As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.

“Some things get really bad–histories, politics, gets controversial that doesn’t get settled easily,” said Bernard Huberman, author of a study, which determined that increased edits make Wikipedia articles “superior.”

Not everyone is buying the study, and some even did their own research to test Wikipedia as a trustworthy source of accurate information.

Alex Halavais, assistant professor in the interactive communication program at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., inserted 13 errors into various Wikipedia articles, including a false addition to the periodic table and the definition of “longitude.”

I think it’s pretty easy to read that as saying that I don’t buy the Huberman study (which, I presume, is this one). Of course, I wasn’t asked about the Huberman study, and I would be curious who these “some people” are. Wilkinson & Huberman present an argument that the best articles are the most-edited, generally speaking–I’m not sure how one would even take issue with that. But–just to be clear–I am not among those “some people,” and I would never use my caprice (the “Isuzu Experiment”) as anything approaching substantial evidence. If anything, I would be pleased if it spurred more thorough investigations of the quality of the content on Wikipedia and how that content is accumulated.

ATTENTION EDITORS – CAPTION CLARIFICATION U.S. President George W. Bush playfully pats the back of U.S. Women’s Beach Volleyball team player Misty May-Treanor (L) at her invitation while visiting the Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Grounds at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, August 9, 2008. Teammate Kerri Walsh (R) watches.

– AP corrected caption, issued eight minutes after and lacking the word “backside” initially sent out with this photo

The question is whether hearing this multiplicity of voices spurs us to discussion and to action, or whether it is stultifying.

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. Application deadline: August 15. Please send applications to Sage Dilts, Dean’s Assistant, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, 121 North Gate Hall, Berkeley, California 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 think it would be fair to say that I was a skeptic of the Bryant Park Project when it started up. Inherent to any project that tries to make the image of an organization more hip, it smacked of trying too hard. After all, NPR has a market psychographic, and they should stick to it. Despite this skepticism, I found myself listening to the show on my commutes up to Connecticut, and found it engaging, amusing, and enlightening. As a radio show, it succeeded brilliantly, I think, at reaching a demographic that was on the edge of NPR already–a group of educated GenXers who won’t be dead (mostly) in the next decade. That they jumped into social media with both feet, allowing it to pervade their program without the programming being necessarily about social media, made it a great example to bring up when people asked the “what to do?” question: go see what BPP is doing.

Unfortunately, it looks like BPP won’t be doing much of anything as of next month, which is really a shame. As the 200+ comments on this posting suggest, BPP had assembled a loyal and interested following. They also suggest that the following was deeper than it might have been wide, but there is no way to know this. Given another year, I suspect that BPP would have brought more non-NPR listeners into the fold; it’s too bad we won’t get to see that happen.

On a personal note, I feel guilty now for not listening. Now that it’s summer, I’m not making the commute up to school, and I generally don’t listen to talk radio while I’m working (too distracting). But I’ll make an exception for the rest of the month, listening to the last of their shows.

The Dallas Mavericks have banned from the locker room any writer whose “primary purpose is to blog.” The problem is that this rule has been applied to only a single journalist, a blogger for the Dallas Morning News, who happened to also write an article critical of the coach the day he was booted from the locker room.

But Cuban defends his decision in a post that seems contradictory, to say the least. He starts out by saying:

A blogger, a beat writer, a columnists. The medium they use to deliver their content should be irrelevant. No question about it.

Right so far. The job of journalist has very little to do with where your story hits, and a lot more to do with the ways in which you gather it. If you are committing journalism, it doesn’t matter where you are doing it.

By the end of the same post, he not only has a question about it, he has completely contradicted himself:

Do they not know the difference between a blogger and someone who actually writes feature articles on a destination website?

Obviously, no they don’t. Unfortunately, he fails to explain the difference. I suppose he is suggesting that he will only allow people in the locker room who have a certain audience. By that measure, Howard Stearn gets a pass, for example. It seems pretty obvious that they limit access to the locker room to those who are full-time journalists, and probably not every full-time journalist who wants access gets it. The whole “blogging” think is a red herring.

