Open Salon is a user-generated site with some differences, the notable one being a tip jar that, one hopes, will lead to people being rewarded for their work. It’s not an original idea — OhmyNews has had this for years — but it’s a worthwhile one.
One of the more interesting items is this speculative examination of the site’s finances.
We need lots of experiments in business models. This is going to be one to watch.
Props to TVNewser’s Steven Krakauer, who has an interview with Brian Ross of ABC News. Ross is the journalist who in 2001 fueled our national fears with his reporting on the anthrax killings, citing unnamed sources who falsely linked the anthrax attacks to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. In light of recent (and still somewhat murky) revelations in recent days, Jay Rosen and I asked three questions we hoped ABC would address. (Here’s my version; here’s Jay’s.)
Read the the questions, and then Ross’ response to TVNewser.
Essentially, Ross is saying that he was told by sources who believed what they were saying at the time; that the White House denied it; that ABC News reported that denial; and therefore everyone acted in good faith, including the network. The process he describes — three top scientists, and then a fourth, concluding that a material found in the anthrax is bentonite, thereby tying the attack to Iraq, before discovering, oops, that it wasn’t bentonite after all — is suspicious all by itself. But let’s assume they were making an honest mistake and were not playing him all along.
There’s another problem, a journalistic one that Ross dismisses: He did not tell his viewers that the scientist sources concluded they’d been wrong, and that they told him so.
The White House denial was enough, Ross told TVNewser, adding, “From my point of view it gave national credibility to have on the record attribution and not some anonymous scientists.”
Right, those same anonymous scientists who were the basis for his melodramatic reporting in the first place — the same sources who spurred him to report, sensationally but falsely, that the anthrax was likely coming from Iraq’s government.
Here’s how Jay paraphrases Ross’s response:
Q. Did you ever report that your three—sorry, four—sources had changed their minds, and that they were wrong the first time?
A. Now why would I do that? These were confidential sources. I had the fire department on the record telling me that it was not arson. That’s a lot better, don’t you think?
A news organization on a mission to keep its audience fully informed would have run a separate report saying that its fabulous sources from the original, sensational reports were now saying they’d gotten it wrong. This news organization preferred, for whatever reasons, to keep such highly relevant information from its audience.
If these events occurred the way Ross says they did — and if ABC has done sufficient homework to ensure that they were not part of a scheme to manipulate the network — then ABC would be justified in not revealing the the sources’ names now. That assumes a great deal. I hope some other journalists who work for other news organizations are probing those questions now, because it’s obvious to me that ABC will not.
UPDATED
ABC News’ behavior surrounding one of its biggest “scoops” is already an object lesson of what’s wrong with American journalism. The news organization has proved unwilling — so far, at any rate — to come clean about how it was manipulated in the 2001 (and later) investigation into the anthrax attacks in the US following September 11.
The network’s hyperventilating broadcasts of leaked, false allegations purportedly tying the anthrax to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime — see Glenn Greenwald’s meticulous examination of the coverage — was bad enough. What the organization is doing now is journalistically unforgivable.
Pressthink’s Jay Rosen and I, among many others who care about the journalism craft, believe ABC has some big, vital questions to answer. Here are three:
1. Sources who are granted confidentiality give up their rights when they
lie or mislead the reporter. Were you lied to or misled by your sources
when you reported several times in 2001 that anthrax found in domestic
attacks came from Iraq or showed signs of Iraqi involvement?2. It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax
came from within U.S. government facilities. This leads us to ask you: who
were the “four well-placed and separate sources” who falsely told ABC News
that tests conducted at Fort Detrick had found the presence of bentonite in
the anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the
attacks to Iraq in multiple reports over a five day period in October, 2001?3. A substantially false story that helps make the case for war by raising
fears about enemies abroad attacking the United States is released into
public debate because of faulty reporting done by ABC News. How that
happened and who was responsible is itself a major story of public
interest. What is ABC News doing to re-report these events, to figure out
what went wrong and to correct the record for the American people who were
misled?
