Fake News is A Problem. And Some Journalists Are Making it Worse.

NOTE: I do not confess to being a good journalist; that’s why I got out of the business more than a decade ago. I screwed things up and made mistakes, but I never flat out made things up.

We know “fake news” is a problem. But when journalists make their own fake news, the problem becomes a thousand times worse.

Example: Not long after the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017, German news magazine Der Spiegel sent award-winning journalist Claas Relotius to find a typical small American town and paint a picture for Germans of the America that sent Trump to the White House.

Unfortunately for real journalists everywhere, what Relotius wrote for the magazine was a lie.
It turns out it is one of at least 14 stories the journalist wrote for Der Spiegel that Relotius admits he made up entirely.

Even two residents of Fergus Falls, who might want to paint Trump supporters as less-than-savory, were appalled at what was written, and fact-checked the article themselves.

Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn, writing for Medium, agree there may be political tension, racism, and unsavory characters in their small town, what Der Spiegel published was at best a caricature of their friends and neighbors and at worse, a pile of German horseshit.

They write:

Yes, we have problems with racism here that he could have used real accounts of (the sign he mentions, “Mexicans Keep Out,” as far as we’ve asked other members of the community, was not seen by anyone else, and would have certainly generated a significant community discussion), but I would also have made sure he got the story of Fergus Falls residents who proudly attended the women’s marches in St. Paul or D.C., and displayed Black Lives Matters signs in our yards or buttons on our jackets, people who mentor immigrants and refugees in the region, people who grow their own food and bike everywhere in order to protect the environment and keep their families healthy, people who have chosen the simplicity rural life as a protest against the often extravagant necessities of city living.

This is just a hunch, but it seems to me that Relotius’ overseas readers might appreciate knowing that small American towns are more complex than they imagine — that die-hard liberals like me can still magically live alongside conservative Republicans — that sometimes we even find some common ground and share a meal together, and take the time to try to understand each other’s viewpoints. You see, we’re definitely not perfect here in Fergus Falls, and many of us feel a lot of responsibility right now, considering that our friends, family and neighbors voted against their own interests in 2016. But we also know how it feels to be ignored in policy and media for decades only to be lectured by ignorant articles such as this after so much silence about our challenges.

A small hunch on my part: Relotius probably figured no one from the hick town would read his article – Americans don’t know second languages after all,* and have never heard of things like Google Translate or, you know, actually KNOW foreign languages or at least someone who does. So why make it true to life when he could just write the kind of fiction he wants to write.

(There’s a link to Der Speigel’s investigation into Relotius’ fabrications in the Star-Tribune article, but it’s protected by a snarly German anti-ad blocker bot thing.)

When journalists and news organizations publish fake news, it makes the stupid cries of “Fake News” we hear coming from our President and his ardent supporters sound – bear with me here – at least somewhat plausible. Viz, via the Washington Post:

But at a time when political parties are deeply polarized on both sides of the Atlantic, the Spiegel controversy could also bolster those who now regularly portray reporting as “fake news.” As a publication that often allows its reporters to include subjective observations in their stories, Spiegel’s anti-Trump cover pieces had been widely shared in liberal circles in recent years. The fact that Relotius was initially exposed because of a story from the United States was immediately used to discredit the magazine’s wider coverage.

On Twitter, Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party wrote: “CNN Journalist of the Year 2014 is #FakeNews. Enjoy #TeamTrump.” The party’s regional branch in the southern city of Heidelberg went on to suggest that other stories published by the magazine must also be fabricated, given the scale of the scandal.

Even Trump’s supporters deserve better treatment than what they got in Fergus Falls.

*Just in my family alone are members who speak French (like myself) Korean, Spanish, Hungarian, Japanese, and Cantonese.

Social Media is Winning the Breaking News War

On July 15, an intense rainstorm dropping nearly two inches of rain battered Rexburg, Idaho.

And bar none, the best on-the-spot reporting done on the flooding in town and on the campus of BYU-Idaho was done by individuals with social media accounts and cell phone cameras.

Witness this video:

(This video is of particular interest to me, as it shows the neighborhood where we used to own a home. I’m certain if it were still there – the house was demolished for student housing – the basement would be waterlogged.)

Here’s another video from the same individual who posted the first, this time showing flooding in a BYU-Idaho building:

More raw video – with a request from ABC News to use the YouTube footage.

Now is this the who-what-when-where-why reporting that represents the best of journalism? No, it’s not. There are no damage estimates backed up by any authority, there is no accounting for the weather that caused the flooding.

But they’re on the spot. They’re eyes and ears and cameras on the ground. And with Facebook and YouTube to distribute the content, they’ve got their audience. No one needs traditional news organizations any more.

Oh, they do if they want the gritty details.

But guess what’s getting disseminated?

Here’s the Idaho Statesman’s coverage. Note nothing from any news outlet – just the raw video provided by that well-recognized news organization, the BYU-Idaho Department of Music.

Here’s coverage from the Deseret News. They went with the bitty story from the local newspaper (more on that later) but relied very heavily on social media coverage of the breaking story for the best on-the-spot reporting.

