenges journalists ethically is the same thing that routinely challenges everyone who writes, speaks, and influences others... self-interest. Sometimes money is the overriding self interest but often I see ego. If it serves my ego (self interest) to beleive I'm right, I only notice evidence that supports my opinion. I talk to authorities that confirm what I believe, I quote "experts" that add weight, I use anecdotes that confirm, I use rhetorical tricks, all to shield my ego (self interest) from any disconfirming evidence. And then to balance things (as if there are only two sides necessary to find the truth) I may quote dissenters but if I do I'm careful to choose a source that's easily dismissed as a nut or a stooge. That's what I see as real ethical challenge... Posted by: laurence haughton at July 30, 2006 1:14 PM | Permalink Rather than "take the donors out of editorial entirely", why not be up-front about who sponsored the article? The idea that "bias" can be completely eliminated from news/journalism is false. Why not admit who is financing your journalism and your personal bias? Would it really kill journalists and journalism, both mainstream and non-mainstream to admit the forces that play into their "reports"? Posted by: kilgore trout at July 30, 2006 4:03 PM | Permalink My current thinking is in line with that: donors who might have an interest at stake in a story would be required to have their names and affiliations made public so anyone can judge. I got out of journalism years ago, mostly because the competing financial interests of the owners dictated that we not cover certain things, or not cover them well. There was no longer a sense of mission or civic responsiblity, and I figured if I was going to be a corporate whore, I'd rather be upfront with it. The idea of directly-funded journalism really appeals to me, though. The details aren't all that impossible; they can be worked out. The idea is the important thing. Why you pay good editors: Because they're going to drive the flavor of the thing. Nothing worse than a good story ruined with really bad writing. (And besides, they're also trained to avoid libel. You'd leave that in the hands of volunteers?) As to those of you complaining about Jay's focus on left-wing blogs: Oh, please. Can we cut the disingenuous crap? The problem with RIGHT wing blogs is simple - they make shit up. They lie, they distort, they fabricate on a fairly regular basis. (See Josh Marshall's all-too-recent comments on what Glenn Reynolds just wrote about him.) Left-wing blogs much more consistently adhere to the basic concepts of ethical journalism, so they simply don't have as far to travel. And when they make mistakes, they correct them in a timely and thorough manner. Now, which side do you suppose is a better investment for the reader? Posted by: Susie Madrak at July 30, 2006 6:25 PM | Permalink "Is there a large enough market of reader/funders who want journalism and not PR?" -- Anna Haynes Bingo! If the thing ends up with editors who filter each proposition through a political screen, it's just another opinion journal. Nothing wrong with opinion journals, online or off -- but we already have enough of them to populate a small city. I think Jay is talking about something else -- and something a lot more ambitious. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at July 30, 2006 7:57 PM | Permalink "He said, she said" journalism is exactly the thing readers have resoundingly rejected. Or haven't you noticed, Steve? I assume you meant "partisan" screen, not political. Because everything is politics, and just because an editor is partisan doesn't mean that's how he or she would direct coverage. I daresay an editor's partisan slant brings a certain passion to the table, but as long as the editor is impeccable in his or her approach to a topic, who cares? When you're talking about an online community, any factual sloppiness will be slammed by the readers. Posted by: Susie Madrak at July 30, 2006 9:15 PM | Permalink Well...this and this are what I don't want. Stephen Colbert--bless 'em--called it "facts unfiltered by rational argument." And that too is what I don't want. Jay, can you expound? I'm not sure what you mean. Posted by: Susie Madrak at July 30, 2006 10:19 PM | Permalink I really like the whole idea of NewAssignment.Net, Jay, I truly do. I just wish that "one of your favorite independent bloggers,” Susie Madrak, would stop scaring away both potential financial backers and potential readers and supporters with comments like these and these: “As to those of you complaining about Jay's focus on left-wing blogs: Oh, please. Can we cut the disingenuous crap? The problem with RIGHT wing blogs is simple - they make shit up. They lie, they distort, they fabricate on a fairly regular basis. (See Josh Marshall's all-too-recent comments on what Glenn Reynolds just wrote about him.) Left-wing