Cit Media

The New York Times, eschewing bogus journalism, takes on the raft of falsehoods Rudy Guiliani has been peddling to sell his presidential candidacy — and does it without the standard he-said, she-said mincing of words. In “Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again,” reporter Michael Cooper cites “facts” that

are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong. And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record.

There’s chapter and verse here. This, folks, is what serious journalism is all about.

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The furor surrounding Joe Klein’s misguided column of a week ago continues, incredibly, given Klein’s bizarre insistence on digging the hole deeper instead of forthrightly acknowledging error(s) and moving on. But this is not just about a columnist’s mistakes and tone-deafness. This is a debacle for the publication and company that employs him, because Time itself has compounded the problem, demonstrating contempt for its audience.

The episode is also a testament to the power of the Net to surface traditional-media wrongdoing — and to hold to account the people who have (and, despite the rise of citizen media, still have) enormous influence over what people believe about key issues. It’s almost inconceivable that Klein and his employers would have even bothered to issue their half-baked corrections had this all occurred a decade ago or earlier.

To recap a bit:

Klein’s original column attacked congressional Democrats’ effort to pass electronic surveillance legislation that would restrain the Bush administration’s wish for essentially no restraints or oversight whatever. In his piece, Klein got some vital facts dead wrong, giving a totally misleading message to his readers.

The responses from the Web were swift and, for the most part, far better informed. In particular, Salon’s fierce blogger, Glenn Greenwald, and Wired News’ Ryan Singel in the site’s Threat Level blog — both of whom are employed by online journalism operations — thoroughly dissected Klein’s factual and logical mess. Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake was among many in the independent blogosphere to join the fray.

Klein dug a deeper hole with a series of follow-up and factually challenged Time blog postings, in one of which he admitted not having actually read the legislation in question. It took him days to admit actual error, but even then he — and Time, in a correction that was and remains half-hearted at best — never fully owned up to the serious failure in this case.

The Chicago Tribune, which published excerpts from Klein’s erroneous column, published a direct and honest correction. Time still refuses, which makes the magazine’s failures much worse than Klein’s.

Why? Because as Singel notes in “Time Edits Wiretapping Correction, Still Wrong,” as he explains why the “correction” is itself so misleading:

For Time to continue to allow people to believe that that’s possibly what this bill would do means after all the detailed criticism it has gotten is clear proof the original column is no longer a dangerous misunderstanding of a complex issue by a two-bit political columnist.

Instead, it’s now an institutional lie.

I don’t know if this story will have further legs. Given the utter unprofessionalism it betrays, it should. But even if it doesn’t, something important has occurred.

Not so many years ago, this institutional arrogance would have been the end of the story. Actually, it’s likely that there would have been no clarifications or corrections of any kind.

And, unhappily, when this is part of journalistic history millions of people will have read Klein’s original column in the magazine. A tiny proportion of that readership will ultimately have learned that a fundamental premise of his argument was based on falsehood.

But the fact that Time (and Klein) felt obliged to respond at all, however grudgingly and still incorrectly, is a direct result of the growing ability of new media to be heard. There’s little to celebrate in this debacle, but we can at least take some satisfaction from that.

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Cory Doctorow has a very smart analysis in Information Week about why he doesn’t fear Facebook taking over the world. Quote:

Every “social networking service” has had this problem and every user I’ve spoken to has been frustrated by it. I think that’s why these services are so volatile: why we’re so willing to flee from Friendster and into MySpace’s loving arms; from MySpace to Facebook. It’s socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list — but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system and send out some invites (of course, chances are at least one of those invites will go to someone who’ll groan and wonder why we’re dumb enough to think that we’re pals).

That’s why I don’t worry about Facebook taking over the net. As more users flock to it, the chances that the person who precipitates your exodus will find you increases. Once that happens, poof, away you go — and Facebook joins SixDegrees, Friendster and their pals on the scrapheap of net.history.

