future-of-journalism

ORGINAL URL:
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001163.php
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/

Wired Magazine's By Kevin Kelly maintains a personal website, and sends out emails about "cool tools" he's found on the Internet. Here's a recent email (which should show up on his website shortly)

By Kevin Kelly

Recently I surveyed the emerging web filters which rely on consensus
methods (see the CT review http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001163.php
) as a way to quickly read what was happening in the world. I hypothesized
that soon there would be a meta-site that would aggregate all the
consensus filters into one. The next day Thomas Marban from Austria wrote
me to say that he had already written one, called PopUrls.com I've been
using it daily for the past month and its great.

This single page now replaces my need to directly read Digg, Reddit,
Delicious, Furl, Slashdot, BoingBoing, NewsVine, Metafilter and all the
others that I subscribe too. This one page encapsulates up-to-the-minute
headlines from 15 consensus filters, and top thumbnail images from the
social sites Flickr, YouTube, and Google Video. The hive mind on one screen.

Here's how I use it. On one page I can scan the latest headlines of what the
web collectively thinks is either popular or interesting. A simple mouse
over the headline will cleverly reveal a small box of expanded text on the
article. If I want even more, a click will open the original entry in the
filter. In five minutes I can scan 18 social site sources thoroughly. I get
an excellent feel for what is new and what is worth following up (a small
amount of overlap between sources helps).

The design of PopUrls is brilliant. There's two flavors, black on white or
white on black. Function drives form, buttons are minimal. It feels like a
well-designed command post for a concise debriefing. Even on a large
screen, like the 21-incher I use, there's a bit of scrolling. But I've come
to realize that I MUCH prefer this single fixed sheet to endless RSS feeds
in a reader. In fact, the page is essentially an improved interface for
multiple RSS feeds, which keep PopUrls constantly updated. The dashboard
doesn't move, while all the streams flowing into it keep it lively.

There's no better way to watch the hive mind.

-- KK

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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 10:11 AM

ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2005/10/mainstream_media_vs_journalism_vs_the_in.php

FIRST POSTED: Monday, October 31, 2005
HEADLINE: Mainstream Media vs. Journalism vs. the Internet

Posted by John Burke on October 31, 2005 at 09:22 AM
on Editor's Weblog (World Association of Newspapers)

There have been many discussions about the contradiction between the huge profits that media giants demand and their newsrooms' role of producing quality journalism. Journalists feel that their publications, and their communities, are suffering greatly because of newsroom staff cuts which their corporate benefactors deem necessary in order to increase revenues as much of their audience and advertising migrates to new media, especially the Internet. The Internet also furnishes a platform for journalism, but it has not yet been determined if it will be able to provide society with the kind of reporting it needs to remain informed.

In this respect, journalism is caught in a tug-of-war whose opposing sides are the old guard, which is seemingly cannibalizing it, and new media, which isn't quite yet sure how to embrace it. Depending on which side wins, either a brand new news model will emerge or journalism will be torn apart in the fight?"Lines blur in the new media world. The only line that doesn't is the bottom one: profit."

Nieman Watchdog has reprinted an essay by Director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, Michael Bugeja, entitled "News media profits undermine reporting." In the article, he says that "Profit undermines the point of reportage - community" and quotes former CEO of the Knight Foundation Hodding Carter III who said companies have forgot that they once were "part of the entire civic enterprise."

Former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Tim McGuire, is quoted in the article as questioning how "values of great journalism can exist side by side with the profit demands of the marketplace," and asking editors to "focus on readers rather than profits." But still, large media companies continue to cut jobs.

Bugeja continues, writing that standard journalistic practices such as fact-checking and objectivity have been sacrificed to increase productivity and thus profit. A loss in fact-checking has conversely caused plagiarism scandals at several papers and objectivity is moving closer to being eliminated by a news cycle that pushes the boundaries of entertainment.

City Paper, a Philadelphia weekly has a couple of articles this week complaining about the cuts that Knight Ridder is making to two of its city's institutions; The Philidelphia Inquirer and the Daily News. They are to lose 75 and 25 newsroom members respectively. Reminiscing about the good-ol'-days of Philadelphia journalism, the articles describe present staff morale at rock-bottom and how many feel that they are not going to be able to accurately report on their communities.

On the other hand, some, such as former advertising man at the San Jose Mercury News (another Knight Ridder paper which is undergoing massive job cuts) Lou Alexander, thinks it impossible for large media companies to cut their profit expectations and "plow massive additional money back into journalism." If they began to do that, firstly their CEO would be fired causing millions in legal fees and eventually a bigger company would swoop down, gobble up the company and spit out the publications for a maximum profit (see former posting on Alexander's views).

When considering the two views, neither of them seems capable of maintaining a high standard of journalism while simultaneously maintaining a high profit margin; the first because the financial resources aren't there; the second because the journalism needed to sell content is absent. So what's the happy medium (no pun intended)? Quite possibly, it's the Internet, the phenomenon that's stealing customers from traditional media as well as revolutionizing the craft of journalism.

An article in Online Journalism Review by associate professor and director of the new media program at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, Rich Gordon, seeks to support this theory. He introduces the piece with a grim prediction for traditional media: "Some great media businesses -- ones that delivered terrific journalism as well as solid financial returns -- are going to fail within the next 10 years or be acquired by other companies. And those that survive will probably employ fewer journalists than they do today." But at the same time he wonders, "Will Internet business models support the creation of original journalism?" Considering the developments of the past year, he thinks this just might be possible. He cites the Internet advertising boom, individual journalists who are successfully feeling out the Web, the spread of citizen journalism and Yahoo!'s journalistic venture with Kevin Sites (see previous posting) as examples.

Furthermore, three characteristics of the Internet will help a new and beneficial form of interactive journalism develop: the power of publishing it gives to everyone; the simplicity of linking to other information; and the ease of finding relevant information with RSS feeds and search. Gordon's theories may all seem feasible, but another article in Philadelphia's City Paper makes some good points about the sustainability of Internet journalism: "Interactive writers can quickly become slaves to instant ratings." He uses the example of a colleague who edits a niche website on AOL, "Diet and Health." The AOL editor writes, "Every time you click, our page views go up we get more ad dollars then I get promoted."