Salon’s Greenwald has a batch of other questions in his follow-up piece today. They are all important.
But Jay and I believe the above three go to the heart of what ABC did, or didn’t do, in its journalism during those frightening days after the 9/11 attacks.
We hope that lots of people will respectfully ask these questions, too. (If you do a posting, please send either Jay or me a note — here’s my email — or post a link in the comments on our respective blogs.)
Unnamed sources are bad enough, but sometimes they’re necessary. My opinion about unnamed sources who use journalists to spread lies is simple. I would blow the whistle, period. This kind of behavior is beyond the pale. So is ABC’s behavior, in not telling us what happened.
Would blowing the whistle on lying sources lead to fewer sources? It might. Sometimes people don’t know they’re lying, when higher-ups tell them to do the leaking with misinformation fed to the sources in the first place. But the over-reliance on unnamed sources stains the journalistic craft in any case, and situations like this one encourage the public to believe absolutely nothing that relies on such sources (not a bad policy, actually, but dangerous in the cases where the sources are telling reporters about truly terrible behavior).
Even before the latest twists in the anthrax case, ABC News was deeply tarnished by its terrible journalism in 2001 and its protection of liars who may well be criminals. Every day that passes takes ABC further into the kind of scandal territory that, at some point, it cannot overcome.
UPDATE
Others who have weighed in on this issue (some before this posting and others it was published) include:
Kevin Drumm of the Washington Monthly, who wrote (and with more hope I’ve managed to summon up, given how long ABC has been aware of the problems with its story):
At a guess, Brian Ross is re-reporting this story as we speak. I’d be shocked if he were doing anything else — and I’d say that part of that re-reporting ought to include a full explanation of exactly who was peddling the bentonite lie in the first place, and why they were doing it.
At the New Republic, John Judis called for a congressional investigation. This will inevitably turn into a circus, given Congreess’ inability to do much but blather, but perhaps it would help at the margins.
Dan Kennedy, longtime media critic, agrees that “ABC has some explaining to do.” He makes the useful point that if ABC’s sources acted in good faith, however implausible that may sound (and I think the chances of good faith there are vanishingly small), then they should not be outed.
UPDATED
Below, you’ll find a pointer to Will Bunch’s American Journalism Review story about journalists’ disconnection with the communities they cover. He interviewed me by email for this piece, and quoted from what I told him — accurately and in context — at the end of the article.
For an even larger context, here’s what he asked, and what I replied (edited to remove redundancy now that I’ve added links to previous postings).
Q: When you worked in newspapers, especially at a larger metro with a mobile staff like the Mercury-News, did you feel that reporters and editors were well-connected to the communities that they covered — engaged in the community and in conversations with citizens that led back to better news coverage. If not, how did journalism suffer?
A: It’s hard to speak for others. But my impression was that we were fairly well connected to the tech and local government folks, and less so to others. There were obvious exceptions, including several local columnists.
For me, the conversation started quickly. I was writing about technology in a place where a lot of it was being invented and improved, and everyone I covered had email early on. The readers were not shy about telling me what I was missing or getting wrong. That was when I realized (duh) that they collectively knew vastly, vastly more than I did — and what a great opportunity I had as a result.
When I started a blog in 1999, I started hearing from even more folks. Tech was and is more than ever a community of interest, not just geography, and I was learning things from a global audience by that point. I can’t overstate how much the blog was valuable in expanding and deepening the conversation.
None of that was to the exclusion of standard reporting, such as picking up the phone and going to see people in person. I got some of my best stuff over lunch tables in Palo Alto, Menlo Park and San Francisco, and in hallways at conferences.
But count me in as a huge believer in the value of online tools to deepen ties especially with communities, local and global.