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I’m an advisor to NewsTrust, a site where people rate news articles and blog postings for accuracy and quality. So I’m happy to report that the site just was awarded a substantial grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

Fabrice Florin and his team have done amazing work to bring the service this far. Now they’ll have the resources to take it even further. Congrats to all…

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“Jon Swift” offers Journalism 101, a sarcastic, clever set of rules for journalists. Funny stuff….

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Steve Outing offers “An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media” — a chronicle of the demise of his company, the Enthusiast Group, which created sports sites. He gave it his best effort, but in the end, as he explains, he and his colleagues couldn’t sustain a business.

Steve’s venture (I was an early investor) was one of many in the field. Some are working. Many are not; most startups don’t succeed, an entirely normal state of affairs.

Bottom line: Steve et al deserve enormous credit for trying. They learned — we are all learning — lessons as this new kind of media takes shape. Some are the tough lessons indeed, but they are valuable.

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Slate’s Trailhead column notes:

You know it’s 2007 when a candidate, in this case Mike Huckabee, holds a bifurcated conference call, first with reporters, then with bloggers. I listened in on both calls to see what the differences were. The reporters’ questions were much more concise and polished. But the bloggers’ questions were more substantive by a long shot.
The only thing wrong with this picture is the bifurcation. Put them all on the same call, candidates.

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One of the most amazing episodes in modern American journalism has emerged from a flagrantly inaccurate and misguided Time magazine column by Joe Klein. He’s a political writer whose work in this case may become Exhibit A for what’s wrong with the craft today.

Klein’s column attacked congressional Democrats’ effort to pass electronic surveillance legislation that would restrain the Bush administration’s wish for essentially no restraints or oversight whatever. In his piece, Klein got some vital facts dead wrong, giving a totally misleading message to his readers.

Needless to say, bloggers and others who care about truth and the Constitution jumped on this outrageous stuff. No one did a better job than Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, who pointed out the misstatements in great detail.

Klein, obviously responding to Greenwald (though never saying so), defended himself without actually dealing with the actual facts — and even more amazingly asserted that telecom companies should do whatever the government orders them to do, even if it’s completely illegal. Bloggers continued to attack both the original piece and his absurd justifications.

Then Klein sort of, kind of admitted error in a follow-up — though he made obvious something even more amazing: He hasn’t read the legislation he attacks. Meanwhile, neither Klein nor Time has put corrections into the original, flagrantly inaccurate column, which also ran in the print edition.

What makes all this so bad is Time’s reach and influence. Millions of people probably read the original. Very, very few will know, even now, that fundamental premises were false.

Why Time employs Klein is a mystery to me, though I suppose it shouldn’t be. He’s a member of the Washington journalistic establishment, where forgetting reality is all too common. As Wired News’ Ryan Singel noted, Klein’s record includes publicly lying about his anonymous authorship of the novel Primary Colors (one of the best books of fiction about politics in recent memory, incidentally). Singel then adds, and I agree:

But Time ought to stop Klein from writing about any substantive topic, especially FISA.

Because when it comes to these topics, Klein is well beyond stupid. He’s dangerous.

(Corrected: I got Ryan Singel’s affiliation wrong the first time; apologies.)

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 (This is the seventh in a series of postings about citizen media business issues. See the introduction here. All of these entries are considered to be in “beta” and will be revised and refined as they find a home on a more permanent area of the Center for Citizen Media web site.   To that end, your comments, additional examples, and criticisms are welcome and will be invaluable contributions to this process.)

Call it a “tip jar” or whatever you like, but citizen journalists should not rule out getting donations as part of a business model. This generally involves a form on the main page (or every page) of your web site that allows readers to donate however much they think your journalistic efforts are worth.

Other than requesting that readers send checks through the mail, use of PayPal’s “donate now” buttons is perhaps the easiest way to allow users to give.  For example, Ed Cone uses this by way of a subtle “help a brother out” donation button on his blog’s sidebar.  Because of its simplicity and ubiquity on the internet, readers may be more inclined to donate if you make it easy for them with a PayPal form. Money you receive from donations accrues in your online PayPal account, from which you can request a check or have it transferred to your bank account.  For the service, PayPal charges a transaction fee of $0.30 plus 2.9% of the amount received.