Essentially, the fact that Internet content can be posted immediately will drive journalists to begin writing for popularity, instead of the investigative journalism society needs. "AOL's narrowcasting encourages even the most diligent reporters to become entertainers," says the articles author.

Taking this all in, if corporate media is to fade away because of poor financial performance and Internet journalism is unable to replace the quality those organizations used to produce, society will be the real loser. But chances are, passionate journalists and citizens will not let that happen. With their intimate involvement in the inchoate media revolution, the tug-of-war will likely end in a draw where both sides will win a little and lose a little. Mainstream media will lose its huge profit margins and win back the trust of its viewers, listeners and readers with quality content. The Internet will lose when some of its developing innovations do not perform as predicted, but will ultimately win by providing an exciting platform for interaction that will benefit democracy and society.

In the end, it's journalism that will emerge victorious.

Sources: Nieman Watchdog, City Paper (Knight Ridder and Internet
journalism), Grade the News (Alexander), Online Journalism Review

Posted by John Burke on October 31, 2005 at 09:22 AM

// posted by newshare @ 1:17 AM

As quoted by Mark Glaser, MediaSift (PBS) columnist, at:
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/03/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_pe_1.html

Cass Sunstein , a law professor at the University of Chicago, has decried
The Daily Me as helping to foster an echo chamber online where people only
read news stories that align with their thinking, and never see opposing
opinions. .If the public is fragmented and if members of different groups
design their own preferred news packages, the consequence might well be
greater fragmentation as group members move one another toward more
extreme positions,. Sunstein wrote in a Time magazine essay, Boycott the
Daily Me , in 2001.

http://www.time.com/time/interactive/politics/undemocratic.html

TIME MAGAZINE, JUNE 4, 2001, VOL.157 NO.22

Boycott the Daily Me!
Yes, the Net is empowering. But it also encourages extremism.and that's
bad for democracy

By CASS R. SUNSTEIN

Technology is tipping the political balance away from the state and toward
activists who can now mobilize instantly.

Our Interactive World, an hour-long special hosted by CNN's Michael Holmes
and Tumi Makgabo, featuring luminaries from the world of information
technology
For most of human history, people's interactions have been shaped by
geography. We lived and talked with those who were nearby. More than
anything else, the Internet is fundamentally changing that.

All over the world, new communities are forming, based not on shared
spaces but on shared interests. Religious fundamentalists in Brazil
exchange ideas with religious fundamentalists in Russia. Survivors of
cancer in Tokyo offer moral support and helpful information to survivors
of cancer in France. Environmentalists in America, concerned about global
warming and destruction of the rain forests, speak on a daily basis with
environmentalists in Germany and South Africa.

From the standpoint of democracy, this seems to be a wonderful
development. As a result of the Internet, people can learn far more than
they could before and learn it much faster. If they distrust the mass
media and want to bypass it and discuss issues with like-minded people,
they can do that. With the declining importance of geography, people need
not depend on the daily newspaper or the local library. And if they want
to send information to a wide range of people, they can do so via e-mail
or websites. People are even able to create what has been called the Daily
Me.a newspaper that includes those topics and points of view they wish to
encounter and that excludes material they find boring or irritating.

In many ways, these developments contain a great deal of promise for
self-government. But there is a dark side, too. For democracy to work,
people must be exposed to ideas they would not have chosen in advance.
Democracy depends on unanticipated encounters. It is also important for
diverse citizens to have common experiences, which provide a kind of
social glue and help them to see they are engaged in a common endeavor. A
world where people only read news they preselect creates a risk of social
fragmentation.

Until now, this danger was diminished by general-interest newspapers,
magazines and broadcasters. When reading the local newspaper, you may come
across stories about technological innovations in Berlin or crime in Los
Angeles or new business practices in Tokyo.stories that you might read but
which you might not have placed in your Daily Me. When the evening news
comes on, a story about an earthquake in India might catch your attention;
maybe you will even help with relief efforts, even though you would never
have chosen to know about the tragedy in advance. You may believe that the
problem of global warming is overinflated, a threat manufactured by
radical environmentalists; but a persuasive article might engage your
attention and even change your mind.

These unchosen, unanticipated encounters are important, even crucial, for
democratic self-government. And while the increased power of individual
choice can expand our horizons, it can also narrow them if many people end
up in communications universes of their own specific design. For
democracy, there is a special problem. Social scientists have long known
that when like-minded people are deliberating together they tend to end up
thinking the same thing they thought before.but in more extreme form.
Those who believe tax rates are too high will, after talking together,
come to think that large, immediate tax reductions are a really good idea.
People who think the world economy is in trouble are likely, after
discussion, to fear economic catastrophe.

This phenomenon carries a stern warning about the effects of social
interactions on the Internet. If the public is fragmented and if members
of different groups design their own preferred news packages, the
consequence might well be greater fragmentation as group members move one
another toward more extreme positions. Extremists will become even more
extreme. In fact, hate groups are flourishing on the Internet simply
because their members are able to interact with others having similar
prejudices, thus fortifying attitudes that would otherwise tend to
dissipate.

Does this mean the Internet is bad for democracy? Not at all. Tyrants are
less likely to prosper when dissidents can exchange information with
democrats from all over the world. More than ever before, citizens can
avoid the limitations of space and form communities around ideas. This is
healthy for the exchange of information; it can even breed political
engagement. But good citizenship requires far more than countless editions
of the Daily Me. Democracy is undermined when people choose to live in
echo chambers of their own design.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 10:40 PM

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/265249_gcenter03.html?source=rss
Monday, April 3, 2006

Public TV host Brancaccio says people just don't trust the media
But blogs, journalism have potential for 'great synergy'

By CHRIS McGANN
P-I CAPITOL CORRESPONDENT
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

As host and senior editor of the public television program "NOW," David
Brancaccio spends a lot of time researching and thinking about the issues
that shape U.S. policy and how those issues shape the everyday lives of
many Americans.

