Sophie's Christmas Wish List*

Photo by: raketen_tim

I must admit that after reading "We Stand Corrected: When Good Journalists Make Stupid Mistakes" I suddenly found myself rather intimidated.

Yes, I understand that mistakes in print journalism can be devastating for the reputation of a large newspaper or news corporation, but what about the reputation of citizen journalists?

Moreover, as citizen journalists we already find ourselves competing with large reputable news sources everyday...so what kind of impact does an error have when its an error by an independent citizen journalist?

I am going to assume it's a large one. Scanlan mentions in the article that each time a news source publishes an error; the reader considers that source to be less credible:

"Each misspelled word, bad apostrophe, garbled grammatical construction, weird cutline and mislabeled map erodes public confidence in a newspaper's ability to get anything right"

However, when it is The Chicago Daily Tribune or The New York Times, I would argue that they still have years of reputable reporting on their side to defend themselves with. After all, a couple of mistakes found in newspapers that have been in print for over a hundred years can't be of much significance. People will keep reading. People won't cancel their subscription.

It is almost as though the public actually forgive them.

Yet, if a citizen journalist with a relatively small blog publishes an error online, they risk losing their already minimal audience completely. After all, why bother with an "inexperienced, unqualified, freelance writer" when large media conglomerates have provided years of "trusted reporting?"

Therefore, I would argue that Silverman's points about fact checking, and "fessing up" to error reporting is even more pertinent for us as citizen journalists. I would say we are gambling with much more when we think of posting "slips" and "errors". The loyalty and attention spans of online readers are much shorter than that of those in print journalism.

So, the question I pose is: Do the same actions that Silverman suggests for print sources and other news media work for the average citizen journalist when it comes to saving their credibility?

*Sophie would like to report the error found in the title of this post. It should read "Apology Accepted?", rather than, "Sophie's Christmas Wish List". She apologises for any inconvienience this has caused the reader.

Plenty and choice

There's always a way to choose
Photo by Orin Optiglot

Barry Schwartz talks about the inherent paradox of too much choice. Like the old metaphor about the dog starving because he couldn't choose between two identical bowls of food. Fear of a zero vector situation, going everywhere and so going nowhere, seems to be on the increase.
But I'm going to have to side with Eve on this one. Schwartz's example of the cola's might be true to someone with no vested interest in or experience with colas. But experience serves as a huge limiting factor for choice. I may have 50 channels on my TV, but experience has taught me that I'm not going to like what's on 40 of them and when making a choice, I will choose amongst the 10 channels I know to be good. The paralysis described by Schwartz might be true for the first time you go to the store, but it probably won't for the second.
But lets say for argument's sake that it is the first exposure to a given choice. Schartz claims that no method has been established to vet internet content. I say he's wrong. The reputation economy, one of the foundations of internet culture, is the greatest limiting factor there is. It's no coincidence that most of the most popular sites serve the function of vetting or limiting choice (top 10 sites, Digg, TVlinks, etc..). People are not a victim of choice, and in the event of a choice-glut, the internet is adapting.

Mistakes Are Acceptable...Lying Is Not

The article about fact checking; We Stand Corrected: When Good Journalists Make Stupid Mistakes- is a good read, and I honestly believe that the website Regret the Error, is actually performing a public service by putting all journalistic errors and corrections in one easy to access place. It is important because while mistakes are easily made, it is difficult to alert people to the corrections of mistakes.

However, I’m actually alarmed at the fact that journalists even need to be reminded that it is okay to make mistakes, and that they need to be told that it isn’t taboo to come forward-rather than to try to cover up or deny an error.

As is quoted in the article, “The first thing to do is create an organizational culture that values error prevention and accepts that corrections are an important part of journalism. Get rid of the stigma of error that causes people to want to hide their mistakes and not learn from them.”

How can this even be? In a domain where truth, and trustworthiness is engrained in everything that we do-how can a journalist lie or ignore an error?! A journalist should know better than anyone else the ways of humans, and that no one is perfect, and that errors are normal. Perhaps instead of correction of errors, we should focus on the correction of the mentality of the industry!

Paying for Content...Please!

I have become quite the Internet surfer as of late.  Sometimes I spend hours scouring the Web looking, finding, exploring and learning.  Anytime I come across a site though, asking for any credit card information, I "X" the window quickly and never return.

 

Jaron Lanier's, Pay Me for My Content, speaks of the possibility of charging for the Internet content we put out.  Lanier suggests that advertising can only go so far and furthers his argument by preaching his beliefs that, "Information could be universally accessible but on an affordable instead of absolutely free basis".  

There's something different about getting my monthly subscription from Vogue and my weekend edition of The New York Times in the mail; although I pay quite the hefty sum, I feel like I have proof of the money I spent.  I have a tangible, real, and concrete piece of material in my hands and you don't get that from surfing the web.  