blogs much more consistently adhere to the basic concepts of ethical journalism, so they simply don't have as far to travel. And when they make mistakes, they correct them in a timely and thorough manner.” "I daresay an editor's partisan slant brings a certain passion to the table, but as long as the editor is impeccable in his or her approach to a topic, who cares? When you're talking about an online community, any factual sloppiness will be slammed by the readers." Talk about killing a good idea before it even gets off the ground. Good Grief. Posted by: Kristen at July 30, 2006 11:27 PM | Permalink Susie: The two articles I pointed to, Partisan Divide on Iraq Exceeds Split on Vietnam and How Common Ground of 9/11 Gave Way to Partisan Split are classics of politically neutered, banalized he said, she said, journalism. Neither is able to describe what actually happened in this country after 2000. I am not interested in that kind of journalism. I think it has failed. David Broder, Dan Balz, Jim Rutenberg and Robin Toner in this case failed. New Assignment would fail if it went about things in that way. That's what I meant. New Assignment could have conservative leaning editors and liberal leaning editors, as long as they were independent-minded and free to say what they thought, and as long as the site has one set of standards for factuality, evidence, fairness, rigor-- intellectual honesty. Colbert makes fun of television news people who purport to present facts unfiltered by rational argument. I agree with him. Kilgore: Would it really kill journalists and journalism, both mainstream and non-mainstream to admit the forces that play into their "reports"? And Jay: donors who might have an interest at stake in a story would be required to have their names and affiliations made public... First of all, my thoughts on funding NewAssignment as an enterprise, as opposed to funding individual stories, does not preclude disclosure of the donors. The thing is, I don't think I've seen a definitive argument that persuades me that individually funded stories with disclosure is necessarily superior. And what about potential donors who have good reasons to prefer anonymity that have nothing to do with bias? And what about this... In this example, the disclosure was useful to me, but harmful to the enterprise. While it is certainly preferable to know the identity of a crusading donor who is able to manipulate a story, it would be even better if no such manipulation was possible. That's the advantage of enterprise funding. The donors, who can still be identified, are not calling the editorial shots. Posted by: Mark Howard @ News Corpse at July 31, 2006 2:24 AM | Permalink Jay Rosen: "Point is there’s no way Susie Madrak checks her vision or sensibility at the door, if she becomes a New Assignment editor. It’s the opposite, Kevin. Her unique angle on the world expands." Susie Madrak: "As to those of you complaining about Jay's focus on left-wing blogs: Oh, please. Can we cut the disingenuous crap? The problem with RIGHT wing blogs is simple - they make shit up. They lie, they distort, they fabricate on a fairly regular basis. (See Josh Marshall's all-too-recent comments on what Glenn Reynolds just wrote about him.) Left-wing blogs much more consistently adhere to the basic concepts of ethical journalism, so they simply don't have as far to travel. And when they make mistakes, they correct them in a timely and thorough manner." NewAssignment.net, while still vaporware, just took a credibility hit. That's a part of transparency. Now I want to know how Susie's "unique angle on the world expands" as a potential editor at NewAssignment.net. Posted by: Tim Schmoyer at July 31, 2006 5:27 AM | Permalink Jay, that's what I hoped you meant. Because those stories made me break out in hives, and David Broder is the ultimate example of Beltway Bobblehead. Tim, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by quoting my remarks. Either you don't read many right-wing blogs, or you're reacting to my statement on an emotional, tribal basis (which would make it your problem, not mine). Kristen, I'm fundraising on my blog right now. In my comments section, one reader writes: "I'm sending you $50 even though I don't agree with what you wrote about Israel." Another reader writes: "Well, I sent you $50, because I do agree with what you wrote about Israel." In other words, readers consistently support my work financially - not because they agree with me, but because I have integrity - and thus, credibility. I was a newspaper editor for 15 years. I don't check my ethics at the door simply because I have an admitted partisan bias. As John Lennon once said about Yoko Ono, I'm not running for Miss America. People like what I do because they value my sensibilities. While passion without integrity (factual and otherwise) does not a journalist make, journalism is not worthy