Since he took over as host of the show in 2005, when Bill Moyers retired,
he's provided viewers unique perspectives with hard-hitting reports on
government secrecy, the future of America's public schools, the plight of
America's workers, the influence of talk radio on public policy, the
conservative movement's political convention strategy, and the future of
the environment, from mercury in our lakes to natural gas drilling in the
Rockies.

The general thrust: "We've got a problem with our media and it's not just
the media's problem."

"There's a lot of inward looking and hand wringing about the state of
journalism in America," Brancaccio said. "I'm trying to make the case that
this is everybody's problem because we have a democracy here."

The problem breaks down into two major components, he said.

"The level at which the public trusts journalists continues to fall," he
said. "The good news is the public still seems to think that it's a decent
idea for the news media to keep a close eye on public officials and
government -- that's nice, but they don't trust us. They think we are
biased."

Why does the trust break down?

"There's an interesting theory," he said. "When you ask journalists why
they do what they do, I say, we do this in the public interest. Trying to
make the community a better place. It's part of the role of the news media
to keep an eye on civic issues and gather the facts so that people can
figure out what to do with those facts.

"And yet the public absolutely doesn't believe that. They think that we
are either, A) delusional when we say we are working in the public
interest or, B) lying."

For a number of reasons, Brancaccio said, people don't think journalists
are being honest about their motives.

"So you have this problem of trust," he said, "and then it bumps up
against this interesting little paradox in my line of work: Public
broadcasting ... is the most trusted brand of journalism."

Brancaccio's explanation: "I'm not serving shareholders. I'm lucky enough
to just be able to do my thing with my non-profit little production
company. It's easier for the public broadcasters to make the case that
they are in this for the public good, that there is an educational mission
here."

What about blogging? Does that undermine the trust?

Brancaccio said blogging comes up in every interview he does and many
people say the way of the world is online new media, he said.

He cited a Project for Excellence analysis of news content on a single
day.

"Only 5 percent of what was in the blogs were what you or I might consider
journalism," he said.

Defined as: "Did they do any interviews? Did they consult any documentary
sources? Were they witness to events? The answer: no, 95 percent of the
time," he said.

"The idea of citizen voices expressing themselves through blogs is
fabulous," he said. "There's people reading them and there's people with
cool opinions.

"I read blogs quite a bit because they are other smart people with more
time on their hands than me (and they) have aggregated stories that I need
to see. I'm just worried that underlying the blogs -- there needs to be
some news coverage and we have a challenge -- who is doing the news
coverage? Well, I'm doing some, you're doing some, but it's endangered.

"It's all great stuff but it is not a replacement for professional
reporting ... just people kind of commenting from the side is not all you
need. You need somebody inside these big institutions talking to people or
getting sources, he said."

What about the way blogs could undermine traditional gatekeepers and
traditional authority?

"I think it is pretty good even if it undermines journalism some. When we
screw up, the bloggers are right there to hold our feet to the fire," he
said. "But there has to be a basis of actual fact, fact does matter. It's
not all just spin. But if blogs are built upon a foundation of facts that
journalism can provide, then that's a great synergy."

What are the basic ingredients for doing stories that restore trust in
journalism?

"I love doing interviews with people who are not the elites, but on the
other hand the caveat that my colleagues have for me is: They're not that
interested in simply an interview of simply someone who is the next guy on
the bar stool -- there has to be a basis for what they are saying," he
said.

"They have to have some kind of reason that we are talking to them
specifically, some experience or something special to give.

"Sometimes in blogs, it is like the next guy on the bar stool --
everybody's got some opinion.

"As your paper discusses its role in the blogosphere, there is something
called journalism that's a real thing and it's not just snobby journalists
upset that regular citizens can also do this, but when they do it they
must be journalists.

"They have to have seen something, done some rigorous interviewing or
consulted documentary sources. It can't just be pilfering and respinning.
The concern is that there is supposed to be an economic model that
supports the rigorous side of this. We are struggling with it, too."

P-I reporter Chris McGann can be reached at 360-943-3990 or
chrismcgann@seattlepi.com.

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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 11:14 PM

ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/04/2oppel_edit.html
Sunday, April 02, 2006

COMMENTARY: RICH OPPEL
Oppel: Newspapers, the guardians defending us from official tyranny

By Rich Oppel
EDITOR, AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN, Austin, Texas

I saw the other day where New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller says
he'll spend less time reading blogs and granting interviews to the
bloggers who see newspapers as stumbling behemoths on the way to the
graveyard.

Way to go, Bill.

Nothing is new when it comes to critics predicting the impending doom of
newspapers. I heard the predictions before most of them were born.

The bloggers are derivatives, good at catching "Old Media" in its
mistakes, but virtually incapable of breaking news on their own.

June 1, 1963, was my first day as a cub at The Tampa Tribune, and reporter
Milton Plumb ambled over to give me some advice: "Don't get into this
business, kid. It's dying."

Then Plumb went through his nightly exercise of dismantling his
Smith-Corona and locking up the parts so that no one could use the
typewriter. Then he left.

Today Milt's son Terry is the seasoned, worthy editor of the Rock Hill,
S.C., Herald. So much for dire predictions. We couldn't afford to see
newspapers go away. They are essential to an open society, and we would
all be in sad shape if daily papers weren't here.

In a good fight with big government, the bloggers can't hold the jackets
of newspaper people because they lack shoe-leather experience and the
financial resources of a newspaper to pursue and endure. Further,
magazines have become frothy, and TV news has been crippled by
fragmentation.

The business of journalism will change; but the journalism of journalism
needs to hold up.

This is Pulitzer season, when the 18 members of the Pulitzer Prize board .
I'm one of them . read the work of the three finalists in each of 14
journalism categories and then announce winners in mid-April.

Again this year, I see courage, passion and skill in journalism across the
nation, from the great cities to the small towns.