As LAist points out, Cuban seems pretty clueless about the media environment, suggesting that if he lets one blogger in, every high schooler with a MySpace page will want to crowd into the locker room.

The banned journalist, Tim MacMahon, posts his own response, and once again showing Cuban’s perfidies (or at least churlishness) on the issue, brings up Cuban’s own argument against walled gardens expressed less that two years ago (during a talk in which he suggested that Google would be stupid to buy YouTube).

The question remains, though, how professional sports survives without the walled garden. Really, it remains the test case. Cuban, as with all owners, is in the business of selling first, the spectacle, and second, the brand. The only way to price out spectacles is to be exclusionary. But it’s also the best way to become irrelevant in a media environment rich with alternatives.

(via Aaron)

Tin Foil Hat

I have a pet theory. The president of the university, John Lahey, is nothing if not public relations-savvy. What is the guaranteed way of getting publicity for your campus newspaper? Threaten to shut it down, let things stew for a while, then make a firm statement that clearly endorses the autonomy of the newspaper. Think of this as a kind of “Pentagon Papers” for our own little newspaper. In a year the Chronicle may be seen as a beacon of student activist journalism, simultaneously propelling our journalism program to national prominence and dispelling the idea that the Quinnipiac campus is particularly apathetic.

It’s almost a given. If you want publicity, threaten the editor of the university paper when he criticizes an administrative policy. Even better, make sure that the president is directly involved. This is like sending an email to journalists saying “free hooks.” And at least a few of those journalists have bitten. An article appeared last Sunday in the New York Times detailing the conflict, and another article appeared earlier this week in Inside Higher Ed.

On the Other Hand?

On first blush, it looks like there is little to prop up the administration’s position. They offer two issues. The first is that they claim that things have been misquoted or taken out of context in Chronicle articles. This is almost certainly the case: after all, newspapers always fail at incorporating what everyone would like to see in the paper. Newspapers cannot please all of the people all of the time.

However, I am particularly cognizant of this criticism because of an exchange that occurred on this blog. I noted a quote in the Chronicle that seemed odd, and the person quoted argued that she never said what the paper said she said, or that if she did it was taken out of context. She complained to the paper, and the automatic response in these cases–the ethical response–is at the very least to make clear to the readership that the quoted individual disputed the article’s quotation. When I read a response on this blog that suggested that the paper was unwilling to do this, it raised serious flags for me: journalistic ethics require that reporters and editors are sensitive and responsive to their audiences and their sources. I think this is something that the paper should take seriously, and review their procedures for handling complaints about quotes and either publishing retractions or letters from sources contesting the quotation.

The second issue, which comes in a letter from the administration to faculty that I will not quote, suggests that there is an issue of legal liability: if the newspaper publishes content that is libelous, or that reveals protected information about the student (presumably issues protected by FERPA), the university could be held liable. I won’t hold them to this argument, since it seems not only misguided, but potentially damaging. If they are suggesting that by publishing the paper they are editorially responsible for it, I think they are setting them up for a fall down the road. It is almost inevitable that a media outlet will at least be *threatened* with lawsuit at some point. Even this lowly blog has received such threats from more than one corner. Does the administration really want it on record that they think they have an oversight role in determining content in the paper? If they assert such a role now, it will lead to a lot of back-peddling if and when the paper is sued and the administration tries to wash its hands of culpability.

In the end, what needs to happen is a clear statement from the administration that they have no interest or desire in acting as a censor for the newspaper. That is a vital first step. The second issue–whether university officials are allowed to speak to student journalists directly–is important to the quality of the education QU students receive, but if the administration chooses not to speak to the press, internal or external, there isn’t much that can be done about it. In some ways, the worst possible public relations is limiting your relations with the public. As the university seeks to become better known nationally and internationally, it needs to abandon parochial views and embrace a role that is very much in the public eye.