Here’s TV coverage from Boise. This is all social media coverage, not local news coverage.

Here's one of our local TV station's coverage. And here. And here. And here. And here.

Here’s the local newspaper’s web coverage.

It’s sad. Two static images (fairly small ones at that) and nothing beyond a little who-what-where in the brief text treatment of what’s probably the biggest news event so far in Rexburg in 2014.

I can understand the restraint, however. In breaking news situations, situations fluctuate. Eyewitnesses give inaccurate information. One of our local TV stations had good coverage, balancing news gathering with social media video. Some of their news, however, was out of date as the events unfolded last night (power never was shut off, contrary to what the report says).

Still, the local paper could have done better. A lot better.

I’m not taking a look at print presentations of the news. I’m looking at the breaking news presentation. This kind of event is what screams for instant coverage, without the high-handed hand-wringing of “we can’t verify a rumor.” We’re not asking for rumors. We want to see these videos and hear from the folks reacting to the news as it happens, not a day later. By that time, we’ve seen all the videos. You can fill in the whys and there wherefores and address the rumors and officialdom then, and that works just fine. But it’s clear social media is winning the breaking news competition, hands down.

Even the big guys are stumbling.

To take a quote from Alan D. Mutter’s “Reflections of  A Newsosaur” blog, “Newspapers can’t merely dabble at digital.”

Nutter’s post discusses an internal New York Times report (leaked by BuzzFeed) detailing how the paper is failing at digital distribution of its news products. Nutter says: 

In one painful example, a Huffington Post editor told the Times team that their newspaper was “crushed” by the amount of traffic captured by his site when it repurposed NYT coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela. “I was queasy watching the numbers,” said the unidentified editor quoted in the report. “I’m not proud of this. But this is your competition. You should defend the digital pickpockets from stealing your stuff with better headlines, better social.”

In another example of digital tone-deafness cited in the report, the author of the sprawling Dasani series on a homeless family trapped in horrific public housing did not get around to tweeting about her own story until two days after the first installment ran. Curiously, noted the report, the newsroom controls the Twitter account but the “business side” runs the Facebook page.

On this Rexburg flood story, most news media was outfoxed by students or university employees with digital cameras and access to YouTube or Facebook. And here’s the thing: I’m sure none of them set out thinking “I’m going to beat the local news by covering this event.” They were merely recording what they saw and distributing it using tools any fool can use. News outlets, with access to those same tools, got beaten to the punch – because no one has yet figured out how to make money off such coverage. Which is, of course, the bottom line in the business, and why it’s getting screwed by ordinary folks with an Internet account and a camera.

"He's Bonafide!"

Pardon me if I “rasp poetic.”

I am, obviously, a blogger. I was also, for about ten years, a journalist. For the past eight years, I’ve worked as a technical writer. I teach English. I’m completing the third revision of a novel, one of many I’ve written (no, I’m not published yet, but give me time). I feel the sting of typos to the point I scout my Facebook history and my blog looking for things that need to be fixed. And I fix them. And have been called anal retentive for doing so. But I will continue to do it. I have a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication and a masters degree in English. I am, as they say in the vernacular, bona fide.

Also, I try to practice what I preach.

And one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in nearly 20 years as a writer is that writers live in glass houses. And shouldn’t throw rocks.

But that’s a lie, of course. Writers throw rocks all the time. Writers should, however, have better aim. And more polished rocks.

Here’s a journalist throwing rocks at bloggers. As I read her screed, I’m not sure how to write my own. Context, I keep saying. Context. A journalist is supposed to provide context. As this journalist rags on a blogger for not writing as a journalist should, there’s no context. No link to the offending blog so we can judge for ourselves – and bless me, we would judge – the content of said blogger’s character. The old saw goes that if your mother says she loves you, you should check it out. So if this blog is so bad, let your readers check it out. Seeing the evidence for themselves will help them believe what you say.

As it is, there is no link. No context. So we’re left to judge the character of the judger.

I know. I’m throwing rocks.

Polished rocks.

Here’s her version of events, factually laid out (at least in part) contrasting with the unlinked blogger’s nonsense:

The Caldwell police responded to calls from local residents that they may have seen someone on the foreclosed lot next to their home. The house has been vandalized in the past, so the police set up bright yellow police tape.

"We want kids and others to know they can't just trespass," said Caldwell police cheif James Bongiorno. 

In order to help the problem, the chief added, the borough is reaching out to the owners to take immediate measures to secure the house so there is no easy access.

Hm. Much, much too wordy for starters. Here’s what a journalist should have done:

Caldwell police want trespassers to know they’re watching the vacant home at ADDRESS.

“We want kids and others to know they just can’t trespass,” says Caldwell Police Chief James Bongiorno. He said borough officials are trying to contact the vacant home’s owner to ensure trespassers can’t get on the property.

Neighbors called police DATE AND TIME when they noticed someone on the lot. The home has been vandalized in the past.