It is evident in the editorials of The Oregonian in Portland, supporting
fair treatment for the institutionalized mentally ill; in Biloxi, Miss.,
where editor Stan Tiner's eloquent writing gave courage to Katrina-mauled
residents; in Toledo, Ohio, where Blade reporters turned up a $200 million
state investment fraud by one of Gov. Bob Taft's golfing buddies.

But whether they are winners or not, two journalistic efforts stand out.
They are national projects done in the face of our nation's growing veil
of secrecy and despite threats by the Bush administration. They could
change history.

Dana Priest, who covers the intelligence world for The Washington Post,
revealed that the CIA was operating "black site" prisons in East Europe.
She showed prisoner abuse, mistaken imprisonment and a record of few
intelligence gains.

The other national piece of great note was "Spying at Home" by Eric
Lichtblau and James Risen of The New York Times. The White House asked
that the articles not be published. The Times published anyway . and
showed that Bush had permitted the National Security Agency to eavesdrop
without court warrants inside the United States.

The NSA spying led investigators to only a few potential terrorists, while
flooding the FBI with useless tips and diverting them from more promising
work. Both the Post and the Times spurred public debate about the balance
of fighting terrorism, civil liberties and the growing concentration of
presidential power.

You can be angry. For those who believe the press is undermining national
security, or at the least playing into the hands of Democrats, remember
that Priest's work caused a Republican-controlled Congress to require the
CIA to report on the secret prisons (which the CIA had, until then, failed
to do).

No newspaper is worth its salt unless it provokes people.

Who would do this work if daily newspapers didn't exist? Who would replace
the Post and the Times on national security, and who would be Biloxi's
voice were it not for Stan Tiner of the Biloxi Sun-Herald?

And if the American-Statesman didn't exist, who would conduct Laylan
Copelin's investigation of Texas redistricting, Texans for a Republican
Majority, the Texas Association of Business and Tom DeLay?

Who would replace Andy Alford and Erik Rodriguez in uncovering the Austin
Police Department's pattern of abusing minorities, which is now lessening?
Who would pick up Robert Elder's close watch on state investment funds?

TV, radio and magazines occasionally penetrate the walls of government to
develop meaningful enterprise, but they do not match the work of more than
50,000 journalists in the newsrooms of American daily newspapers.

No other medium has the resources to stand guard at the wall separating an
informed society from official tyranny.

No one.

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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 11:05 PM

ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=934bdeb7-ccea-4e05-aa30-6b39539af1aa&k=2184

Monday » April 3 » 2006

Time's bold move into blogs

Mark Evans
Financial Post (of Canada)

Friday, March 31, 2006

Without being too melodramatic, the blog as a disruptive and rebellious
medium could be dead. Perhaps the most obvious indication blogs are
becoming part of the mainstream is Time magazine's recent decision to hire
two high-profile bloggers -- Ana Marie Cox and Andrew Sullivan -- to write
for the magazine and the Web site.

Instead of being dismissed as just forums for online rants or digital
diaries written by broken-hearted teenage girls, blogs have quickly
emerged as credible communication tools.

As a result, it's no surprise to see newspapers and magazines embrace
blogs as a new way to engage consumers, particularly younger ones who
spend more time online than reading and watching television.

Quebecor Inc., for example, is trying to jump-start its digital strategy
by launching blogs and other user-generated content. "I think there is no
other future for conventional media ... than to migrate to this model,"
Pierre Peladeau, Quebecor's president and chief executive, told reporters
earlier this week.

One of the big challenges facing traditional media that launch blogs
and/or hire well-known bloggers is maintaining the unique culture that has
allowed the blogosphere to flourish over the past two or three years.

A big part of a blog's appeal is authors pretty much have free reign to
write what they want -- be it commentary, criticism or ideas. Blogs are
free-wheeling creatures that -- at their best -- reflect the personality
of the author in a way that is difficult for newspapers and magazines,
which have to follow a format and engage in self-censorship for legal
reasons and editorial accuracy.

So what happens when blogs are institutionalized by the mainstream media?
Does it mean posts have to be edited and approved before they appear
online, rather than being controlled by the author? Would this take away a
blog's voice and vibrancy? And do readers see blogs as something they want
or expect from the mainstream media ?

These are questions that will need time to be answered because it is still
early days for blogs -- despite there being roughly 50 million in
existence.

To date, many newspapers and magazines are in experimentation mode and
trying to figure how to blog and who should blog. Do they hire bloggers or
cajole their staff reporters to write blogs as well ?

Among newspapers around the world, The Guardian in England has a
reputation for having a forward-thinking blog strategy. This includes a
group blog called "Comment is free," which features columnists from the
Guardian and Observer newspapers along with other writers and commentators
with a wide range of interests.

In the U.S., a study by journalism students at New York University of the
100 largest newspapers cited the Houston Chronicle, Washington Post and
USA Today as the "top blogging newspapers."

An informal study by NYU professor Mark Hamilton found Canadian newspapers
are lagging behind. An exception was the Toronto Star, which has eight
writers who blog.

Om Malik, a writer with Business 2.0 magazine and a highly popular blogger
(gigaom.com), said it was inevitable "big media" would eventually discover
blogs, and part of their strategy would be hiring some of the
blogosphere's biggest stars.

"In my opinion, blogs are the new black," he said. "I think Time made a
brilliant move in hiring Sullivan and Cox because we are all looking for
big media validation."

Mr. Malik said he expects more newspapers and magazines to hire
professional bloggers because writing a blog on a consistent basis can be
a challenge. "I have made this argument time and time again; people don't
realize how tough it is to write original stuff [for a blog] and be a
reporter," he said.

In hiring Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Cox, Time has realized blogs are not a
passing fad but an increasing part of the media landscape.

The company's willingness to experiment with and embrace new digital
content should not come as a surprise. Even before the dot-com boom
happened, Time Warner invested US$75-million on a Web site called
Pathfinder.com that featured free content from many of its magazines.

The site was closed in 1999 after five management changes -- probably
because it was ahead of its time.

Rather than stay on the sidelines and watch rivals move into the
blogosphere, Time is taking a bold step forward. If it means blogs lose
some of their funky, cool cachet, so be it.

