The Public Editor Sunday column, 10/16/05

By TED VADEN, Staff Writer

There's been a good bit of chatter about blogging on The News & Observer blog sites recently. The gist of the discussion: What effect does online communication have on traditional journalistic standards?

You can catch a peek at the issues by looking at a lively exchange between The N&O's executive editor, Melanie Sill, and other bloggers, including nationally known press critic Jay Rosen.

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That discussion was sparked by a conference last weekend on blogging and journalism at N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro that attracted some 300 bloggers and journalists from around the country.

What is a blog? I think of it as the online equivalent of a letter home, addressed to whoever wants to read it. A blog is often personal, written by a single individual, but blogging can come from institutions like The N&O, which launched several blogs over the past six months (including one by the public editor.)

As they gain popularity and readership, blogs are challenging the position of "mainstream media" as sources of information on news and public policy. They also are causing newspapers, as they get into the blogging game themselves, to re-examine long-held standards of journalistic practice.

"I think the new media are going to force us to look at very closely held journalistic values and think carefully about how we apply them -- keep some, change some, maybe discard some in order to succeed," Kerry Sipe, news online coordinator for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, told me. "The new media is a different game and requires a different set of values, maybe a more complex set of values."

Example: It is a generally a no-no in the newspaper business to give a news source the chance to read a story before it's published. That's to prevent compromise to the story's integrity.

But Sipe asks, "Why wouldn't you show a source a story? The fact is that the source knows more about the story than you do." Allowing pre-publication review doesn't have to mean giving that person veto or editing authority over the story.

The real-time nature of blogging also means compromising the traditional newspaper editing that, we think, ensures accuracy, balance, fairness, thoroughness. In the blogosphere, the editing process is having to yield to the online demand for instant information, regularly updated. Some N&O reporters, used to almost oppressive editing, are nonplussed to find their blogs going online without being touched by an editor.

If newspapers have to adjust their standards for blogging, what kind of standards apply in that world? At their best, blogging advocates say, higher standards. John Robinson, editor of The Greensboro News & Record, says the best bloggers: provide electronic links to their information sources, so readers can fact-check behind the blogger; update as new information becomes available; quickly correct mistakes; and are more responsive to readers. "They do a better job than journalists partly because of the difference in the online medium," said Robinson, whose newspaper has attracted national attention for its ambitious portfolio of staff-produced blogging.

But not all bloggers meet that "best" standard. One reason is that so much blogging begins with opinion, rather than fact. "There are a lot of bloggers who put opinion out there with the idea that it will lead to the truth, rather than do what reporters do, which is to start with the facts," Robinson said. "What we get with some bloggers is that there is no reporting. That's where I'm not sure that the standards of some bloggers are up to the standards of newspapers." (It's a coincidental tidbit, but you should know that both Sipe and Robinson used to work for The N&O.)

I talked to one Raleigh blogger last week who writes critically about The N&O but refuses to put his name on his Web site. Asked why, he said, "I want my blog to be about the material on the blog. I don't want to be John Personality." OK, but so much for accountability.

After the Greensboro conference, I wrote a blog saying Rosen, the press critic, claimed higher standards for bloggers than journalists. In an e-mail to me, he took issue with my characterization of his remarks. He said his purpose had been not to claim a higher ethical standard but to jolt journalists out of a complacency that they have standards and bloggers do not. In the interest of equal time, I share his e-mail at length:

"What this (complacent) view overlooks are a number of ways in which bloggers at the high end meet higher standards than journalists at the high end," he wrote. "I mentioned the art of linking, where bloggers set the pace, speed of correction and the willingness to correct, interactivity, transparency, being in conversation with others on the Web.

"I didn't mention, but it was implicit, that in other ways professional journalists do have more stringent standards: their rules for verification, right of reply, and not engaging in speculation would be examples there. My purpose was to complicate the picture, not to raise the triumphant hand of the bloggers and call them the winner, which would be obnoxious -- and untrue."

So where does all this leave us? In the area of journalistic standards, I for one am not getting too hung up on the relative merits of newspaper journalists versus bloggers. My sense is that readers will gravitate to those communicators, print or online, who over the long term demonstrate adherence to basic journalistic values of accuracy, fairness and pursuit of truth.

And we should be reminded that blogs are not a replacement for traditional journalism. For one thing, much online content is not original but feeds on the reporting done by newspapers and other media. "Most of what you know, you know because of the mainstream media," Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, told an audience recently. "Bloggers recycle and chew on the news. That's not bad. But it's not enough."

Finally, we need to be aware that there is an important part of our population, the poor and disadvantaged, who are disproportionately left out of the public debate as it moves online. Wherever this wild ride in the blogosphere takes us, it needs to serve all of society.

The Public Editor can be reached at Ted.Vaden@newsobserver.com or by calling (919) 836-5700.

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