We don’t need to know about the bright yellow police tape, or that the measures will be “immediate.” This journalist says she likes to “rasp poetic” and that “[a]dding in that poetic or inspirational writing is the art in journalism but not every journalist has those creative bones and can spin their words to "weave that sticky web of an irresistable (sic) news story." Sadly, either you have that poetic eye - or you don't.”

I don’t know if she counts the police setting up bright yellow police tape as poetic or inspirational, or spinning words to weave that sticky web of an irresistible news story. But it’s not necessary for a police blotter item. Stick to the facts, and keep the poetry and inspiration in the features. Police stories need to lean heavy on fact – such as the location of the house and the time and date the complaints were called in. Now, I have no way of knowing if this excerpt is the full story or not – again, there’s no context provided. Maybe she did a better job in the full story. She doesn’t provide me with a way of knowing.

Perusing other writing under her name at Jersey Tomato Press, however, shows many other examples of the poetry and inspiration getting in the way of the facts.

Example:

As my own unused (for years) AOL sends out meaningless emails to contacts - that were deleted 2 years ago - and Target takes a giant sigh of relief after their giant hacking into their systems, Michaels Stores, a fun family-friendly (sic) arts and crafts home store, announced late yesterday they had been hacked.

What’s the news? Oh, the Michaels data breach. But it’s buried under the poetic inspiration. I don’t care that her AOL account was sending out meaningless emails. And her mention of the Target hacking makes it sound like the company was hacking its own systems. And if Michaels were a grumpy, adults-only arts and crafts home store, would she put it that way?

Example:

Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn A. Murray announced today that the former Glen Ridge Borough Registrar of Vital Statistics admitted to stealing $82,981 from the Borough over a three year period.

Tresor Gopaul, 30, of Montclair pled guilty today before the Honorable Peter V. Ryan, Judge of the Superior Court, to second degree theft by unlawful taking.

Wow. Three very, very long titles in two short paragraphs. Here’s what a journalist would have done:

A former Glen Ridge Borough registrar pleaded guilty in superior court DATE to stealing $82,981 from the borough over three years.

Tresor Gopaul, 30, of Montclair, pleaded guilty to second degree theft by unlawful taking, according to Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn A. Murray.

Who cares who the judge was? If the judge had something significant to say about the crime, then include his name and honorable title. Otherwise, it’s unnecessary information. It’s important that the guy pleaded (not pled) guilty. The rest of the information, including his title, can come later in the story.

The story has other problems – two individuals identified by the last name of Wells – is it the same person, or two Wells? The second Wells isn’t identified by title or by connection to the case.

And if you’re going to criticize bloggers, don’t write like a blogger. This piece just oozes blogginess. A real journalist would not continue to insert herself into the story, no matter how poetic or inspiration she might be feeling. She has a significant story here. She should step out of its way.

Yes, I know it’s easy to sit here and armchair quarterback news stories for a news organization that confesses in a blog post it has no copy editor. Just as easy as it is to armchair quarterback bloggers for doing what they do without really considering the blogger’s reach (probably very small) and their motivations (sometimes like looking into an empty room, yes, but more often than not they have a sincere desire to do something, whether it’s to share the news, feel involved, shout into the darkness or write scattered commentaries on the state of journalism versus blogging). It’s all relative.

I congratulate the Jersey Tomato Press on its willingness to work hard at journalism. But invest in an editor, as some of  your commenters have said. Someone used to editing newspaper stories. Then preach against bloggers all you want, after those rocks of yours are polished.

And yes, I took a butt-first exit from the industry in 2005. I don't claim to be a perfect journalist. I don't claim to be a journalist at all now. But I have my bonafides in professional writing, and I ain't afraid to use them.

Newsy Conciliation

Marc Fisher, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, has a fascinating piece on what he calls a “conciliation” of old-guard journalism’s emphasis on truth first and new media’s emphasis on publish now, vet later. What he writes should pique the interest of anyone in the old guard – mainly newspapers – but also those who think the Internet is a purely self-correcting creature.

Here’s the core of his piece:

But consider a new possibility: What if conciliation is at hand? As the lines between old and new increasingly blur, are the two schools of journalism’s core values blending into a hybrid? Increasingly, in newsrooms both print-centric and all-digital, the imperative for speed in the journalism of tweets and Vines has triumphed over traditional ways: What’s news is what’s out there, whether or not it’s been checked and verified. Rare is the news organization that doesn’t occasionally jump on Twitter with half-baked facts, and rarer still is the one that refuses to gin up content about the day’s major trending topics.

As I discovered in visits to newsrooms with varying histories and roles, what’s new is what’s always worked: In the minute-by-minute struggle for audience and advertising, old-fashioned notions about credibility turn out to be as essential as speed. Despite utopian rhetoric about the Web as a self-correcting mechanism, getting things right from the start turns out to have considerable value.

“The sheer impact of doing the wrong thing has grown tremendously because of the speed and reach of the new media, and that is leading a lot of these new brands to show a lot of traditional values,” says Eric Newton, senior advisor to the president at the Knight Foundation and former managing editor of the Newseum.