Although I reap the benefits of the Internet and all of it's marvels, I would not pay for content. I believe that the future of the Internet is a free one.  The most attractive quality that the Web offers is the fact that mass amounts of information are quickly and easily available... for free! 

The Internet makes getting connected quick, simple, and easy- it makes the world a smaller place.   

Selfish Giving

picture by giverculture.com

Although the idea of gift economy has only come to fruition recently, the concept of giving without any expectation of reciprocity has been going on for centuries and can date back as early as the Stone Age.

When contemplating further on the gift economy I began to ask myself this question: Why do human beings give? What is it about giving without expecting that makes us want to give more?

Then something inside of me clicked: giving not only brings joy to the receiver but gives the giver a sense of satisfaction. It makes us feel good about ourselves. So as a cynic would put it giving is not only an act of honor and kindness but also a selfish act since the act itself makes the giver feel more competent.

Sounds confusing? Well it is since it is a theory studied in Psychology and is known as Psychological Egoism.

This idea centralizes around the notion that human beings perform acts that are in essence self-serving. For example, if I decide to give someone a gift, in return I feel good that I have made that person feel good. On the contrary, if I did something good for someone that I knew would make me feel horrible, that act would no longer be called giving a gift but rather sacrificing or giving up.

We can take psychological egoism and examine it in terms of the Gift Economy.
Open-source sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr tend to thrive on just that. For example, when you post a video on YouTube and you notice all the hits you have received, you in turn feel good about yourself. Similarly, when you display a picture that you have taken on Flickr and you read all the positive comments on it, you feel more competent.

As Tara Hunt highlights in "The Gift", the gift economy is eminent. It is just important to acknowledge and accept that the gift in itself is also a self-serving act. We do think about how we will feel after giving flowers to our partners as a way to say "I'm sorry." We do have ulterior motives when helping a friend in med school write a paper.

Because as Patrick West, author of Conspicuous Compassion writes: "sometimes, the only person you care about is you."

Is citizen journalism error free?

Photo by Red_Fox_Anna

My editor once told me, "once you see one of your mistakes printed 10,000 times, you'll never make that mistake again." And Craig Silverman's visit to class brought that quote back to mind.

My question is this, with the rise of citizen journalism and the new format of evolving stories, will publishing errors still exist?

We talk about how important it is to acknowledge the mistakes a paper has made. Publishing a falsehood or misleading statement has real effects. But when a story is never really finished are there ever such things as errors? Can every mistake found simply be explained away with an, "it was to the best of our knowledge at the time?"

Internet content has a far greater reach than anything someone physically publishes. And understanding that, it would seem that every mistake published electronically would be far greater than one published physically.

But despite this we seem to think of electronic content as less damaging than something physically printed. In many cases, it's supposed to be understood that citizen stories are a work in progress.

Are we, defacto, looking at the end of error?

Going, going, gone

image courtesy of www.ezprezzo.com

As journalism students (which many of us in this class are), it's extremely important to be aware of the processes and consequences associated with making a published error. 

We've heard it a million times by the end of our first year: "CHECK YOUR FACTS!"  Well after reading straight out in Chip Scanlan's article the embarrassing correction and retraction process, we just might be motivated to be as anal as possible when writing our stories. 

While Scanlan's article/interview transcript focuses on errors, it brings up a hugely important issue right at the beginning of the article: people's attitude towards newspapers.

What's interesting about this piece is how Scanlan highlights the idea that making such mistakes in newspapers actually makes people lose confidence in the already declining medium. 

I think that entire concept relates to the fact that this is, simply put, a fast generation. Fast food, fast shopping, fast everything. When a mistake is made in an online article, all it takes is one or two e-mails and the problem is usually fixed almost instantaneously. But in the newspaper, it takes a few days to print a retraction, which just contributes to the idea that newspapers simply aren't part of the bandwidth-information highway-high speed connection lifestyle.

There is an excellent blog called Fading to Black that really explores how the newspaper is a dying medium. The blog also cites practical situations to use as examples of the shrinking industry. 

Montreal is no stranger to the concept. Just last year, the Gazette offered packages to many editorialists. You can see the actual memo from the publisher here. 

These situations are really scary for everyone, but particularly for journalism students. What's the future of our industry going to be? I recently heard an estimate that if newspapers keep doing what they're doing without making any changes in response to market fluctuations, they will have their last reader within decades. 

"Philip Meyer, who has studied the newspaper industry for three decades, can see the darkness at the end of the tunnel. If present readership trends continue indefinitely, says the University of North Carolina professor, the last daily newspaper reader will check out in 2044. October 2044, to be exact." (source)

Now that's a scary number for anyone studying print journalism. That's why classes like this one are so important. They're training young journalists to change the state of current print journalism to meet market demands. People don't want to wait until tomorrow to read relevant headlines. As such, many papers are beginning to keep regularly updated websites; and their journalists are maintaining blogs. Some say this is too much for journalists to do in addition to their traditional responsibilities. This is the argument that has lead to the longest lockout in french print media at le Journal de Quebec.