of the name without it. Posted by: Susie Madrak at July 31, 2006 6:12 AM | Permalink And by the way, I spent ten years in sales and marketing after I left journalism. You think I'd scare away donors? Hah. Get together a room of them, and just watch me collect the checks. Posted by: Susie Madrak at July 31, 2006 6:21 AM | Permalink Susie Madrak: "Tim, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by quoting my remarks. Either you don't read many right-wing blogs, or you're reacting to my statement on an emotional, tribal basis (which would make it your problem, not mine)." Susie, my response to your remarks is not based on emotionalism, tribalism or a Left/Right blog-illiteracy. It's a query about your ability to complexify your vision or sensibility if you become an editor at NewAssignment. Posted by: Tim Schmoyer at July 31, 2006 6:41 AM | Permalink A potential footnote from a reader for NewAssignment's journalistic goal (in the form of a link): Towards more useful journalism Posted by: Tim Schmoyer at July 31, 2006 6:57 AM | Permalink I repeat: New Assignment could have conservative leaning editors and liberal leaning editors, and editors who lean other ways, as long as they were independent-minded and free to say what they thought, and as long as the site has only one set of standards for factuality, evidence, fairness, rigor-- intellectual honesty, in other words. Tim. It appears there are no worthy reasons for disagreeing with Susy. I guess this is what you'd call disclosure, and very useful it is. If only more journos were so honest. Mark. WRT your example of Clinton and Scaiffe et al. In your hypothetical, is the story true or false? Without knowing that, the point is vague. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at July 31, 2006 9:43 AM | Permalink Jay. WRT Seigel's cut you have there, I think he's got it wrong. The "nervous" and "compulsive" linking is, IMO, a matter of not wanting to look as if you're stealing somebody else's good idea. Stealing good ideas and pretending they're yours is not cool. It's not a matter, as the cut seems to imply, of trying to deflect blame for something provocative. It has gotten to the point that it seems as if it's an appeal to authority, rather than an acknowledgment. Example: Orwell's famous dictum that, effectively, the pacifist favors the fascist. Anybody with an average IQ would come to the same conclusion after about fourteen seconds' thought--if he were driving in a blizzard. Sitting still, it would take less time. Anyway, my sense is the linking is an attempt at good manners. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at July 31, 2006 10:05 AM | Permalink I always thought an editor's job was to de-complexify complex subjects. Not "dumb down," but to embed the concepts in the reader's mind by pointing out concrete, accessible examples, and build the narrative in the same way you'd make a mosaic. Posted by: Susie from Philly at July 31, 2006 10:17 AM | Permalink Oh, I see. When Richard disagrees with someone, it's intellectual discourse. When I attempt to clarify what I believe to be erroneous characterizations of my work, I'm actually saying I'm always right and everyone else is always wrong. And you wonder why so many people stopped reading newspapers. Posted by: Susie from Philly at July 31, 2006 10:21 AM | Permalink Tim's link points to a critique of a Doug McGill PressThink essay about objectivity and moving past "he said/she said" reporting. I think most readers here would agree with its principles, just as most readers understand the desire for value-added journalism that gives us the straight skinny. One of the issues, then, is how we determine and assign trust. "He said/she said" assumes that trust will always be limited. Value-added journalism has a similar assumption, but moves the ball by putting "he said/she said" in a larger factual context. In both cases, trust and credibility are framed in the construction of each individual story, rather than in the systems that produced them. If you think about it, that's a pretty inefficient way of building trust and credibility. Today's press still operates on an impossible standard of objectivity (objectivity as an almost meditative state of being, which -- even if achieved -- cannot be tested by outside observers), and it needs to move toward the scientific concept of objectivity (not a state of mind, but an agreed-upon, transparent process). If the goal of the press is to communicate relevant information quickly, then part of that goal should include giving the receiver of that communication reason to trust it. I suspect that some part of our press future is going to include systematic, transparent processes, simply because the scale of information flow demands a better way of making judgments about credibility. Does NewAssignment focus on this issue? I don't see that it does -- or that it needs