No journalist ever wants to publish something that’s wrong. But it happens to every journalist without exception. I know how much it hurts from personal experience. But as has been illustrated by a friend’s Facebook post last week about a local newspaper not moving fast enough on a significant news story in the community (and the Facebooker in question is a former editor of the self-same paper, not some run-of-the-mill complainer) there’s still a serious disconnect in some organizations between being right and being current. There’s also a failure to realize that you can be fast and mostly correct at the same time, and that as long as you continue to provide your readers with updated information, they’re more likely to see along with you that news evolves and that what was once reported earlier changes as more information becomes available.

But here’s the invaluable part: Even through your errors, your readers were there for the ride. You let them participate in the news event, perhaps even contributing themselves, to get them more involved. And that seems to be working. Back to Fisher’s article:

On the snowy evening before I drove up to south central Pennsylvania to visit the York Daily Record, its editors suggested I check out the liveblog they had created to cover the first significant storm of the year. The blog featured video snippets from staff reporters showing where slick roads were snarling traffic. There were feeds from the National Weather Service and tweets from reporters and competing media outlets. The editors were proud that their blog gave equal treatment to reader-generated content—pictures and tweets with the #pawx hashtag.

Reader Dan Sokil said roads were “slow with a solid layer of slush but passable slowly.” Jhofford20 posted: “What better way to spend a snow day than by drinking a couple beers.” Erin Kissling added: “Winter Storm Advisory: The state liquor stores are closed. this is bullshit.”

No one edits the storm blog at night, says Jim McClure, the Record’s editor, but there’s nothing on the blog he’d have taken out. The beers line “captures the feelings of the community,” and the profanity is fine because “we’re looser online.”

These days at the Record—which has 19 reporters on a staff of 55 journalists, down from 80 at its peak a decade ago—everyone blogs, shoots video, and posts on social media, as well as reports and writes. Reporters and photographers post directly to the site, “so it’s incumbent more and more on the reporter to get it right,” says metro editor Susan Martin. “Editors fix things after they’re online, as soon as we can.”

That sounds like, to me, a news organization working with digital media, and its audience, to find truth together, rather than being the dispenser of truth on its own timetable. And today’s audience, certainly those in the younger bracket, want participatory anything – participatory everything – in order to remain interested. 

That may sound Brave New World-ish, with the entertainment factor of news taking over, but step back and see what’s going on here. Participating readers are readers. And if they’re participating, they’re sharing. And if they’re sharing, they’re encouraging more participation.

And the truth, the accuracy, the gestalt of instantaneous and accurate is coming closer.

So size doesn’t matter. That the media engage with its readers seems to matter.

More from Fisher:

“Everything we do is irreverent, but not glib,” says the editor in chief [of news startup NowThis News], Ed O’Keefe, 36, a veteran of ABC News. “We remove all ornamentation, anything that distances. The YouTube generation understands that stories evolve. It’s dirty and it’s not always right, but it’s instantaneous.”

There it is, the red-hot core of the difference between old school and new. I’ve never had a print editor who said anything like that out loud. But I have heard any number of editors who are struggling to figure out how to compete digitally embrace the idea that putting something up can take precedence over checking it out fully. This is no expression of tabloid amorality; O’Keefe is a serious journalist who is trying to find a standard that works in the new world. He doesn’t want to deliver inaccuracies to his audience. Rather, he wants to give them the closest version of the truth he can while still meeting them where they are, which is on their phone, right now. Wait a few minutes, and they won’t be there anymore; they’ll have moved on to the next story.

Internet News Evolution Continues Apace . . .

Mike Fourcher, writing at his blog Vouchification on Jan. 11, posts “21 Things [He] Learned Running Hyperlocal News Sites,” with some interesting bits of wisdom for anyone in the business of trying to attract and retain eyeballs on the Web. 

Full article is here. I’ll go over a few things I found interesting, from my few years’ experience working at Uncharted (and for whom I no longer work, due to time constraints). 

(Fourcher, by the way, runs some successful hyperlocal news sites in the Chicago area, and has had his share of hyperlocal bombs, also in the Chicago area. He knows from whence he speaks.) 

This one seems the most important to me:

Building an audience is getting harder. 

Competition, direct and indirect [is responsible for difficult audience-building]. Readers in 2013 have thousands of news sites to choose from, as well as social media, electronic books, and so much more. Launching a new brand and gaining mind share is getting logarithmically more difficult to do. 

Want to support yourself at least partly with ads? Get a big audience. Fast. 

20% of your consumers consume 80% of your product. Make sure that 20% is big enough.

Ultimately, there is a limited demand for the kind of news you provide. Only so many people live and work in the neighborhood. No matter how much reader development we did, those baseline numbers would not go up. 

Then, we knew that about 30% of your readers checked our site every day. Another 50% checked at least once a week. Even though we had some really dedicated readers, the pool wasn’t big enough to generate lots of ad click-throughs. 

