Center for Citizen Media

UPDATED

NY Times: Wal-Mart Enlists Bloggers in Its Public Relations Campaign. Under assault as never before, Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters. But the strategy raises questions about what bloggers, who pride themselves on independence, should disclose to readers. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, has been forthright with bloggers about the origins of its communications, and the company and its public relations firm, Edelman, say they do not compensate the bloggers. But some bloggers have posted information from Wal-Mart, at times word for word, without revealing where it came from.

It should go without saying that the bloggers should make this disclosure, right? No question, the ones who parrot a company line — down to using the company’s words — ought to be more forthcoming about the connections.

It should also go without saying, in that case, that newspapers (typically small ones) should not reprint press releases verbatim or nearly verbatim, at least not without disclosure. Yet some do, and the New York Times rarely (if ever) beats up on them.

And it should go without saying that TV stations shouldn’t use footage from “video news releases” (VNRs) without noting the video’s origins. Yet they do.

Most of all, though, it’s worth noting that people involved with stories, or their paid personnel, constantly talk with pro journalists. Now they talk with interested bloggers and others in the “new media” world. It’s part of the influencing and journalism processes, but it’s getting larger and to some degree messier.

I’d guess that most professionals realize they shouldn’t pass off other people’s work as their own. And the difference between advocacy and straight-up reporting, while sometimes less clean than we might like, is not a total mystery.

I don’t think the bloggers need to say they’re talking to Wal-Mart or its PR people when they make such postings. Journalistic transparency doesn’t have to include listing the people you’ve interviewed, though maybe that’s not such a bad idea to consider. Would that also include the disclosure that we’ve consulted the Web sites of the company or its supporters? Where does transparency end in telling readers/viewers/listeners about our research?

We should also note that the Wal-Mart PR person objected to the bloggers’ actions. That was responsible on his part. In the future when PR folks are asking bloggers for help, they should always make it clear that an outright quote without citation is a no-no.

Summing up: The Times is not making an unfair point with this story. To the extent that the paper now hammers on transgressions among professionals (and it has done so in the past, to be sure) it will be doing its proper journalistic job.

(Note: Richard Edelman, CEO of the PR firm advising Wal-Mart on its strategy with grassroots media, is a member of the Center for Citizen Media’s Board of Advisors. I didn’t contact him before writing this piece. I don’t like Wal-Mart, for many reasons, incidentally, but they have a right to be heard.)

UPDATES:

• Richard Edelman: PR firms must be very conscious to abide by some very clear ethical standards, so that we do not compromise bloggers. First, we must always be transparent about the identity of our client and the goal of the PR program. Second, we should ask permission to participate in the conversation, and be comfortable with any communication being made public, whether by the blogger or an investigative journalist. We should support bloggers’ transperancy re. the source of their information. Third, we must reveal any financial relationship with bloggers, whether consulting or even reimbursement of trip expenses. Fourth, we must ensure that the information we provide is 100% factually correct and not “spin.”
• Jeff Jarvis: I think some newspaper ombudsmen should do PR audits of their papers. How many stories come from flacks without disclosure? How much of the substance of stories comes from flacks without disclosure? How many benefits accrue from flacks and companies without disclosure?

Dave Winer: What is an unconference? First, you take the people who used to be the audience and give them a promotion. They’re now participants. Their job is to participate, not just to listen and at the end to ask questions. Then you ask everyone who was on stage to take a seat in what used to be the audience. Okay, now you have a room full of people, what exactly are they supposed to do? Choose a reporter, someone who knows something about the topic of discussion (yes, there is a topic, it’s not free-form) and knows how to ask questions and knit a story together.

I’m planning an unconference on citizen media during the summer (tentatively at Harvard in early August; the time and location are now being decided), and want to do it this way. With this topic, it’s basically the only plausible way, actually.

If you’re interested in attending/participating, please let us know.

Terry Heaton: TV News in a Postmodern World: New Metrics and Principles: What’s needed is a new metaphor to replace the old one, and new metrics upon which to place value in a world of unbundled media. The value will be there, because access to eyeballs (or eardrums) will always have value. But those eyeballs are scattered, knowledgeable, hip to our ways, and highly suspicious. This requires a completely counterintuitive set of metrics and principles.

Terry offers a long list here. I disagree that these are counterintuitive, however.

If you don’t read it already, Digg has been the hot site in finding the latest Internet buzz among techies. The social bookmarking site allows users to vote on what sites are hot by adding their “digg” vote to the raw list of contributions. However, it has always been hampered by a weak comments feature, replete with trolls and juveline insults. Grand-daddy news site for nerds Slashdot, with its engaging discussions on tech issues and trends, developed a meta-moderation system and became a wine-sipping salon for intelligent and witty discourse, while Digg grew by providing bookmarks as virtual jello-shots, quickly turning into the Animal House of social software. (Interestingly, the weekly affiliated podcast Diggnation features the two hosts tossing back beers while discussing the most Digg’ed sites each week.)