Q: What did you learn with Bayosphere and in researching your book about the walls between journalists and citizens in their communities? Do you have concrete suggestions for breaking down those walls? Should their be limits on what types of activities a journalist should take part in — i.e., political activity (some journalists like Len Downie don’t vote, as you probably know)?
A: If we’re talking about breaking down walls between traditional journalists and communities, we’re actually making some progress. Whether it’s too late to matter is a separate issue, but it plainly won’t hurt.
As I’ve suggested before, newspapers in particular can have a huge leg up on doing this, and have more options. But broadcasters can do some of these things, too.
The first thing, whether you’re a newspaper editor or broadcast news director, is this simple test: Go to Flickr, Technorati and YouTube and search on your community name. You will find a parallel universe of media, being created by people in your community for themselves and each other. Then see what’s happening on Facebook and MySpace and other social networks. And see what old-fashioned (!) email lists, such as Yahoo Groups or Google Groups, are covering hyper-local topics. (Our old Palo Also neighborhood, consisting of several hundred homes, had a mail list where people regularly broke news of interest there, news that would never have risen to the attention of the Palo Alto paper, much less the Mercury News or Chronicle.)
Second, stop pretending your organization is an oracle. It’s not. You don’t know everything, and even if you did you couldn’t publish or broadcast as much as you’d like to. Pointing to outside sources of information — especially local blogs and other media — is a great start. It doesn’t mean that you endorse what these folks are saying or vouch for it, but it does mean that you recognize that others in your community are creating media with at least some information other people might want to see. Be the portal to everything. Point widely beyond the portal on individual stories and topics, and not just to source material, which more and more organizations are finally doing. Point to your competitors’ best stories when they beat you on something local. (I routinely did this on my blog, pointing to the SF Chronicle, NY Times, WSJ, trade journals and other tech outlets, because it was what my readers expected. I sent them away to the best stuff I could find, and they kept coming back because they knew I’d do that.)
Third, make sure your audience can respond and, in many cases, join the journalistic process. Comments are only a start. Moderation is a fine idea, but use a light touch. My rule for conduct is simple: We’ll be civil. We can disagree sharply, but we will treat each other with respect. Beyond comments, do what more and more organizations are (belately) doing: Ask the audience for information that can lead to better journalism. But if you’re turning people into unpaid freelancers, don’t be surprised when they start posting what they know on their own sites, not yours.
Newspapers have at least two more huge opportunities.
First is to open the archives, with permalinks on every story in the database. Newspapers hold more of their communities’ histories and all other media put together, yet they hoard it behind a paywall that produces pathetic revenues and keeps people in the communities from using it — as they would all the time — as part of their current lives. The revenues would go up with targeted search and keyword-specific ads on those pages, I’m absolutely convinced. But an equally important result would be to strengthen local ties. (Note: I discussed this in much greater length in 2005 in this posting, “Newspapers: Open Your Archives”.)
Second, expand the conversation with the community in the one place where it’s already taking place: the editorial pages. Invert them. Make the printed pages the best-of and guide to a conversation the community can and should be having with itself. The paper can’t set the agenda, at least not by itself (nor should it), but it can highlight what people care about and help the community have a conversation that is civil and useful. (More on this in another 2005 posting, “Where Newspapers Can Start the Conversation”.)
BTW, one word for the notion of journalists not voting: ridiculous.
Will Bunch (American Journalism Review: Disconnected. As embattled news organizations try to safeguard their futures with intensely local coverage, there is often a wide gulf between journalists and the communities they cover.
Talking Points Memo: Big News Orgs Fail To Label McCain Attack Ad What It Is: False. (Y)ou’d think the fact that the McCain ad contains a blatant falsehood would merit a mention in the coverage.
They must be talking about the big news organizations that occupy a parallel universe.
UPDATED
Doing journalism at its most basic level is a combination of two essential tasks. The first is reporting — gathering information via research, interviews, etc. The second part is telling your audience what you’ve learned — writing (in the broadest sense, including video, audio, graphics and more) and editing.