© National Post 2006

Copyright © 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks
Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

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The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 10:56 PM

THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF JOURNALISM. Good Experience

By Michelle Cottle
The New Republic

Only at TNR Online | Post date 04.03.06 Discuss this article (46)

ho says the Bushies' crusade to spread democracy isn't working? Sure,
things are still a little hairy in Iraq. The Palestinian elections didn't
go exactly as we'd hoped. And Egypt has basically given us the finger as
far as fixing its democratic shortcomings goes. Over in Madison,
Wisconsin, however, the administration's ideas really seem to be catching
fire.

As reported last month by The Washington Post's indefatigable Howie Kurtz,
the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison's morning paper, recently moved to
harness the interactive nature of its website by inviting readers to vote
online for which of several stories they'd like to see on the front page
of the next day's paper. Rather than imperiously decreeing what sort of
piece readers should care about, the Journal's editors have gone
grassroots, giving the reading public a say about what is or isn't worth
its attention.

How democratic. How market-oriented. How customer-responsive. How utterly
moronic.

I realize these are unsettling times for the Fourth Estate. The web is
changing the way people consume news. The Bushies, along with their
conservative media colleagues, have spent the past several years trashing
mainstream journalists as ideologically motivated and morally bankrupt.
Jayson Blair has convinced readers we're making it all up. Dan Rather has
convinced them we're all unpatriotic Bush haters. And every remotely
controversial news story winds up sliced, diced, and julienned by an
overcaffeinated blogosphere with a chip on its shoulder about the
arrogant, self-satisfied, lazy, corrupt "old media." It's hardly
surprising that polls show our public credibility headed towards that of
Jack Abramoff.

In response, journalists have become obsessed with showing everyone how
open we are to criticism, how eager we are to dissect our screw-ups, and
how committed we are to being humbler and more in touch with what our
readers have to say. The New York Times finally broke down and hired
itself a "public editor." Traditional media outlets have been scurrying to
create web-based reader feedback forums. And every time you turn around
there's some media group hosting a panel or conference or breakfast or
fondue party to discuss how we can make everyone love us again.

Fine. I'm on record as believing that journalists could do with less
self-flagellation, but I can see the appeal and potential benefits to
these moves. But even as we host all the chat fests and solicit all the
reader feedback we can stand, media outlets really should draw the line at
having readers do their job for them.

I realize it's very popular--not to mention economically savvy--to talk
about "giving readers what they want." And I'm in no way suggesting that
we ratchet back the "soft news" or "lifestyle journalism" pieces that keep
readers subscribing. (Hell, without its Wedding Pages, the Sunday New York
Times would only have two dozen readers.) But determining what merits
serious, front-page coverage really should be left to people whose careers
have been in the service of the news.

Already, I can hear the clackety-clack-clack of angry e-mails being
composed: Who the hell are the editors of the Wisconsin State Journal--or
even The New York Times--to say what is or isn't news? At the risk of
sounding tautological, they are the editors of the Wisconsin State Journal
or The New York Times or USA Today or what have you, and making exactly
these sorts of news judgments is a big part of what their profession is
all about.

And make no mistake. No matter how half-assed or silly it may at times
seem from the outside, journalism is a real, grown-up profession in which,
as with nearly every other job on the planet, experience and acquired
skill matter. While that may sound obvious, I'm convinced that a sizeable
chunk of the public can't quite get past its belief that any idiot can be
a journalist because, by and large, it doesn't require the same sort of
specialized or technical knowledge as being a doctor, chemical engineer,
or CPA. (Just look at all the articles and blog posts cheering the death
of the exclusionary, elitist big media and the rise of the web-empowered
citizen journalist.) It's a little like the disdain with which many people
quietly view child care providers: It can't take much skill or smarts to
tend to a child, because look at how many clueless teenage moms do it
every day. Likewise, folks figure that any idiot can form an opinion and
write a sentence, so what's so tough about being a journalist?

But reporting and editing, like preparing a legal brief or fixing a broken
toilet or properly taking care of a child, call for a variety of skills at
which one becomes increasingly proficient through experience. (Not to be
confused with opinion journalism, of course, in which folks like me just
make it all up as we go along.) Will experienced professionals
occasionally screw up? Without question. Do they bring personal biases to
the job? Almost certainly. But no matter what the Bush White House may
want you to believe, part of being a straight-news journalist is striving
to minimize the degree to which one's personal biases color one's news
judgment. (This, in contrast to columnists, O'Reilly-esque pundits, and
Ann Coulter freak shows whose careers depend on filtering everything from
the federal budget to the president's snack preferences through their/our
personal biases.)

Certainly, journalists could stand to pay closer attention to what's
happening in the communities they cover--or, in the case of the national
media, to venture beyond the rarefied cultural bubble of the New
York-to-Washington corridor. But it's absurd, not to mention
counterproductive, to think any of us can win readers' admiration by
further undermining the notion of journalists as serious professionals
with acquired knowledge and expertise. If members of the news media can't
take what they do for a living seriously, how can they possibly expect
anyone else to?

Michelle Cottle is a senior editor at The New Republic.

----------------------------------------------------------------

This article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 10:46 PM

In Chicago, the publisher of The New City, an alternative weekly, himself
a lifelong reader of multiple mainstream daily newspapers, tried going
without a paper for a month and decided to kick the habit -- relying
online news sources only. Read Brian Hieggelke's account, especially his
trenchant observations about what the change means for large newspaper
companies.

ORIGINAL URL:
http://www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/5217.html

Life without Newspapers
Are dailies dead?
Brian Hieggelke

Web readers of Newcity might notice that some of this story was first
published at Newcity.com.

I am a lifelong newspaper junkie. Growing up, my dad always read the
newspaper, and when his dad was around, he read the newspaper. I
understood implicitly that grownup men read newspapers.

After school, I went to work for Goldman Sachs, where it was drilled into
the trainees that keeping up with news was a fundamental component of
success. I indulged, almost excessively. In my twenties, I subscribed to
the daily editions of the Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, the New
York Times and the Wall Street Journal. And, because I "covered"
Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa for my sales job, I subscribed to both
Milwaukee dailies, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Des Moines
Register. I think I personally took down a tree a day.