And one more important one, but not really a mind-bending one, for anyone familiar with Clay Shirky and his work: 

The barriers to entry are virtually non-existant in news now. 

With a  free WordPress template and a sense of what’s interesting to readers, you can create a news site that attracts thousands of readers. It may not be any good, but it will attract readers. Regardless of whether they are making money – or even selling ads – these sites are competitors for local news eyeballs. They make it necessary for other local news sites to adopt their methods, because without readers there’s no advertising. 

That’s something that wouldn’t surprise any Clay Shirky fan – he was saying that years ago. 

Most interesting thing Fourcher said, however, is that he believes evolution of the news online into something resembling viability is going to be a slow process, and that what we see now will probably be what it’s like in that distant future, as he predicts no great innovations, but many iterations of the same old thing.

Sheltering Old Media?

I’ve made it clear that I’m pleased I’m no longer a journalist.

Not that journalists don’t do valuable and noble things. They do. For me, other things, ranging from career fatigue to a perceived lack of support, got in the way of valuable and noble. I’m mostly to blame, I admit. But the allure of a journalism career, for me, got in the way of what I wanted to do as a writer. So I quit. I’m still writing as a technical writer, and I like that just fine and find myself doing valuable and noble things in my new career.

So I like to see what the Columbia Journalism Review is doing to encourage folks like me – consumers, but not producers of news – to support the value and nobility that is local, original journalism.

To a point.

First, there’s this.

Watch the video. It’s good. It reminds us all that most of what we see on the web in regards to news is recycled by people who don’t do original reporting of their own.

Then there’s this. Boiled down:

Notice who is doing original reporting and support them through our consumer choices. And, oh, donate to non-profit journalism/reporting outfits.

Ohh-kay. Great. So, support the status quo: Newspapers and local TV. Subscribe to the paper. Buy from the folks who advertise with the paper and with the local news. Gotcha. Doing that. With the exception of the subscription. I get the paper passed on to me. Most days.

But guess what?

For the local original reporting that interests me the most, I’m turning not to local news, but – surprise – to independent journalists – both professional or not – who do original reporting outside the venue of traditional news outlets.

There’s Bizmojo Idaho, a local blog produced by Paul Menser, whose Shoptalk column used to be the first thing I turned to when it appeared in the local paper. There’s also Idaho Falls Projects, another blog that’s done some original reporting. Not necessarily in-depth, muck-raking as the CJR video promotes, but it’s stuff that’s of interest to me.

Then there’s Dan Yurman’s blog on nuclear research and nuclear energy that occasionally hits news that’s of interest to me, locally.

I’ve seen all three of these outlets featured in traditional media reports locally, and know that they’re watched carefully by at least our local TV station for news tips and such.

So maybe the CJR should, in addition to encouraging support of traditional news outlets, encourage readers and consumers of news to seek out local, independent news producers who are doing original reporting outside of traditional news outlets. But that doesn’t fit in with the status quo that the CJR appears to promote: Old media.

Don't listen to me from here on out. I'm a burned-out, lazy former journalist you should not listen to. But journalism, as I see it, is a young person's game. A young, single person. There are plenty of those. But in most media markets, that's about all you're going to get. Becasue of the pay and the demands on time. That's what killed journalism for me. But don't listen to me because I'm lazy and undisciplined as far as young, single journalists go. Or went. Or whatever. I'm bitter too. I need to buy two shopping malls. It's the cart before the horse, see. Local journalism doesn't pay well. It doesn't pay well because the advertising money is drying up. Readers can find news -- regurgitated and original -- elsewhere, produced by parroting mimics or dedicated professionals and amateurs alike who have a passion for what they're reporting. Originally.

I don't know what the solution is. The CJR doesn't know, beyond the blinding obvious, which isn't really working all that much, if you haven't noticed. Clay Shirky doesn't know, and he gets paid to think on these things.

[Redacted]

Interesting little brouhaha going on at Slate.com – one of my favorite Internet reads – though you won’t get a sense of much interest out of Slate.

A little Googling tells me that on Feb. 17, Slate published an article written by Carl Elliott, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics, calling into question the ethicality of a stem-cell researcher and businessman also serving as editor of a journal on bioethics. Slate retracted the article – which I had not read until today – offering as its only explanation a terse editorial statement stating the article didn’t meet its standards for verification and fairness. Slate stripped the article from its website and apparently did a pretty good job of scrubbing the web, as I can’t find a link to the article on Slate.com anywhere.

The article’s author, and several other experts in the bioethics and stem cell community, seem to think Slate caved in to the threat of a lawsuit over an article that contained only minor factual inaccuracies. Ed Silverman, writing at Pharmalot.com, has a good rundown of the situation.

Sez Elliott, per Silverman:

I disagreed strongly with Slate’s decision to withdraw the article. McGee had threatened them with a lawsuit, and their editorial decision seemed driven entirely by fear. For a journalistic organization to allow itself to be bullied in this way is shameful.

As is probable, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, though Slate’s terse statement and complete scrubbing of the article does lend itself to some odd questions, as up until now, Slate’s corrective efforts have been much more open and traceable than this.