The demolition of the professional journalism business model has led to a sharp decline, one I don’t see slowing anytime soon, in traditional media. Many people in the field have been asking an obvious question with a not-so-obvious answer: Who will do the serious journalism we need in the future?
I have another question that will lead us to an answer. Not the answer, but one strong possibility — if we start thinking about, and helping, the “almost-journalists” among us to do actual journalism.
Anyway, here’s the question:
What famous journalism organization has, until very recently*, done the best reporting (remember, that’s the gathering process) about the United States government’s Guantanamo Bay prison? That’s the place where the United States holds the people the government has declared to be terrorists, a prison where prisoners have been in many cases tortured and, until recently, held without access to the legal system.
The people who’ve done the best reporting on this scandal have not, for the most part, been working for major media outfits. They’ve been working for that famous journalism organization called the American Civil Liberties Union.
Yes, the ACLU, which has done prodigious work to uncover the truth about America’s actions in creating this extra-legal system, shrouded in secrecy and in general disregard for international law and norms, not to mention America’s traditional respect for human rights. And on the ACLU’s “Rights in Detention” sub-site, you’ll find a huge amount of information — and advocacy — about this topic.
Note the word “advocacy,” because it’s critical here. The ACLU is an advocate, a passionate one, for the Bill of Rights. It is utterly up-front in that advocacy, and is working hard to change our policies in a variety of areas.
Now consider Human Rights Watch, the mission of which is “Defending Human Rights Worldwide.” It’s another advocacy organization that does superb reporting on the issues it cares about and they produces media to spread its message. Take a look, for example, at its report on Saudi Arabian domestic workers to see an exhaustively researched document on some troubling practices.
And then check out the Council on Foreign Relations “Crisis Guides” — see, for example, this one about Darfur – that provide remarkably detailed coverage of global political crises. As the judges of the Knight-Batten Awards said of the council when honoring its work, “This is an institution stepping up and honoring the best of journalism. It’s filling an absolutely articulated need.”
What the council did was journalism, by any standard. It lived up to the vital principles of journalism: thoroughness, accuracy, fairness, independence and transparency.
What the ACLU and Human Rights Watch did was what I’m calling almost-journalism. Their reporting was superb, but what they produced fell just a shade this side of journalism. They didn’t fully apply journalistic principles to their media, and that’s a shame.
Their media? Yes. They are absolutely in the media field now, because they are using the tools of media creation to learn and tell stories, and to make those stories available to a wide audience. These organizations and countless others like them — small and large, local and international — are part of the media ecosystem. With just a little extra effort, they could be part of the journalistic ecosystem too, in ways that go far beyond their traditional roles.
Consider the former public-knowledge trajectory an organization like the ACLU had to follow in the past. It would do painstaking research on topics like Guantanamo, and then it would issue reports. Its public relations people would contact reporters at, say, the New York Times and hope that the newspaper would pick up the story. If the national press ignored the report, no matter how powerful the content, the information would be known to a tiny number of people.
The ACLU still works hard to get its reports covered by the Times and other national media organizations. The traditional media retain a powerful role in helping the public learn about important issues. But advocates have new avenues, which they are learning to use more effectively.
They’d be even more effective, I believe, if they applied the principles of journalism to their work.
They’re falling short today in several areas, notably the one that comes hardest to advocates: fairness. This is a broad and somewhat fuzzy word. But it means, in general, that you a) listen hard to people who disagree with you; b) hunt for facts and data that are contrary to your own stand; and c) reflect disagreements and nuances in what you tell the rest of us.
Advocacy journalism has a long and honorable history. But the best in this arena have always acknowledged the disagreements and nuances, and they’ve been fair in reflecting opposing or orthogonal views and ideas.