When I left Goldman, I symbolically quit my WSJ subscription, but picked
it up again a few years later. Over time, my addiction to newspapers
became as much a burden as a pleasure. Stacks would pile up, and time
would disappear as I plowed dutifully through every edition. Finally, when
the Sun-Times couldn't deliver consistently to my Loop apartment, I
dropped it. I dropped the New York Times to save time. With the advent of
the Internet, and the incursion of email, I started losing even more time.
Eventually I dropped the Journal, leaving only the Tribune. Ironically,
the Trib is my least favorite of the four, and for years I subscribed to
it over the Sun-Times only because its delivery service was virtually
flawless and, frankly, because it had the good comics.

Newspaper reading is a ritual for me. I wake up, make coffee, get the
paper and hit my chair. In earlier years, I'd get agitated if someone
messed with my papers, out of fear that I might miss a section, and my
long-discarded bad behavior lives on in reputation with my family. Now, I
read the Tribune in a repetitive manner on most days--first Sports, of
which I read little but scan for scores and major news, then Business,
Chicagoland, Tempo and the main section. I discard Classifieds, Automotive
and Real Estate, along with ad circulars, without even opening them. I am
personally embarrassed that the new Personals page of celebrity gossip--in
the main news section--is one of the sections of the Tribune I read
faithfully, but guilty pleasure it remains.

Newspapers are like throwbacks to another time, with "family-friendly"
profanity-free copy, aw-shucks columns and Blondie cartoons. Reading the
newspaper is like limiting your television watching to a steady stream of
"Leave it to Beaver" reruns. I am sure that for some segments of the
population, perhaps for that mysterious "Red State America" out there,
this is a good thing. But for me, the pleasure of reading comes from
magazines and books.

I've been an early adopter of the Internet, and read dozens if not
hundreds of stories a month online. But I've done so in conjunction with
my daily newspaper habit. Over the last year, I've grown more pessimistic
about the future of the print newspaper, a notion supported by the growing
consensus of countless pundits contemplating the crashing earnings and
circulation figures flowing out of the once-mighty emperors of ink. For
me, the proliferation of the wireless Internet has been the lynchpin, as
I've become addicted to perpetual connectivity and have seen my lifestyle
changing to reflect it. And I'm from the newspaper generation; those
behind me lack any allegiance to print.

I decided to go cold turkey for a month and give up print newspaper
subscriptions altogether--to try and get my daily news fix from the web,
and see what happened.

Day One

Although I look forward to a more varied news diet, and fully expect to
dramatically vary my menu as time progresses, I decide to start with the
familiar and head to Chicagotribune.com. After reading one of the top news
stories about Dick Cheney's wayward shotgun, I click on what looks like
big news on Lollapalooza and get exiled to a login/registration page. I've
already registered but, of course, can't remember which password I used,
so I have to get it emailed, then login, then back to the home page to get
to the story again. Not an auspicious beginning.

I skim and scroll a lot, replacing the similar process of skimming and
scanning that I use with my newspaper. Many stories are just headlines,
and in most cases, I don't want to invest the time to click and see if
they are interesting. This is especially true of columnists, since I don't
have any particular favorites at the Tribune. In print, I'd scan all the
stories and perhaps read something I would not have expected to, based on
the headline and the lead paragraph.

Overall, I'm somewhat disoriented, despite the familiarity. I don't really
look at sports, and don't know where the celeb gossip that I read in print
is.

One thing I observe today is that while the news is theoretically as fresh
as it can be, "fresh" news seems to be mixed in with older stories,
especially on the section pages. I see headlines to stories I read in
print Monday, or even Sunday. With print, you might not have the latest
news, but you have a built-in sense for how fresh it is, and make mental
adjustments. With the web, you rely on posting times, which you usually
have to click on a story to see, or you live with confusion. For example,
Tom Skilling's weather forecast today projects a high of 42 and a low of
32, but when you scroll down the page, the seven-day forecast shows a high
for today of 52 and a low of 37. Which is the most current forecast? Is
one just a keypunch error?

Another observation: with print, you have a somewhat defined beginning and
end, which helps contain the time you spend with the news. With the web,
there is no such finiteness, allowing you to spend as much or as little
time as you want. I fear that this will end up costing me more, not less.

Suntimes.com immediately seems like a better-organized site--like a print
tabloid, it's more linear in its organization, allowing for more
methodical scanning of stories. It offers email editions, of which I sign
up for several. And quick access to columnists where, unlike the Tribune,
I do have favorites.

Day Twelve

It's almost two weeks since I kicked the print newspaper habit and,
truthfully, I'm not feeling any pain, or any more optimistic for the
future of the daily newspaper. I still spend as much or more time reading
news in the morning, but my consumption has changed fundamentally. I do
feel a tad disoriented, like a brand-new vegetarian might feel after a
lifetime of carnivorous behavior.

I've already settled into a routine. I start every morning with the New
York Times, thanks to their email service. They're in my box long before I
get started around 6:30am; the Sun-Times email usually arrives after I've
finished. So I now take all of my national and international news from the
NY Times, as well as most of my cultural coverage. After perusing
Doonesbury, Dilbert and Boondocks online, I turn to the Sun-Times for
local news and columns. I like the linear organization of the Sun-Times
site; it makes for simple and (seemingly) complete navigation. Columnists
are listed next to the main news well by name, but only listed if they
have a fresh column that day. I read Feder, DeRogatis, Lazare and Zwecker
whenever they're posting. From there I head to the Tribune and see what
local news they've covered that the Sun-Times didn't have; usually not
much. I check the weather on the Tribune, which is sometimes all I read on
the site. Organized a bit like its broadsheet big brother, the Trib's site
doesn't offer especially friendly navigation. Things I would always read
in print--Blair Kamin, local arts and entertainment coverage, takes some
effort to find.