What this means for the future of print journalism remains unknown. Until then, perhaps the most useful thing to do is to arm ourselves with modern skills such as the ones being taught in this class in order to infuse the currently dying medium of newspapers with new life, ideas and energy. 

Out of Print

image curtesy of Grant Robertson

We touched on the ‘old guard’ of newspaper crews today being reluctant to adapt to new information technology, not willing to forfeit their traditional roles as gatekeepers to praise the new opportunities of information gathering as a public space.

A journalism professor at the University of North Carolina, Philip Meyer, has studied the decline of American newspaper readership. His extrapolation of the data shows that, if newspapers do nothing to change their ways, they will lose their very last reader in 2044.

In line with this: ‘Time is running out’ perspective is an article published in the
New Yorker by Eric Alterman today. Ironically, if it had never been online, I would have never come across it at all. It’s an overview of the American Newspaper, a 300 year old institution, that may not survive the next century.

“Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago.”

He’s all over the place from the 1920’s, to Walter Lippman’s and Arthur Miller’s views on journalism, to the virtues of mainstream journalism and funeral pyres of the Newsprint industry. It’s a tedious read. Obviously Mr. Alterman didn’t get the memo for concise paragraphs in online publishing. More interesting than his rambling, I thought was his citing of London’s Times executive editor, Bill Keller’s “Not Dead Yet” published in the Guardian.

Words of wisdom, from an old school guy, doing some progressive thinking for a new generation:

“For all of the woes besetting our business, I believe with all my heart that newspapers - whether they are distributed to your doorstep, your laptop, your iPhone or a chip implanted in your cerebral cortex - will be around for a long time.

Newspapers, including at least a few very good newspapers, will survive, simply put, because of that basic law of market economics: supply and demand. The supply of what we produce is sadly diminishing. And the demand has never been greater.

People crave trustworthy information about the world we live in. Some people want it because it is essential to the way they make a living. Some want it because they regard being well-informed as a condition of good citizenship. Some want it because they want something to exchange over dinner tables and water coolers. Some want it so they can get the jokes on the late-night TV shows. There is a demand, a market, for journalism.

That may sound like a strange thing to say in the age of 'too much Information'. You turn on your computer and there is a media tsunami: blogs, Google News, RSS feeds, social sites like MySpace and file-sharing programs like YouTube. You can harvest it from around the world. You can customize it. You can have it delivered to your cell phone.
The old joke that freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one is now largely inoperative. Freedom of the press now belongs to anyone with an Internet Service Provider. This is all unsettling to the traditional news business, but it is also an opportunity.

The truth is, people crave more than raw information. What they crave, and need, is independent judgment, someone they can trust to vouch for the information, dig behind it, and make sense of it. The more discerning readers want depth, they want scepticism, they want context, they want the material laid out in a way that honours their intelligence, they might even welcome a little wit and grace and style.

The newspaper companies that will offer these things 20 years from now will be different, even more different than today's newspapers are from the newspapers of 20 years ago. We are already changing before your eyes, morphing into hybrid newsrooms that produce journalism in print and on-line, and racing to invent enough revenue from our growing websites to compensate for the diminishing returns in print.”

When is common sense common?

Photo by: PugnoM

The other day I suddenly saw things in a new light, it was when I the video clip with Lawrence Lessig from the TED conference one more time. The first time I saw it I didn’t like Lessig’s conclusion about changing the laws of copyright, just because “our kids” (as he calls it) are breaking it. In my eyes that is not the way to build a society – you can’t change the law every time somebody breaks it.

But seeing his talk again I discovered the connection between how Lessig thinks the law should be changed now and how it was changed back when the law of trespassing made farmers complaint about the airplanes flying over their land.

Perhaps I was the only one who didn’t see this connection the first time, but it made me feel more open towards changing the copyright law, because the example with the trespassing was so clear and obvious. As will the example with a changed copyright law perhaps be in 50 years or so.

One thing I still find a bit hard to accept is one of Lessig’s arguments for changing the law; common sense. Just looking at how many different definitions Wikipedia gives of the phrase common sense makes me wonder how you can use common sense as an argument for changing a law. What is common sense to me may not be common sense to somebody else and so fort.

Still I would argue most people today think it was common sense to change the law about trespassing, but that was then and this is now. The context in which we form common sense is different. No one can argue against the fact that we know more now, than we did 50, 100 and 150 years ago.