So being the curious little fellow that I am, I did some more Googling and, thanks to the Center for Genetics and Society, I got to read the full article (still tagged as being published by Slate). Read it here.

One has to wonder by Slate didn’t come to bat for Elliott, who seems to raise legitimate conflict of interest claims and relies – as do most journalists – on careful research into the subject. And given the ease in which I was able to find the full article, still credited to Slate, on the web, you have to wonder why they thought they could make this article go away. Elliott himself tells Silverman that the subject of the article seemed most upset about Elliott’s repeating of already-reported facts – found in articles and at sources that are in the public record and aren’t going to go away, no matter who he calls.

Having made terriffically bad mistakes myself in newspaper articles, I know the pain this causes. I also know that editors owe it to the public to explain up front what happened and what the consequences are and, frankly, what the mistakes were, in order to clear the air and move forward. Slate.com hasn’t done this at all.

Tweet First, Verify Later

What a long way we’ve come.

Back in the halcyon days of the Internet – and even today, in some circles – the amateur’s presence on the Internet led to derisive descriptions of pajama-wearers, basement-dwellers, illegitimate fools whom the mainstream media – and professionals of any ilk – should ignore.

No longer. Those amateurs – and those professionals who exist outside officialdom – are increasingly being sought after as original sources, especially in fast-breaking new stories, according to a recent study, “Tweet First, Verify Later,” by Nicola Bruno, writing for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. His study may be read in a PDF here.

Bruno studies a handful of American and British news agencies who handle “social media content” in varying ways, and to varying effect. He quotes journalist Nik Gowing who says, “In a moment of a crisis what is the difference – if any – between the staff reporter who observes, writes, blogs then files an article for an established media organization, and the motivated amateur or quasi professional who does exactly the same for a web or blog site?” Increasingly, Bruno is discovering, there is no difference in the eyes of the media, particularly on breaking news.

Bruno studied how CNN, the BBC, The Guardian, and other outlets have used social media to mine information on breaking news stories ranging from the 2009 Iran revolution to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Interestingly, he finds that the news organizations are relying heavily on Twitter for breaking news alerts – which kind of flies in the face of a previous Pew Internet study which shows that the relationship is fairly one-sided – the media may go to Twitter for news, but Twitter users aren’t flocking to traditional media to find news.

The study shows interesting contrasts between how these various news organizations use social media and how they verify the information they find.

Here’s what Bruno says:

Contrary to other news organizations, the BBC considers as paramount the principle of verification and fact-checking of each and every online resource. Before informing the other BBC reporters at the World Desk or BBC World about an interesting online source, “We always check out each and every image, video or key contact before we broadcast them, to make sure they are genuine and to resolve any copyright issues. When it’s impossible to do that – such as with content sent from Iran or Burma – when contacting the contributors is very hard to do or might put them in danger, we interrogate the images, using BBC colleagues who know the area and the story to help identify them.”

Further, James Morgan with the BBC, Bruno writes, subjects his sources to other tests of authenticity, from considering the context of his or her tweets or Facebook posts of interest with what the user posts in general, to checking on things like IP addresses, cell phone prefixes, et cetera.

CNN, by contrast, takes a more “Web 2.0” approach, leaving its iReport unvetted and unverified as a general rule, Bruno says, but vetting and verifying anything that gets an official CNN stamp. Reactions to unverified news, however, is a problem news outlets are going to have to learn to deal with. Bruno points out an instance in 2008 when an iReporter submitted a hoax story on Apple chairman Steve Jobs suffering a heart attack. Though the story was never broadcast on CNN nor stamped with the official iReport stamp, its mere presence on the website caused Apple’s stock to plummet 10 percent in 10 minutes and triggered an SEC investigation, per Bruno.

These varying approaches, Bruno discovered, remained fairly consistent during the news response to the Haiti earthquake. CNN was less hesitant to go with unverified material, though it did offer some iReport material that was verified. The BBC was more cautious, but overall, these news outlets relied more than 50 percent on social media sources within Haiti to report on the early days of the quake.

Bruno helpfully identifies a “practical example” of a guide for journalists to verify online information from the Online Journalism Blog, which is echoed here.

Those at the OJB go on to say:

When the telephone first entered the newsroom, journalists were skeptical. ‘How can we be sure that the person at the other end is who they say they are?’ The question seems odd now, because we have become so used to phone technology that we barely think of it as technology at all – and there are a range of techniques we use, almost unconsciously, to verify what the person on the other end of the phone is saying, from their tone of voice to the number they are ringing from, and the information they are providing. Dealing with online sources is no different. How do you know the source is telling the truth? You’re a journalist, for god’s sake: it’s your job to find out.

Amen to that.

Instant Experts, Circa 1968

I wrote earlier this week about David Pell's commentary at Gizmodo.com on the Five Most Endangered Words on the Internet, and chastised him a bit for suggesting that this phenomenon of comment now, think later, is boren of the Internet age.