But last week, Digg introduced comment rating, nesting and filtering, and the nature of the community has changed quite dramatically for the better – smart conversations are happening now that the signal/noise ratio has improved.

This is a good example of what Clay Shirky has described as situated software – “software designed in and for a particular social situation or context.” Instead of engineering an entire site for all foreseeable features it might need, the situated software models means having software programmers working alongside content folks to adapt to the conditions, needs and growth of the community. Slashdot did the same thing in developing meta-moderation. Wikipedia developers (one paid, and many volunteers) rewrote features as the community grew and vandalism was more rampant and sophisticated. It’s good to see Digg upgrade their site to keep up with their phenomenal growth.

AP: Reports: AT&T, BellSouth near$65B deal. AT&T is nearing a deal to acquire BellSouth Corp. for $65 billion, according to reports published Sunday. The companies were expected to announce the terms of the deal as soon as Monday, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Both papers cited unidentified sources, due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.

If this deal goes through — and given the Bush administration’s (and Congress’) willful blindness to the implications of a telecom world dominated by only a few, and soon only a couple, of predatory giants — Verizon will surely buy Qwest. Why wouldn’t they?

We’re moving into troublesome times, where rapacious mega-companies, steeped in monopolistic traditions, assert utter control over our communications. If you think they won’t use their market power to stifle innovation they don’t control (or from which they get a cut of any action) you don’t study history.

What can average folks do? Complain to Congress, of course. Sadly, this has less and less effect in a political system that is increasingly of, by and for the wealthy and powerful.

It can’t hurt, however, to raise your voice.

Newsvine took off the wraps today, and I have to say it’s one of the best efforts yet in combining the knowledge of the community with the news. I’ll be saying more about it in an upcoming post, but this is one of the sites you have to watch if you care about the future of news.

The same applies to Digg.com, which has a tech focus and is getting pretty good at surfacing news that matters in the tech world. People vote on stories and they move up or down accordingly.

What both lack, as far as I can tell, is a way to add individual reputations — chosen by the user — to the mix. I like knowing what the community considers interesting. I like knowing what certain people consider interesting a great deal more.

I’m at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication with a bunch of online journalists, of many stripes and motives. The one-day conference, held under the auspices of the Online Journalism Review, is not a bunch of lectures and panels but rather a collection of discussions.

OJR will be covering the sessions in depth, and I’ll point to those reports when they appear.

All-around smart guy Tristan Louis has examined blog trends in the past year by taking the Technorati 100 from 2005 and comparing it against 2006. He found some interesting results, showing the dynamic nature of the blogosphere:

• Only 9 blogs moved up in the rankings, and there were 65 new entries to the list. That means only 35 of the 100 have stayed.
• Asian blogs seem to be “becoming a major force… In a world where globalisation is key, the blogosphere has not yet fully grappled with the impact of the Asian Pacific region and there probably will be some interesting discussion around this in the future.”

His conclusion:

If you take those numbers, it means that a total of 90 blogs (25 dropping within the list and another 65 dropping off the list completely) ended up with a lower position in 9 months. Combined with the fact that 9 blogs moved up, this means that 99 percent of the list was dynamic.

This, to me, was a pretty stunning revelation: while there is much obsession about who is and isn’t on those lists, it seems that their nature is a lot more dynamic than expected. Going beyond that, it also look like being on top is no guarantee that you will stay there (if anything, it is a guarantee that you will not, as 9 out of 10 blogs fell and 65 percent disappeared from the list altogether).

UPDATE: As Seth Finkelstein and others pointed out on Tristan’s blog, the algorithm for ranking the Technorati 100 has  changed in the past year, which also contributed to the changes in the list.

The New York Times reports that Yahoo is shifting focus away from creating traditional, TV-like content on the Web to a major focus on bottom-up material. Key passage:

With advertisers moving large parts of their budgets online, the market for content, created by professionals, bloggers and individual users, is expanding rapidly — as is the competition. Major media companies are developing video-based programming for the Internet. Myspace.com, purchased last year by the News Corporation, has become a major site based on user-contributed content. Many start-ups, like youtube.com, seek to follow suit.

Indeed, Mr. Braun said yesterday that the way to keep users on Yahoo’s site longer — and thus be able to show them more advertising — was to offer ways they can create their own content and look at content created by others. He pointed to the site Yahoo built for the 2006 Winter Olympics, which prominently featured photographs from Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing site, along with articles both by news agencies and by a few columnists exclusive to Yahoo.

“I now get excited about user-generated content the way I used to get excited about thinking about what television shows would work,” he said.

The story says Lloyd Braun, who’d been widely expected to be leaving the company, planned to stay. If he’s really serious about “user-generated content” (an expression that I loathe) that’s a surprise to me, given his history. His turnaround is an admission that he didn’t grasp what the Web was about — and I give him points for admitting it.

Yahoo has been a leader in the bottom-up space for some time. The grassroots need even more help, and this could be a big boost.

Jay Rosen and his students at New York University have launched their Blue Plate Special, a listing of what they deem to be the best blogging newspapers in America. Check out what they (accurately) call their nifty chart.