On his blog Among the Trees, Environmentalist Eric Baerren uses not just a PayPal donation button but also a banner from Blog Patron.  Blog Patron is similar to PayPal in that it’s a money transferring service, but instead of the range of services PayPal offers, Blog Patron’s primary feature is the “recurring donation.”  The site manages people’s donating, allowing for contributors to set up a repeating schedule of donations.  For those who give to one or more organizations on a regular basis, this is a useful organizational tool.  More importantly, by providing people with the option to repeatedly donate, it has the potential to bring in a steadier revenue stream using the same logic as a subscription system (for more information on subscriptions, see this earlier post). Blog Patron charges a fee schedule that tends to be a little higher than PayPal’s: $0.25 per transaction plus a flat 4.5% transaction fee.  Also, Blog Patron only accepts credit cards (no bank transfers or transfer of funds already in your Blog Patron account).

For those with a specific monetary goal in mind (or an arbitrary estimate of how much you’d like to raise), ChipIn provides a free widget that displays the cliché fundraising thermometer along with information about where the money goes, number of contributors, percentage to goal, and the contribution deadline, if applicable.  It also allows you to enable supporters of your cause to display your widget and raise money for you.  Sam Mayfield and the Center for Media and Democracy have a blog that covers their trip to Ghana to help the area’s first and only community access television station.  They display the ChipIn widget prominently to raise money for travel and equipment costs.  ChipIn doesn’t actually collect the money, but rather redirects users to PayPal for payment (standard PayPal transaction fees still apply).

Earning revenue through donations can be difficult, especially if you fail to consider carefully the presentation of the solicitation. On one hand, aggressive or sloppy solicitations can look unprofessional or greedy.  On the other, if the link is too subtle, people might not notice it or think it important. Remember that your number one priority is to gain and keep readers. If you provide a quality service, you may be rewarded.  But if you pester, panhandle, or ask for donations while at the same time bombarding users with advertisements, you may turn many people off.

Creativity in your presentation goes a long way. Michael Fortin has a tip jar in his blog’s right sidebar with the text “Enjoy this blog? Buy me a coffee or a drink. May I suggest a venti Starbucks dark roast coffee for $3? Or choose any amount you wish to tip” and a link to donate via PayPal. This friendly, no-pressure approach to soliciting donations may prove valuable to many.

One of the most successful and unique applications of the donation system can be seen at OhMyNews, a South Korean news site with the motto “Every Citizen is a Reporter” (note: the link is to the English version).  With the vast majority of its content coming from citizen journalists, OhMyNews reimburses writers of articles that meet certain standards.  On top of this reimbursement, contributors are able to receive tips from appreciative readers.  According to Don Lee of the LA Times (courtesy of Global Tech Forum), “Kim Young-oak, a Harvard-trained classics scholar, holds the record: More than $30,000 poured in after he wrote an article questioning the logic and wisdom of moving the nation’s capital outside Seoul.”  To keep the site going, OhMyNews keeps a portion of the donations.  In a recent talk at UC Berkeley (as covered by The Tyee), founder Oh Yeon-ho mentions that content-related income accounts for 20% of the company’s revenue. 

Another possible approach is to ask for donations instead of displaying ads and make it clear that donations are what makes it possible for the website to run ad-free. Whether you use this method or not, describing exactly why you ask people to give and explaining where the money goes—in other words, transparency—is key for building trust, which is necessary in matters of money.

Suggestions

• Do explain to readers exactly why you ask for donations and where their money will go whether hosting fees, travel expenses, morning coffee, or even reimbursement for time spent.

• Do be careful not to appear greedy by asking for donations amidst an assault of other advertising.

• Do be as creative as possible in your methods.  As seen in the example of OhMyNews, a donation system can even add value to the reader.

• Don’t pester your readers by hounding them for donations or trying to make them feel bad for not donating.

(Ryan McGrady is a new media graduate student at Emerson College where he is studying knowledge, identity, and ideas in the information age.)

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As an old friend once said of humanity on this best of all American holidays:

We need more pilgrims and fewer turkeys.

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