I'm a headline reader now. Head and subhead are often enough to get the
gist of the story. With print I would likely have scanned the first
paragraph at the very least, and often got sucked into the whole story.
Now that manual (click) commitment and the time it takes to load the page
puts the burden on the headline package to really convince me. I usually
just move on. The importance of the headline and teaser are paramount to
web news, yet so many stories are given ambiguous one-line treatment that
offers the reader no real information. And the craft of writing these
little morsels is essential: I get the Salon newsletter every morning with
the New York Times, but, as lively as the writing is in the publication, I
find little to click through to from the newsletter.

So what's missing? I sometimes feel a lack of completion; that, in spite
of the time I'm spending, there is important news I would have read before
that I do not read now. And I often take note, as I walk by the newspaper
box on the way to the train, of the modulation in type size of the very
headline I've earlier read online. When the headline is especially big and
bold, the story takes on more importance. That's a role editors play,
using modulation to help readers prioritize the reams of information we're
getting. And one they're not playing the same way on the web.

Day Thirty-One

Today my month-long "vacation stop" ends, and there is my newspaper, like
clockwork, outside my door. I find it easy to return to my routine, with
my chair, my paper, my coffee. But something has changed. I've grown
accustomed to a new manner of digesting news, and especially fond of
keeping up with the Sun-Times. And I'm reading the New York Times again,
and realizing how much I missed it.

At the suggestion of a Tribune editor a couple of weeks back, I signed up
for their email newsletter, Daywatch. It's a fine product, with its own
byline for the veteran Charlie Meyerson, but it has two drawbacks: 1) you
have to be a paid Tribune subscriber to get it and 2) it comes out midday
rather than early morning.

In fact, it's possibly too late for the Tribune with me. Habits have
already been formed online. I still have my chair and my coffee, but now
it's the laptop. And, of course, all the news sources in the world, a mere
click away. The web is a news junkie's heaven--and hell.

And my print subscription? I cancel it, effective at the end of the month.
When I call, the friendly customer-service rep warns me that I'll lose the
perk of my email subscriptions. I can't help but think that it will
actually be their loss.

So are daily newspapers dead? Of course not. But their world is being
rocked, and will continue to be rocked, for at least the next decade,
after which they won't look much like my father's newspaper.

A few years back, I spent many hours on the Internet conference circuit,
spending time with the "pure" new media types and the online newspaper
folks alike. The newspaper guys were addicted to the mantra that
newspapers weren't going anywhere until you could take your computer to
the bathroom with you. It was disheartening on two levels; one, that it
seemed to place so much value emphasis on the physical character of the
medium, and it did not take a crystal ball to visualize a portable
computing future, which was well underway; and two, that it connected its
value to bathroom diversion. Fortunately, and unfortunately, you do not
hear this argument anymore.

In fact, it is the newspaper, especially in the broadsheet format like the
Tribune, that now suffers from an unwieldy format. So much so that the
"quality" newspapers in London have made the revolutionary migration to
tabloid, a development many foresee in the United States as well.

Earlier this year, a large shareholder knocked the last vestige of
complacency out of the newspaper world when it almost nonchalantly called
for a sale of Knight-Ridder, one of the nation's biggest and most
respected newspaper companies, and Knight-Ridder complied without much of
a fight. The much smaller McClatchy Company emerged victorious, but the
whole affair left the industry feeling shakier than ever. In an unusual
move, McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt felt compelled to pen an editorial in the
Wall Street Journal that walked the conceptual tightrope of arguing that
the future of newspapers was bright, but at that same time he was getting
a steal in his purchase of Knight-Ridder. Much of his argument was
obvious, self-serving and, in some cases, dubious: comparing the audience
of the Super Bowl broadcast on a single television network to the Sunday
circulation of the entire newspaper industry, for example. But he raised
an interesting point about a larger role played by newspapers in our
society:

Self-government depends on continuous civic conversation, which in turn
depends on people having a common vocabulary. Without a shared sense of
what the problems are, there's little hope of finding solutions. That
shared middle--a place where people basically agree about the facts and
the issues, even if they differ over what to do about them--is where we
believe our responsibilities as newspaper owners lie.

Pruitt's point is that the value of the mass media is (or more likely was)
simply its mass. I don't know whether he's right, anymore than I know
whether my life in whole is much better since the Internet changed
everything. I just know that it changed everything.

Halftone Clarity

A few notions about the future of newspapers online, some large and some
very small, from a newspaper junkie gone cold turkey:

Some newspapers will still be printed for a very long time. Newspapers
that survive in print will be the nationals--the New York Times and USA
Today--and the specialties: Wall Street Journal for finance, Washington
Post for politics, the LA Times for Hollywood. Sounds like Britain, with
all its national dailies, doesn't it? In addition to broadsheets
converting to tabloid format, national tabs might emerge at the "lower
end."

Newspapers will survive, and thrive, on the web, but in different ways and
at different scales. Like the shrinking department stores who saw market
share dwindle once they joined the specialty stores at the mall, so too
will specialty web sites carve away key revenue segments (like Craigslist
is doing with classifieds). Daily newspapers today are very big companies,
and like big ships, they don't change course very rapidly. Those
classified ads that Craig Newmark and Co. have taken away might make more
sense on the Internet and the advertisers certainly appreciate getting
them for free, but their revenue used to pay a lot of journalist salaries.
The revenue underpinnings of print newspapers are complex structures that
have evolved over decades, yet are eroding over months. Consequently,
newspaper companies are likely to become either much smaller and more
specialized or much more diversified at the corporate level if they are to
survive.

Like the TV networks these past two decades who saw once-astonishing
market penetration dwindle but revenues soar, the newspapers'
proportionate scale in a rapidly fracturing media world will still offer
advertising efficiencies to larger entities seeking a "mass" if less
demographically attractive audience.

Formatting traditions will continue to evolve as the world gets "flatter."
Unlike newspapers today, which deliver content in a three-dimensional
space--the height and width of the page multiplied by the number of
pages--the Internet works best in two dimensions. That is, in spite of
near-infinite depth, we enter a story through a headline either emailed,
sitting on a home page or turning up in a search engine. Headline writing,
especially, will evolve as an art form into a mix of wordplay and punchy
digest writing.