I offer tonight a brief excerpt from Victor Lasky's book "It Didn't Start with Watergate," published in pre-Internet 1975, speaking on the phenomenon of instant analysis:

By the time Lyndon Johnson left office, his administration was under bitter attack by the media and its subsidiary organizations. Thus in 1968 the journalism society Sigma Delta Chi had this to day: "The Credibility Gap, which as reached awesome proportions under the Johnson Administration, continued to be a grave handicap. Secrecy, lies, half-truths, deception -- this was the daily fare."

In turn there were those who felt that the press had its own credibility problems. Douglas Cater, special assistant to President Johnson, suggested that too often newsmen presumed an expertise they quite obviously didn't have.

"I'm concerned about the little demigods of TV who make an instant analysis of complicated events," said Cater. "There should be bounds on what TV men do, so much of which is delivered with flippant abandon."

It's a familiar criticism, as Pell says. The mainstream media sees this attitude -- with some justification -- in the blogosphere. It's a criticism they ought to be careful in making, since it's obviously a criticism that can be leveled at themselves quite easily, with some justification.

It's a common aphorism in most journalism circles that a journalist is an "instant expert." It's a cute thing to tell journalism students and rookie reporters, but it can also be a dangerous thing. I know I fell for it often enough -- not our of laziness, but out of sheer exasperation in trying to become an expert in something in a day or less, given the common deadlines we're given to work with. I note that the reporters and writers I enjoy the most aren't instant experts -- they're the ones who have toiled for years to understand their subject matter, and thus can write and speak on it authoritatively through their hard work, not through j-school bravado alone. If I learned anything in my short journalism career, it's that there is only a small leap of difference between an instant expert and an instant asshole. I'm intensely gratified that there exist areas of knowledge in which I can safely say I am somewhat well informed. I'm far from being an expert in anything.

It's as true in journalism as it is true in the blogosphere that there are many out there who babble on with the air of authority without really having the knowledge to back it up. It's equally as true in journalism and the blogosphere that here are many out there that know from whence they speak. The babbling jerks in the blogosphere may be part of the sphere as a whole, but they do not define the sphere. As Uncle Jay would say, "those who think they do ought to be embarrassed."

How J-Schools and the Current Beat Model May be Killing Journalism

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, after it folded for the last time at about this time last year, launched itself on a bold experiment in community-based journalism.

Note the experiment does not say “Internet-based journalism.” There is a distinct difference here, even though their experimentation is in a wholly online environment.

What the Seattle P-I is doing is, I believe, showing both the good and the bad side of community journalism -- involving non-experts in the activity of producing stories, photos, columns and other content. It’s also showing that part of the failing of current professional journalism is the education model coupled with the business model.

In other words, the Internet isn’t killing traditional journalism. How it’s being taught and how journalists are being trained, however, is.

I applaud the Seattle P-I's approach here -- getting citizens involved, having professionals work with them to turn out better-quality content (sounds familiar, doesn't it). There's a lot of passion out there for creating news and features, photography and all sorts of stuff that papers could use if they'd just break down that "fourth wall" and open their publications to non-professionals. As it is now, most papers do this but only in niche products -- humor columns, occasional op-eds by prominent citizens, gardening columns and the ubiquitous letters to the editor. Our local paper long has lagged in covering the Idaho National Laboratory -- but have never bothered to tap into the writing and photographic talent that's there already because these people aren't their employees or might have “biases“ that would show up in their reporting. As if reporters, on their own, are free of bias, or if the non-professionals can‘t be coached, in just a few hours, to realize how bias shows up in one‘s own writing and enthusiasms. That‘s part of professionals showing the non-experts how to do something, while tapping into their expertise outside of journalism, and the passion they have for writing about what they do.

On the other hand -- there's always an other hand in these arguments -- I can see that reaching out to the non-professionals is going to bring on a more eclectic, less substantive product in many cases (strictly talking here of the news side of journalism; I don‘t see lighter features, columns, et cetera, being affected much, quality-wise). It's just like as is said in a recent article on the Seattle P-I from another journalistic dinosaur, the LA Times (full article here):

The community bloggers produce useful items -- like school curriculum debates and local crime trends. They also offer plenty that is leaden or narrow -- a bride's musings on her wedding or a homeowner's ponderous diary on a visit by a film crew.

David Brewster, who founded and ran the alternative Seattle Weekly and now heads Crosscut.com said he finds some PI stories provocative. But the tangle of information overwhelms him.

"I am slashing my way through this jungle and occasionally finding good stuff," Brewster said, "and I think that is a mistake."

There's a lot of passion out there among amateurs, and a lot of talent. Finding that talent and then nurturing it to the point this talent can consistently produce content is a difficult thing.

But a big part of the current problem in journalism is that even for those who are professionals, in the business, the extent of the passion that brought them into the business is lacking, as this article points out:

When a bright young reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer named Monica Guzman mentioned a couple of years ago that she planned to post a story with a Web link to the rival Seattle Times, colleagues didn't swallow their tongues. But close.