All of this comes back to an instigating issue. A number of racial epithets were scrawled on the doors of black students’ dorm rooms and elsewhere on campus. In some sick way, this makes Quinnipiac quite a bit like some other major campuses, where racial insensitivity is rising. Unfortunately, it represented yet another black eye for Quinnipiac, in part because of a (correct) impression that it is not particularly diverse. Quinnipiac ranks among the “top” ten whitest law schools in the US, and despite some interesting efforts, many of the students are strikingly unaware of the world outside of this little slice of the eastern seaboard, or outside of their own neighborhoods. It is important that the president not sweep racism under the carpet; like many social ills, it racism breeds best when kept under wraps, quiet, and unchecked. Many students on campus reacted against the racial incidents that occurred, and it is important to reflect the tolerance of our community proudly. We need to demonstrate our beliefs publicly, and conversations with our president should be equally open and public.

What Doesn’t Kill Us

As I said, I am hopeful that good can come out of this incident. As one commentator has noted, this act has energized otherwise placid students at Quinnipiac. She notes this rather ominous YouTube posting, suggesting that there is an undercurrent of activism on campus:

If there is such an undercurrent, it is well hidden. Many of the differences between this campus newspaper and that at the The Daily at the University of Washington are night and day, in part because the latter has successfully navigated efforts at censorship. It’s about page proudly trumpets its independence:

The Daily is the independent student newspaper for the University of Washington. The Daily is produced exclusively by students, with the exception of four non-student UW staff members who provide fiscal and administrative assistance. Any UW student may work for The Daily and will be paid for their work.

All content and advertising is approved by student staff members with no interference by UW staff or administration for an uncensored press. No non-student staff members review editorial content before publication.

A nine-member Board of Student Publications oversees the newspaper, reviews finances, resolves disputes and selects the editor and advertising manager. The board is comprised of representatives from UW administration, the Faculty Senate, the Department of Communication, ASUW, GPSS, a professional publication and The Daily newsroom.

The Daily began as the Pacific Wave in 1891. It became The Daily in 1909 when the paper began publishing five days a week. The Monday edition of the paper was dropped in 1933 during The Great Depression. The Monday publication resumed in 1985 and has run on schedule ever since.

The uncensored approach to student journalism has been controversial at times, but the First Amendment and Supreme Court decisions guarantee this right for students at the University of Washington.

Former UW Communications professor, Don Pember, stated “While freedom of expression has been considered a basic right for the press in this country for nearly 200 years, this right was not articulated for college and high school newspapers until quite recently. Until the 1960s, college and high school journalists enjoyed about as much freedom of expression as the newspaper’s advisor, the high school principal or the college dean was willing to allow.”

In the 1967 Supreme Court decision Dickey vs. Alabama, it was ruled “censorship of school papers is allowed only when the exercise of freedom of speech interferes materially and substantially with the requirement of appropriate discipline and order in the school.”

It remains as the law today.

UW faculty, staff and students can be proud that this university was a pioneer in clarifying the freedom of student press and that University presidents have defended that Constitutional freedom ever since.

The Daily won the Apple Award at the 2006 College Media Adviser Spring Convention in New York City for the best overall four-year college tabloid-sized newspaper in the nation.

Obviously, The Daily has about a century of a head start on the Quinnipiac Chronicle, but I hope that the current efforts to curtail its freedom act as a kind of annealing process, giving student media on campus a more common set of values and objectives.

The award dinner was tonight at the Metropolitan Club, and though I was lucky enough to receive an invite, it was not clearly “and guest,” so I decided to shy away this year. Next year, though, assuming I am lucky enough to score another invite, I’ll make my way out. It’s cool that my School does this, I think–honoring journalists is something we deserve to be proud of. I know who I would vote for next year, though it may not be considered a “safe” choice.

Update (5/23): Oops: it’s a lunch, not a dinner :).