As newspapers shrink, they might get personality back. Before World War
II, newspapers were the domain of larger-than-life press barons like
William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer and Chicago's own Colonel
McCormick. Many were relentless and even unscrupulous in their pursuit of
stories, of circulation and of profits, and they unabashedly had
personalities that matched their owners. As the organizations grew and
founders passed on ownership to often-disconnected heirs or public
shareholders, the professional journalist came of age. Many of the changes
that era brought were for the greater good, and journalism reached its
zenith when it helped bring down the corrupt presidency of Richard Nixon.
But the cautious commitment to "family values" in the newspaper, matched
with an unrealistic ideal of objectivity, turned the professional
newspaper into a rather bland, soulless thing. Magazines, whether glossies
or alternative weeklies on newsprint like Newcity and the Reader, stepped
into that void, establishing more intimate, more committed relationships
with their audiences. Online, newspapers will give up the advantages
gained in the postwar era; advantages of scale and subscriber inertia.
Online, brand loyalty is a frictionless click away.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

// posted by newshare @ 10:18 PM

FIRST ACCOUNT by John Burke at WAN's Editor's Weblog
http://www.editorsweblog.org/print_newspapers/2006/03/ap_accused_of_taking_story_from_a_blog.php

AP accused of taking story from a blog

The Associated Press confirmed using a story from blog RawStory.com as the basis for a March 14th article detailing a change in national security policies.

The information in the article written by the AP, .Security Clearance Rules May Impede Gays,. attributed its information to gay rights groups, who happened to be wrong and who received their information from Raw Story. The discovery was made by Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story's Managing News Editor, and John Byrne, Raw Story's Executive Editor. According to Raw Story, they .picked the wording out of an extended document released in December [and the] AP ran a story the following day, highlighting the same item and using similar language..

Two gay rights groups confirmed they had used Raw Story.s articles and notes as the basis of their conversation with the AP reporter. The AP later admitted they had learned of the article from the Raw Story site.
AP.s Director of Media Relations Jack Stokes said the reason Raw Story wasn.t credited in the Mar. 14 article was because the bureau .hadn.t heard of. Raw Story, and because they had received the article from third-party groups. He said the agency would be issuing a statement on the issue soon.

.We do credit blogs that we know,. Stokes said. .We had no idea who you were.. AP has given credit to blogs like Instapundit and Pajamas Media. Raw Story has previously received credit from The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, Roll Call, The Hill, The Salt Lake Tribune, MSNBC and Rolling Stone, although many publications still take articles from the site without attributing them. This is not the first time a news organization has been found using an article from a blog without crediting it.

Source: Raw Story
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Associated_Press_says_they_based_article_0328.html

Associated Press says they based article on Raw Story report but refuses
to credit or correct

John Byrne
Published: Tuesday March 28, 2006

(John Byrne is executive editor of Raw Story and a former reporter for The
Boston Globe).

The Associated Press has confirmed using a Raw Story report as the basis for a Mar. 14 article detailing a change to national security clearance policies but has refused to issue credit for the piece.

Their article, "Security Clearance Rules May Impede Gays," signaled an apparent Bush Administration attempt to tighten security clearances with regard to gay Americans. It attributed the discovery of the clearance changes to gay rights groups . a factually inaccurate statement which the agency has refused to correct. The discovery was made by Larisa Alexandrovna, Raw Story's Managing News Editor, and John Byrne, Raw Story's Executive Editor.

Raw Story picked the wording out of an extended document released in December. AP ran a story the following day, highlighting the same item and using similar language. Two gay rights groups, Human Rights Campaign and Servicemembers' Legal Defense Network, confirmed they had used Raw Story's article and notes distributed by Raw Story as the basis of their conversations with the AP reporter. The AP later admitted they had learned of the change from the Raw Story article. Raw Story.s article, along with notes intended to help groups speak to its contents, was sent to gay groups by Michael Rogers, a gay activist who runs PageOneQ.com.

In response to inquiries about the errant wording . .lesbian and gay advocacy groups recently found the change. . AP.s Director of Media Relations Jack Stokes has said the language had been carefully worded. The AP disputes Raw Story.s claim that their report was inaccurate.

Raw Story had requested a correction from the AP late last week. Katherine Shrader, the AP national security correspondent who authored the article, told us she had spoken with her editor and that no correction would be made. "I've talked it over with our bureau chief and we're not going to be doing that," Shrader said. In a return call, Shrader refused to talk further and referred calls to AP.s corporate communications office.

Raw Story then spoke with Jack Stokes, AP.s Director of Media Relations. Stokes took careful notes regarding our concerns and said he would investigate our claims. He found that the AP had, indeed, gotten our article from "human rights groups" but that it was AP policy not to credit blogs. "It does turn out that we don't give mentions to blogs when we're researching our stories and when we've been given material by others such as in this case human rights groups that brought this stuff to us that we independently check," Stokes said in a voicemail message.
Stokes elaborated Tuesday, saying the AP does give credit to blogs. He said the reason Raw Story wasn.t credited in the Mar. 14 article was because the bureau .hadn.t heard of. Raw Story, and because they had received the article from third-party groups. He said the agency would be issuing a statement, most likely later today.

.We do credit blogs that we know,. Stokes said. .We had no idea who you were..

In the past, AP has given credit to such blogs as Instapundit and Pajamas Media. Raw Story has previously received credit from The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, Roll Call, The Hill, The Salt Lake Tribune, MSNBC and Rolling Stone, though major media publications have repeatedly lifted the site.s work without attribution.

Servicemembers. Legal Defense Network confirmed they had given Raw Story.s original article to the AP reporter. Human Rights Campaign said they had briefed their director on the story from the original Raw Story report. Neither group mentioned Raw Story in their press releases . which Stokes said may have affected how AP handled the story. Raw Story did receive credit for the story in the Washington Blade, D.C..s
leading gay newspaper.

// posted by newshare @ 12:08 AM