Joel Connelly, a veteran political columnist at the Post-Intelligencer, found that his forays away from his beat, to review books and write about religion, made union overseers all twitchy. They didn't like anybody coloring outside the lines.

But in the year since the Post-Intelligencer printed its last edition and laid off all but 20 of 160 employees, Guzman, Connelly and their co-workers have been unleashed to cover and link to just about whatever they want. Amateur journalists have been invited to join their ranks. Other media outlets have been thrown into the mix. A 146-year-old newspaper has been reborn as an Internet-only news site that invites material from almost all comers.

That the Internet is providing outlets for that “misdirected” passion isn’t killing newspapers. That most newspapers in general haven’t -- or won’t -- allow their professionals to pursue their passions in the context of providing the service they do -- local reporting, investigative journalism, et cetera -- is a general failing of the industry model in general, and would be a failing whether the Internet were here or not.

Look at the current model: a person decides he or she wants to be a journalist either because they like to write, they like to poke their noses into other people's business, they like to talk to people, whatever reason. So they go to school and get a journalism degree and then go into the job market and really want to contribute. Then they find that they're slotted into a niche -- school reporting, features, whatever -- and see that if they try to cross that line for the most part they get their hands slapped and are told to do their assigned job, even if it's not their exact cup of tea, even if it doesn't completely fulfill the passion they have; the passion that got them into the business in the first place. The best description of this phenomenon that I've ever heard come from Dave Barry, who before he was a columnist was a local beat reporter for a rinky-dink paper in Pennsylvania: He was ready, he said, to go out as a journalist and expose corruption (that was the big reason to go into journalism when he was in college) but he had no idea how to find any. And that, among many other things, is a big failing of the majority of journalism schools around. I have to confess that I didn't learn anything more in four years of college studying journalism than I did in the two years i was in high school journalism. (I always wanted to ask this question, but never had the guts to do it: "If you (the professors) love journalism as much as you say you do, how come you're working here rather than as journalists?") The conundrum is this: In J-school, they said, "We'll teach you the basics, you'll pick up the specifics through on-the-job training." Then when I got the job, they said, "Hey, how come the didn't teach you the specifics before you got this job? We have no time for on-the-job training." Thus we find our current state of journalism. Passion-filled people whose job descriptions typically misdirect or deform part of that passion, leading to discontent and eventual flight from the industry.

Damn, I think I've just discovered a doctoral thesis if I ever decide to go after a doctorate. This is all anecdotal information, but I'll bet if I interviewed a lot of ex-journalists, they'd find this same problem. The Internet (getting back to the topic) didn't create this problem, but added the felling blow to the traditional newspaper's business model. But does the world need another doctorate babbling on about this kind of thing, or would it be better to get teachers -- and the industry -- putting these babblings into place. Well, it’s something to think about, anyway.

True Online Journalism

This is the kind of online journalism the mainstream media needs to fear. Or emulate. Or purchase. (Hat tip to the Reflections of A Newsosaur blog for bringing this to my attention.)

Michelle Leder, author (but no longer proprietor) of Footnoted.org took her expertise in business journalism and parlayed it into a successful finance-oriented blog that has attracted an undisclosed number of subscribers who pay $2,500 a year for premium content and attracted the attention of Chicago-based Morningstar, which purchased Footnoted.org just recently.

This kind of online journalism isn’t going to kill traditional newspapers or traditional media, but it is going to provide an expert source for information that the MSM simply cannot afford to provide.

Is what Leder is doing a model for the MSM? Hardly. I can’t see anyone paying that much of a premium for local news, simply because there are so many local news outlets out there. Just in my area alone (which is rural) we have three television stations that present local news for free and one local paper that offers most of its content online for free. The regional daily charges $6 a month for their content. That’s probably about as much as the market will bear – though by their own numbers the online portion of their site represents just under 3 percent of total subscriptions. It’s a way to bet the attention of the American Bureau of Circulation, but it’s hardly a model on which one can anchor a business.

I don’t fault the local news outlets for doing what they do. The regional daily is right to insist on payment for its content. It’s well-reported and researched. With the other sites, we get what we pay for, typically in one-sided reporting and lots and lots of typos. Just like my blog here. But I don’t pretend to be a news outlet.

This is, however, a model for any enterprising journalist who has a specialty and wants to leverage it outside traditional media. Yes, Leder built her site up over time, through long struggles and lots of self-marketing, something many traditional journalists are loath to do (Grammar Nazi is proud I used this word correctly). It doesn’t mean that every niche journalist is going to succeed at this, but it shows it can be done. And it shows the power of the Internet as a publication platform and distributor. Leder could not have done this the old-fashioned way, via print, with the initial overhead costs being far too high.

This is where being a knowledge worker intersects with having enough leverage to use that knowledge to best effect. There are few mainstream news outlets who would use Leder full-time at doing what she does – extracting, in her words, buried treasure – from filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Maybe the Wall Street journal, maybe another national paper. And the others would be foolish to hire her, not because she’s talented, but because her talents would be wasted. An Internet platform is perfect for what she is doing.