It’s interesting because it has grown up largely outside of the blogging phenomenon. It’s a bit like LiveJournal in this respect, but to an even more extreme degree. Paul made the site in response to the needs and the interests of the community, and as a result, it feels a lot like other blogs in some ways, and not at all in others. Judged on its own merits, it is a striking design, and has a very rich feature set. Particularly for community-based journalism/journaling, which has always been at the heart of the project, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a better platform.

But it is also interesting in the ways in which it integrates with the physical community–a section just north of downtown Buffalo surrounding Elmwood Boulevard Avenue–but manages not to integrate much with other blogs. Certainly, there are links to it from other prominent blogs in Buffalo, and it is widely read by bloggers in the area, but it has somehow managed–largely by design–to be a very place-based community website, and for that reason, among others, a particularly interesting collaborative community. Paul did a lot to publicize the site, but none of it was virtual publicity. Mostly, he linked to the site from the physical location: the side of his house, chalking the sidewalk, or t-shirts on people.

The New York Times has a very nicely done article on underaged model sites, sites that include images of (often barely) clothed minors in sexual poses. This is sometimes referred to as “legal child porn,” and while that certainly seems to be an oxymoron, it may not be entirely. While US v. Knox established a test that allowed for prosecution of those selling (and receiving) images of clothed minors under certain circumstances, it strikes me that pedophiles can turn any image of a child into pornography, if more explicit images are not available. In other words, unlike a lot of laws, while you are still held responsible for breaking the law, it’s not completely clear where that line is drawn.

Obviously, the solution is to get no where near anything that could be even possibly considered child pornography. But that’s easier said than done. On the “mainstream” porn side, there are extremely popular titles like “Barely Legal” that play to an appetite for youth. On the non-pornographic side, there are the millions of parents who think nothing of taking pictures of their children in the bath, or nursing–photographs that have gotten people in trouble for producing child porn.

The Times article links directly to the lilamber website, as an example of the progenitor of this phenomenon, noting that the new sites tend to be more explicit in their language, if not their images. (As an aside, I am terrible at judging age, and while “lilamber” is clearly young, I can see how someone would mistaken her for being over the age of 18, perhaps.) This follows on the recent arrests in the UK over what is sometimes called “virtual child pornography.”

But the editorial policy of linking to the lilamber.com site (which I have done above) is interesting. One one hand, by providing the name of the site, they have effectively given the reader enough information to find the site. Actually making it a hyperlink is merely a convenience and a pretty common thing for bloggers to do, for example, as a service to their readers. However, it isn’t a convenience offered elsewhere in the article. Indeed, this is the only external link in the article, which affords it some importance.

As the article itself notes, they quickly ran into sites they found to display child pornography in their own investigation. Under such circumstances, is it responsible to shunt readers off to a site that is on the questionable border of such material? Does the Times have a clear policy as to what it does and does not link to?

I spoke with Schiff for about forty-five minutes last month. And yes, I am shallow enough to have hoped to see my name in the pages of the New Yorker, but I guess I\’m just going to have to write something myself for that to happen :). I think she summarized some of the research Derek and I are doing when she noted (as Wales has) that “Wikipedia remains a lumpy work in progress.” I generally speak to a few journalists each month, and though I would never teach an interviewing class, some of them are really bad at interviewing. And unlike what you might expect, some of the worst interviewers are at the top papers. They can be bad in two ways: technique and knowledge.

On the technique side, I just don\’t get it. I am certainly willing to wait a second while you catch up on typing something out, but if you are making me wait for a minute between each question, I\’m going to tune out. Use a tape recorder! And if you have questions, have them be answerable. I\’ve been told that I am a good interviewee, in part because I have no problem listening to myself talk, but there is nothing worse than answering a question like \”Sooo, what do you think about X?\”–at least if that\’s the only question there.