to. Not today. To use an automotive analogy, if NewAssignment were an experimental engine, you'd still have to surround it with more or less standard components to take it out on a road test. That doesn't mean that you'd want to stick with the standard transmission forever -- just that you don't want to wait around for the development of a new and better transmission before you put your new engine to the test. Jay's description tells us that NewAssignment will start with more transparency and better trust feedback than traditional press has today, but NewAssignment is not really an experiment in objectivity or credibility. So yes, it will have to contend with the same questions that other media do. Over time, it's likely that this experience could lead to better ways of addressing trust -- maybe as part of NewAssignment, maybe as spin-offs from the project. Posted by: Daniel Conover at July 31, 2006 10:22 AM | Permalink "it [the press] needs to move toward the scientific concept of objectivity (not a state of mind, but an agreed-upon, transparent process)" I like that as much as Jay's definition of the "competetent paraphrase." Good thinking Daniel! Posted by: laurence haughton at July 31, 2006 11:54 AM | Permalink Just got to San Francisco and I see that the New Yorker's press columnist, Nick Lemann (also dean of the Columbia Journalism School) wrote about New Assignment within the larger frame of "journalism without journalists"-- that is, citizens media. Jeff Jarvis (who is taken to task) has a reply, as does Mitch Ratcliffe. I'd be interested in any views or reactions. Truly appropriate to choose the Manjoo article as an example. The problem with that article was that it contained a number of errors, which I documented in a five part series. What was Salon's reaction? They prominently featured the abbreviated comment I posted on their site, scissoring it to merge bits of two separate paragraphs to make it seem to say the opposite of what it actually said. Clearer proof that Salon is in desperate need of actual editors could not be found. As for the idea of N.A.N, Jay, it's been used in other fields. It will work, but it has problems. If you want to know what they are, talk to your colleagues in the physical sciences about the joys and sorrows of contract research. There's also the issue of capturing and maximizing the value of the intellectual property. While the latter may sound esoteric to an academic, it's essential to any enterprise. Even academia itself exists because students are able to invest time and money to (theoretically) emerge with a degree providing a higher salary than a high school grad would get. As I am fond of pointing out to journalists, the reason that people buy newspapers is that they have economic value. The decline in journalistic standards explains why people are ceasing to buy them. Since the news that is being published is as cooked as the Iraq intelligence-- the coverage of the Mexican election is shameful and mendacious-- it is incapable of predicting the future. To take a simple example of how predictive capacity can serve as the measure of news value, lies are of no value or even of negative value to an investor. How does one add economic value? High distribution combined with advertising, subscriber fees or royalties. Jay, Unfortunately, this frame also obscures anything we could learn about weblogs whose attention sometimes falls on topics also covered by traditional media organizations. The "citizen journalism" frame sets up all blogs to simply be seen as bad newspapers -- bad because they're run by people who care about issues, bad because they're not consistent enough, bad because they don't make enough money and therefore aren't professional, bad because they think things are funny, engage in shameless catblogging, and devote space to a wide variety of items that simply aren't news. Because the frame of "are blogs journalism/are bloggers journalists" is so limiting, articles on the topic tend to be pretty repetitive. Mr. Lemann's writing is excellent, but the article reads like a replay of Tom Grubisch's OJR article of almost a year ago on the same topic. But to look at what I like to call placeblogs as bad newspapers is a bit like looking at a cat and saying it's a lousy dog because it doesn't fetch. Placeblogs are about the lived experience of a place. Placeblogs are an act of sustained group attention to a place in all its variety. Sometimes the community around a placeblog will find its attention falls on a topic that is suitable for newspaper coverage (example), but often it doesn't. In cases where a local community is experiencing a crisis or significant event, sometimes placeblogs can provide coverage that a newspaper can't, simply because of their 24/7 operation and infinite free pixels. It's frustrating, too, that Americans tend to want to live where there isn't any "news." As I often