Sourcing, verification, bloggers and the Times
Last night, I had a conversation with Ted Vaden, public editor of the N&O and a panelist last weekend at ConvergeSouth. Ted is thinking of writing his newspaper column about the issues of blogging and journalistic standards that were raised at Converge. Melanie Sill, the N&O's editor, and journalistic blogmeister Jay Rosen had a bit of a dust-up over this at Melanie's site.
I don't want to get in the ring with those heavyweights. But the conversation with Ted got me thinking again about standards, competition and the changing media landscape. I think Jay is right about the need for newspapers to pull themselves up to the standards set by the best bloggers. Bloggers do a better job with transparency and linking and correcting errors and interacting with readers. (My experience in talking with newspaper people, though, is that it is not the best blogs that worry them. It is the blogs that aren't fastidious at verifying information or transparent fact-checking.)
But I'm going to take the discussion in another direction. Ted and I began talking about the Jefferson-Pilot merger story we chased throughout the weekend but didn't publish because we couldn't verify it. What if a blogger had posted an item about the merger first, Ted asked. Would you have published then?
I said no, probably not. It would matter if the blogger sourced the information, and we could track it down. But say the blogger didn't. Who knows what his or her standards of verification are. Who knows if the blogger's info is anything more than the rumors we heard? Nah, we wouldn't publish.
Then, I flashed on another thought. We published a JP merger story online Monday morning based on a New York Times story that had no named sources or attribution. Hmmm, I thought, so I'm saying that we can justify publishing an unsourced Times story but not an unsourced post by a blogger? What if the blogger had been someone like, say, Ed Cone, a journalist, a columnist for this paper and a credible reporter? Hmmm again. Or what it had been Sandy Carmany, a city council member who might well be in a position to know about the buyout? We'd try to confirm the information, but what if we couldn't? What if they protected their sources? If you believe your readers know more than you, where does this leave you? Why would we give the Times, which has had credibility issues of late, a pass but not local bloggers we trust?
I said some of this to Ted and have been thinking about it ever since. To paraphrase Ed from months ago, that little Microsoft hour-glass in my head is flipping. It's an interesting time.
Comments (2)
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John,
The fact that you're willing to entertain these questions says alot about what you and the paper are trying to do.
I can't blame you for running with the Times and for not running with a blogger, at least in the short term. The reality is that although the Times has made plenty of mistakes over the years, especially of late, they have also built a consistent track record of reliable reporting for decades.
Bloggers on the other hand have not had the same time to build up that trust. Even someone like Ed who is a professional reporter has only had a short time to build his EdCone.com brand. His other writing has been on behalf of other entities that we must assume fact-checked and edited him. EdCone.com benefits from the Ed Cone name, but it is not a proven entity like "Ed Cone the journalist who works for Wired and the News & Record" does. I think once EdCone.com has been around for a decade or two and has proven to be a reliable news source, then you can run the story with relative confidence. And I'm by no means implying that Ed isn't reliable, just that his blog hasn't earned the institutional trust that the Times or for that matter the AP have built up literally over generations.
As for non-professional-journalist folks like Sandy or Patrick Eakes, I think you really have to keep them in the fold as trusted sources that will generate story leads for you. Practically speaking they're less likely to produce what we would consider a classic article written for publication, but they are quite likely to produce a couple of paragraphs that highlight a breaking story.
I'd say your instincts were right on, and I hope you proceed with the same caution for at least the near future.
Posted on October 12, 2005 6:11 PM
Bloggers are making an impact. Scooping info left and right from local media outlets will become more of a trend soon. However, it still blows my mind when I see what the big boys...the real media..see as news worthy on blogs...Viagra anyone?
Posted on October 14, 2005 12:31 PM