By doing so, they can strengthen their own arguments in the end. At the very least they are clearer, if not absolutely clear, on the other sides’ arguments, however weak. (That’s sides, not side; there are almost never only two sides to anything.)
Of course, transparency is essential in this process, and for the most part we get it from advocacy groups. The one we can’t trust are the ones who take positions that echo the views of financial patrons. The think-tank business is known for this kind of thing, and it’s an abysmal practice.
As the traditional journalism business implodes financially, the almost-journalists are going to play an increasingly important role in the ecosystem. As traditional journalism companies are firing reporters and editors right and left, the almost-journalist organizations have both the deep pockets and staffing to fill in some of the gap — if they’ll find a way to apply those old and new journalistic practices to their media, whether it’s designed to inform or advocate.
We in the journalism education business have a special role. We can help the almost-journalists — the ones who want the help — to understand and apply these principles.
If we can get this right, the advocates and think tanks will have more credibility. The public will have more credible information sources. Isn’t that what we all want, and need?
UPDATE: My friend and colleague Ethan Zuckerman pushes back. In a meeting today at Harvard’s Berkman Center he observes that Human Rights Watch gets funding from the same foundations that support his own Global Voices Online project. They’re competing for a limited pool of money, he notes — and, besides, this doesn’t solve the who’ll-pay-for-journalism question but rather shifts it one level away from the reader/viewer/listener.
I’d respond this way: Yes, GV and HRW compete, and yes, in some ways we’re only shifting the sustainability question. But I still think it’s a good idea to elevate (if that’s the right word) the NGO-almost-journalism? As long as these groups are doing something so close, a small amount of leverage can produce some great new supply — and that’s worthwhile in its own right.
Also, see this posting by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, where he accurately says:
It has been left to the ACLU and similar groups (such as the Center for Constitutional Rights and Electronic Frontier Foundation) to uncover what our Government is doing precisely because the institutions whose responsibility that is — the “opposition party,” the Congress, the Intelligence Committees, the press — have failed miserably in those duties.
Yes, there have been many failures, leaving these openings for advocates. But they’ve always been a key source of material for reporters; what’s crucially changed is that they are now media outlets in their own right.
* And, the qualifier near the top, where I said the best journalism has been done about Guantanamo until “very recently,” had come from the ACLU, linked to the McClatchy Washington bureau’s brilliant series that ran in June, “Guantanamo: Beyond the Law” — a explainer that everyone should read. Naturally, other journalists basically ignored it, exemplifying the not-invented-here syndrome that weirdly continues to afflict the craft.
Finally, welcome to BoingBoing readers, and a thank you to BoingBoing for the pointer.
I’m honored to be giving a keynote talk at Highway Africa, which has become the biggest annual gathering of African journalists and has a strong element of how technology is changing journalism. A key theme this year is citizen journalism.
The conference has some scholarships available for working journalists. A link to the application is here.
Paul Grabowicz, head of new media at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, forwards these job listings. Good money for 9 months work a year:
Multimedia Fellow (2), UCB Graduate School of Journalism:
The University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism seeks two experienced journalists with extensive multimedia skills to help coordinate a new School-based research and educational project to develop digital news and information sites for under-served communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Fellows will work with Journalism School faculty to oversee the creation and management of the sites, collaborate with researchers from the Information School, Business School and other campus departments to assess the sites’ performance and viability, and train students in core journalism and multimedia classes at the graduate level.
A BA degree at minimum is required, along with proficiency in the use of multimedia equipment such as digital video cameras, digital audio recorders and digital photo cameras, and multimedia software applications such as Flash, Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro and Photoshop.
Teaching experience is desirable. At least three years experience as a practicing journalist is strongly preferred.
Salary: $80,000 a year for a 9-month teaching and research appointment, with year-round benefits. Possibility of summer employment opportunities at the School. This is a two-year appointment, beginning August 1, 2008, with the possibility of longer term renewal. The positions will remain open until filled. Applications will be reviewed upon their receipt.