say to journalists who ask me whether there's "enough to cover" in Watertown, if there was a lot of news in Watertown I'd have to move. Seeing placeblogs as lousy newspapers doesn't explain why many of them are so popular. If they're not as good as the local newspaper, why are they getting an audience? Because there's a lot of things that neighbors want to talk about that will never show up in a newspaper. Let me say here that unlike many people who talk about citizen journalism, I have very few quibbles with the news judgement of the local or regional papers that are distributed in Watertown, the community that I run a placeblog about. Given the preciousness of the column inches that are paid for by advertising dollars, I think that the editors are probably making precisely the right decisions most of the time. But those column inches are shrinking all the time, to the point where the appetite for local content (not just news) now exceeds what the newspaper is able to supply based on advertising revenue. Combine that situation with free or low-cost tools to distribute information on the web, and bingo, you've got placeblogs everywhere. Go visit Didjuneau.com for Juneau, Alaska; or Annarborisoverrated.com. You could take fifteen seconds and say, wow, what a lousy newspaper, and click the Back button, or you could see that they have special access to the one thing that it's hard for a local newspaper to get at: the fact that most cities and towns have a Daily Show Moment every hour, on the hour. Because local newspapers are -- rightly -- sources of authority, if they make fun, they look like a bully, or print something just for fun, they look frivolous and unprofessional.
Lemann's article cites both placeblogs and blogs that focus on national partisan politics. This is appropriate for an article in a magazine that has a national audience, but I don't think I need to point out that they're radically different in both operation and motivation. My comments here are, of course, about placeblogs. Perhaps someone else can paint in the part about pol-blogs. Secondly, I'm not sure I really understand the passion that journalists have for the topic of weblogs. Weblogs aren't a threat to journalism and won't save journalism, and most stories about them read, to me, like stories about the sense of doom felt by people working at traditional media organizations. Are blogs simply a convenient jumping off point to talk about something that feels really urgent to them? I agree it's an important topic, but my head aches from being used as a springboard too many times. I'm gonna need a chiropractor at this rate. Posted by: Lisa Williams at August 1, 2006 3:42 AM | Permalink I agree that the frame of "are blogs journalism/are bloggers journalists" is extremely limiting, has gotten repetitive, and should have been transcended a while ago. It serves some sort of purpose for the press, however. I agree that editors are the key to this. They do everything from stand between funders and journalists, and also sift through the wisdom of the mob, so to speak. But that means these are special people. It may also mean that the "generalist" editor needs help from specialists. I think some kind of content knowledge for editors is important when the story veers into areas requiring expertise: science, medicine, economics, even education. PS. Jay -- sorry if that part reads like it's aimed at you -- it's actually a response to Nick Lemann's article. Of course, is your average New Yorker reader as jaded as we are with the whole blogs vs journalism thing? Maybe it's fresh to them ;) Posted by: Lisa Williams at August 1, 2006 12:58 PM | Permalink It's worth remembering, every now and then, that the rest of the world is still catching up. I had a meeting with a marketing guy last week, and his image for a blogging campaign featured twentysomethings laughing about something they were looking at on a cellular phone... which, you know, isn't EXACTLY the blogging experience... and when I gave him the Blogging 101 talk, he looked at an example and said, quite innocently, "So this is where you put your rant?" People are forever shocked to find out that the reality of blogging just doesn't look like the vague, mass-media-framed picture they've developed in their heads. So long as the mass media insists on "discovering" blogs and citizen media concepts every three months, we'll just have to keep correcting the picture. Posted by: Daniel Conover at August 1, 2006 4:01 PM | Permalink Restated as Conover's Law: People are forever shocked to find out that the reality of [fill in the blank] just doesn't look like the vague, mass-media-framed picture they've developed in their heads. So long as the mass media insists on "discovering" [fill in the blank] concepts every three months, we'll just have to keep correcting the picture. Posted by: Tim Schmoyer at August 1, 2006 5:27 PM | Permalink re: Lemann Dittos to Lisa. Least interesting Lemann sentence: "To live up to its billing, Internet journalism has to meet high standards both conceptually and practically: the medium has to be revolutionary, and the journalism has to be good." Most interesting Lemann sentence: "Each side in what Knights understands, properly, as the media front in a merciless political struggle between Whigs and Tories soon began accusing the other of trafficking in lies, distortions, conspiracy theories, and special pleading, and presenting itself as the avatar of the public interest, civil discourse, and epistemologically derived truth." Most obvious Lemann sentence: "But none of that yet rises to the level of a journalistic culture rich enough to compete in a serious way with the old media—to function as a replacement rather than an addendum." Most telling Lemann sentence: "In other words, the content of most citizen journalism will be familiar to anybody who has ever read a church or community newsletter—it’s heartwarming and it probably adds to the store of good things in the world, but it does not mount the collective challenge to power which the traditional media are supposedly too timid to take up." (Stuck on Stupid) Most agreeable Lemann sentence: "To keep pushing in that direction, though, requires that we hold up original reporting as a virtue and use the Internet to find new ways of presenting fresh material—which, inescapably, will wind up being produced by people who do that full time, not “citizens” with day jobs." Related: In his book's Foreward, Bailyn writes: The pamphlets [he looked at to write the book] include all sorts of writings -- treatises on political theory, essays on history, political arguments, sermons, correspondence, poems -- and they display all sorts of literary devices. But for all their variety they have in common one distinctive characteristic: they are, to an unusual degree, explanatory. They reveal not merely positions taken but the reasons why positions were taken...Chill, blogophiles; you're not the first to do what you're doing (January 26, 2005) Posted by: Tim Schmoyer at August 1, 2006 6:13 PM | Permalink The French decide to dig in and interpret New Assignment. If there's anyone who has a good reading knowledge of French I would love to know what these blogs said, with nuances if any. Daniel, Funny, my next door neighbor came up to me, and said , what is blogging? Does it have something to do with ranting? "Why yes it does," I replied. "But we brake for recipes and cats." Posted by: Lisa Williams at August 1, 2006 9:59 PM | Permalink Hello, I will try to briefly summarize my reaction about what Cyril Fievet (Nanoblog) said in connection with your experiment of journalism citizen. I answered to some of his words : "even if there were some precedents, the principle is very new and I see a true alternative there, as well concerning the future of media as regards of journalism citizen ". I wanted to insist on the fact, that with my opinion, this experiment must be replaced in the line of the « Public Journalism », of which you were one of the promoters. I recalled of them the origins, the motivations and the dangers, by supporting me on work of Thierry Watine (http://www.wolton.cnrs.fr/hermes/b_35gb_resume.htm). PS: My english is not good, sorry. Posted by: Olivier TREDAN at August 2, 2006 10:06 AM | Permalink Thanks, Olivier! Here's another. Where are the over-educated when you need them? Hello Jay, I am the "Another" (http://www.universmedias.com) you mentionned in your last comment to Olivier. ;-) On his blog, Olivier Tredan explains mostly the NewAssignment philosophy and the concept of Citizen journalism you want to promote. Just like you, I'm interested in persons (over-educated) with good knowledge in french to translate everything yu wrote about NewAssignment. The spirit was willing, Jay, but my French was weak. If only I spoke/read it as badly as Olivier and Phil's do English. Posted by: Dave McLemore at August 2, 2006 11:48 PM | Permalink Last week the New Yorker wrote on Digital Universe and Larry Sanger. This week, it's New Assignment and Jay Rosen. Digital Universe will fail because nobody is going to do peer-reviewed stuff freebies. New Assignment will fail for much the same reason, tho' your getting grants puts the project on a more sensible footing, but without a continuing, reliable source of money, you'll shut down soon enough. Everybody online wants people to pay for content, but because so much of it is free, only a handful do. I might be willing to pay for a package of online stuff, but subbing on an a la carte basis quickly gets expensive, particularly for stuff you only skim thru now and again. Even registering for putatively free sites is a pain. I wish you luck. Posted by: Loxias at August 4, 2006 11:57 PM | Permalink |
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