Some reporters come in with an agenda. I\’ve actually been asked something along the lines of \”Would you say \’Bats enjoy attacking humans,\’\” and then saw a lead that said \”Expert says \”bats enjoy attacking humans.\’\” That, obviously, is taking it too far. But itâ€s not as much fun if a reporter calls with no angle at all, then there isn\’t really anywhere to go with the conversation. I don\’t mind helping them fish out an angle–I enjoy it–but it needs to be a two-way street.

And then there are folks who are reporting on something–for me it\’s usually social/mobile computing or (sometimes) pornography–and are totally clueless. They\’ve clearly been assigned this topic and haven\’t bothered to do some basic Googling. That\’s fine–that\’s what there are experts for after all. But just like when students come and ask you questions that were already covered in lecture and the book, it can be a little bit frustrating at times.

All this to say that Ms. Schiff was one of the most enlightened interviewers I\’ve talked with, she knew what she wanted to ask, and clearly had a good feel for the complex issues surrounding Wikipedia. It may be that I just caught her late in her research–and obviously she isn\’t under the time demands that most of the newspaper journalists I talk to are–but after talking with her, it does not surprise me in the least that she did such a good job in capturing the dynamics of the issues surrounding Wikipedia.

There is much hand-wringing–and rightfully so–over the fact that a small number of companies own much of the news media we see. So, does that result in a shrinking set of perspectives. I looked at coverage of the presidential elections of 1992, 1996, and 2000 to see whether and to what degree the perspectives of this coverage changed across eight newspapers.

The results were a bit complicated. Generally speaking, the largest, most “national” of these papers started out pretty similar and grew more similar over the period. The more local (but still very large circulation) newspapers remained a bit different. This was excluding, naturally, wire stories. In other words, if you want a diversity of news, it’s not enough to read the New York Times and Washington Post–you should read your local paper as well. OK, that may not be exactly mind-blowing news, but it was an interesting project.

What made it interesting: the way I figured this out was to compare the word frequency in several thousand articles. I don’t think anyone has taken a similar approach. So, that was kind of cool.

I don’t think I’m allowed to republish the article here (same with upcoming book chapters), but I don’t think anyone will object to the readthrough. So, if you are interested, here’s the mp3.

Paper vs. Mecha-Godzilla

All the wrap-ups linked above have the some quotes. This is a group of people who live and breathe soundbites. Yes, Huffington noting that the argument over “paper vs. online” has the feel of the Ginger or Mary Ann bar-room debates and “it’s 2006, can’t we just have a threeway,” is eminently quotable, but doesn’t get you very far. Malcolm Gladwell rolling out the old chestnut of “what if printing had just been invented,” likewise is a kick in the side of the head for an audience that has already been kicked that way a lot. The first part of the discussion revolved around this “will there be paper in 10 years,” which–to me at least–is the dumbest question ever, and has already been done to death anyway. Predicting the future is a bad business to be in, but I’ll lay even money against anyone willing that in a decade we will still be buying newspapers and magazines on regular old dead trees.

Pearlstine especially wanted to know what the economic model would be. Several times, he brought up the importance of the shift in advertising from agglomerated audiences to search-based ads. I think folks are incorrectly shying away from the importance of this, assuming that it is merely the concern of dot-com entrepreneurs and old media CEOs, but it is of vital interest to anyone who wants to know the long-term direction of online media. The growth of the mass media was certainly predicated, in part, on technological advances, but if not for the mass production and mass advertising, there would never have been an economic model that allows for mass media. Without a networked model of advertising, or some other business model, there isn’t any way to know how online media will change our media environment. The technologies have already shifted, as have some of the social expectations, but the money question is still up in the air. The panel seemed to keep coming back to the rather prosaic questions of the technologies of printing and distribution by mail, but there were some interesting observations beyond this.

Weisberg noted that the iPod, in large part because of its rapid penetration, has changed the way the industry and the audience engage music. He suggested that what we were waiting for was the “iPod of reading.” Andy Bowers piped in from the audience to suggest that the iPod of reading might end up being… the iPod. I have a feeling that we identify the iPod as revolutionary in some way because it is the most proximate view of iTunes–an economic model that is new(ish) and seems to work, despite a lot of controversy over how it handles intellectual property rights.