Please send applications to Sage Dilts, Dean’s assistant, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, 121 North Gate Hall, Berkeley, Ca. 94720, sagedilts@berkeley.edu
The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. The School is committed to diversity as a professional and educational ideal.
I had a call last week from a researcher for a big-name journalist, asking a question about the expression “citizen journalist”:
I am primarily interested in finding who coined this term and when it
entered the mainstream media. If you are not sure of the exact timing of
the coinage, I am still interested in when you first heard the term “citizen
journalist” or any other relevant information on this topic. Any insights
you have would be greatly appreciated.
It’s a great question. I don’t have a great answer.
I sent out a Twitter Tweet asking for ideas. One person shot back, Ben Franklin. Certainly Franklin was one of the first to *be* a citizen journalist…
There’s a lot of history, including recent history, to examine. Let’s look, for example, at some newspaper databases — keeping in mind that most newspaper archives went online in this way only in the 1980s. (This has led to the modern journalistic failing, exhibited in this posting, of imagining that the world began roughly in 1980…)
A query on “citizen journalist” in NewsBank turns up a piece by the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Jim Klobuchar, “Work won’t be as lively without her,” dated October 12, 1988. Writing about a colleague, Barbara Flanagan, he said:
As a newspaperwoman, she been a welcome guest in hundreds of thousands of homes for a quarter of a century and as a citizen-journalist she has been a force for good in her community just as long.
I like that. A “force for good in her community” is a high achievement for any journalist.
Jumping ahead to 1995, NewsBank turns up an AP article about Sarah McClendon, who said:
“I’m a citizen journalist ,” she explained. “It means I am trying to do my journalism with the idea in mind I am seeking to give more information to the people of this country for their own good.”
I like that a great deal, too, even with the eat-your-spinach element, because in the end journalism is about giving each other more information for our collective good.
Some people have conflated “civic journalism” with “citizen journalism.” The expression “civic journalism” (also called “public journalism”) was coined in the late ’80s and early ’90s, by Jay Rosen, Jan Schaffer and several others. It connoted the idea that media organizations would help set community agendas in more explicit ways than in the recent past. In a sense, today’s citizen journalism is the outgrowth of this.
What became known as citizen journalism is the result of the digital era’s democratization of media — wide access to powerful, inexpensive tools of media creation; and wide access to what people created, via digital networks — after a long stretch when manufacturing-like mass media prevailed. Blogging was one of the first major tools in this genre.
As I noted to the researcher who asked, not all citizen media is citizen journalism. Most is not.
As to who coined it first in its current, digital-age meaning, or at least came closest, I’m not sure there either. But I’d start with Oh Yeon Ho, founder of Korea’s OhmyNews, who said back in antiquity (2000) that “Every citizen is a reporter.” Mr. Oh is one of the real pioneers in this arena, as we would all agree.
Again, I suspect someone else was ahead of him, even in this context, because I’ve learned never, ever to say someone was first, at least not when I don’t know for sure.
Of course, there’s a debate about whether “citizen journalism” is an expression we want to use in any case. I strongly believe we do, even though non-citizens of specific places can do journalism and participate in media — and they should — just as much as anyone else. My view of it is citizenship at two levels. I am a citizen of the United States, and proud of that. My journalism will, I hope, help fellow Americans. I am also a global citizen, as in one of the dictionary definitions of the word: “an inhabitant, or denizen” — of planet Earth.
That debate is really a topic for a separate post. The most important thing to remember is the democratization that makes it possible for anyone to be part of the journalistic ecosystem. Increasingly, I believe it’s a civic duty, if such an idea still has meaning.
Meanwhile, if anyone has citations of “citizen journalist” prior to 1985 — surely there are lots of them — post them below or shoot me an email. Let’s try to track down the earliest references.
UPDATE: Jay Rosen is trying to nail down a definition for the expression “citizen journalist” here.