Huffington suggested that the New York Times was making a mistake in putting its best stuff behind walls. If it’s not linkable, it doesn’t matter. This feeds into the larger question of who pays for content–where does the money come from. Again, it will be interesting to see what the Times does with the MyTimes project. I was surprised that no one brought up the BBC, which has gotten a huge push in US readership, I suspect, in part because they are so friendly to linkers.

At one point, they called out a survey: how many of the audience, of several hundred, read a newspaper daily (in its traditional on-paper format). Nearly every one of the hundreds of audience members raised their hand. How many did not: perhaps five or ten, including myself. They took this in stride, but I was shocked. At the Hyperlinked Society conference a couple of weeks ago I was speaking with someone (sorry, don’t remember who it was) who noted that he was teaching journalism students who had never read a newspaper, and didn’t know what to make of it. I found the reaction in this audience to be staggering. Kinsley, however, noted that a Rice professor (no name given) had suggested to him at one point that the question of paper would be “solved actuarially.” If this room was any indication, though, that seems like it is a fairly remote solution. I was by no means the youngest person in the room.

Blogging is… different

Several times the discussants circled around to the idea that writing for the web is different, in part because web audiences are different. Huffington argued that web audiences expect and require interactive content, and some feeling of conversation. They also are obsessive about following a story in the news. A front page story may show up and drop off the traditional newspaper in one day–but bloggers will keep at that story until some conclusion is reached.

Weisberg suggested that writers needed to start writing for new media: using hyperlinks, exploiting the potential of the medium. This is not only what readers want, it is what they expect. Journalists of the old school–of the J-school!–still write for their print audience (which, by the way, we have already established were the people in this room). That their articles happened to show up on the web was an afterthought. That needs to change. That articles eventually find their way into the printed newspaper should be the afterthought; the focus should be on the web. There is a need, in Huffington’s words, to find people “able to swim in these new waters.” And these people are not coming out of the J-schools right now. The internet has “broken down the barriers to entry” for doing journalism (Weisman).

And now for something completely Denton

Several people asked questions. Nick Denton challenged Huffington on whether she was a comment whore. I am sure he put it more nicely. Basically, the question was whether she (like he) carefully analyzed server logs and found out what people commented on and liked and concentrated on those items. I think this is really a good question (it’s one I’ve been very interested in of late), and Huffington acknowledged it as such. She said something about how it was important to maintain integrity, but there was certainly some interest in maintaining interest. That balance is a really important one for any medium, for any journalist. Is it pandering to listen to your audience? It’s certainly not a good thing if you are listening to your advertisers, but in some ways, your advertisers shape who you listen to. In the mass media era, advertisers required a mass audience, and a mass audience was only obtainable through least objectionable reporting, or “objectivity,” or “balance,” depending on who you ask. In an era of networked media, the contrary seems true: you don’t reach audiences without being objectionable. If you look at “dugg” or “slashdotted” or other flash croweded posts, it is unlikely that they will be non-controversial. Attention whoring works because people are paying. Which reminds me, I need to get AdWords back up on my site.

Everything else

I’ve passed over a lot. There were mentions of bloggers picking at the carcass of the New York Times and counter-claims that the New York Times is less than the paragon it might have once been, especially given their extremely weak–possibly complicit–reporting on the build-up to the Iraq war. This was a group at home in front of an audience, who also has spent some time at the front lines, and it was an interesting discussion for it. Just wish they could have done it backwards–they spent a bit of time wading through truisms before starting to touch on the meatier questions.

I think this kind of exploratory forensic structure is a really interesting way to present information to the public. It should be the sort of thing that journalists are providing in their online newspapers, perhaps with a narrative “walkthrough” or tour to demonstrate the highlights.