But the common sense from which laws like the copyright law idealistically should be inspired from, in the eyes of Lessig, comes in different colors and sizes. And I think it is very difficult to say, who has the most “common” common sense; perhaps it’s Lessig, perhaps it’s the politicians, perhaps it’s the kids, who are breaking the rules. Perhaps it is just not as easy to change the copyright law, as it was to change the law about trespassing. Either ways it is necessary to acknowledge that there is more than one common sense in this copyright question, and that could be the reason why a solution is not that easy to find.

Craig Silverman's Links

Hi all,

Here are the links from Craig Silverman's presentation this morning. Enjoy!

http://www.LibriVox.org
http://www.newassignment.net
http://www.pressthink.com
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2007/10/09/what_i_learned.html

http://www.buzzmachine.com
http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2008/02/shirky

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_zero_all
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/view_from_crowds

Eliminating Mistakes...Is It Truly Possible?

Picture from www.forcounsel.com

Ronald Regan once said "trust but verify."

However, in a world where news has to be delivered in a matter of minutes, thorough verification is highly unlikely and mistakes are unavoidable.

Mistakes in the media have been occurring ever since its birth. It is easy to say, "look there's another error" but more difficult to come up with a way to eliminate that error from occurring again.

Similarly there are many sites and articles devoted to finding errors in the media like Regret the Error or this article on discovering errors by checking the variables but virtually none that seek to come up with ways to eliminate mistakes. With media editors saying "I don't care if it's good, I want it by seven" errors are bound to happen. So what are the consequences of these errors?

Well, more and more journalists are loosing their credibility but only temporarily. Are these errors affecting their career and the media organizations?
Not at all.

My professor once told me a case where a fellow journalist was in Iraq in the 90's and was asked to say a few words on the radio from some Iraqi officials. The journalist failed to read the intro before.

This was his error.

To his disadvantage the intro had some very anti-semitic comments that he only realized as he was reading live on air. Yes the journalist lost his job with CBC but later got a better paying job at CNN.

Look at the New York Times. A credible and widely read newspaper that has published numerous articles with dozens of mistakes. Read this article for more. When an error is discovered and made public the newspaper simply writes a few articles explaining or justifying the error to regain its credibility and readership.

In "Of Media Mistakes and Explanations", Washington Post's Howard Kurtz examined the ways in which the media dealt with errors through media transparency. Kurtz argued that explaining the errors in fact helped the publications.

Some journalists try to justify their mistakes by delving into the psychological view of error. Alina Tugend published an article in the New York Times that says mistakes are healthy and the only way we can truly learn is when we are persuaded to make them.

What does all this mean?
Make mistakes, acknowledge them, learn from them, then move on...

And so I Googled Goeglein

When Craig Silverman spoke to our class today his discussion on crowdsourcing struck a chord, especially when he mentioned the controversy surrounding Tim Goeglein.

And so I Googled Goeglein...

Tim Goeglein, a White House Aide and Fort Wayne News Sentinel columnist was ousted by Nancy Nall in a blog post when she accused him of plagiarism. However, with the advent of citizen journalism, crowdsourcing, and the technology of the internet, Nall received hundreds of posts by average people further exposing Goeglein as a fraud.

While I applaud Nall and others who contributed to Goeglein's demise, I cant help but wonder why his editors never fact-checked or caught-wind of the fact that he was a cheat. Is that not their job?

Editors of the Sentinel have come to the defense. Leo Morris, an editor there says, "It’s impossible to discover every instance of plagiarism before it hits print; that would just be too time-consuming and labor-intensive". Nall however, admits that it was only a 30-second Web search that in turn produced hard evidence.

Too time consuming? I'm sure!

I wonder though, is this a new trend? Will crowdscorcing produce a new movement and continue to expose faults, innaccuracies, and oversights in mainstream media? And if so, what is the next step and what will newspapers and other publications do to ensure public trust?

I guess the next logical Question is, who is next?

Mistakes do happen but they can be corrected

In Christopher Scanlan's article "We Stand Corrected: When Good Journalists Make Stupid Mistakes", he discusses Craig Silverman's revelation about how the best way to create accuracy is to expose journalists mistakes. If a journalist is making writing their career, then everything that they write and are sending out into the world, should be edited and made so that there are no mistakes.

As Joe Grimm points out, there can be serious consequences if a journalist makes mistakes, for example, the paper or magazine that they are writing for can be discredited because they no longer are reliable.

However, if a newspaper or magazine really does care about the content that they print out, then they should have editors and a process of evaluating the articles that they are given. That way, if mistakes are not found through the evaluation, then they will be caught be one of the editors.

If mistakes do seep through, it is proven that the public would atleast appreciate if a correction was made in a following issue. Mistakes happen but there is always the possibility of revealing those mistakes and correcting them.

Journalists have the education, a team that helps them improve their work, and the ability to show their work to the world, so they should make sure that this work is corrected and modified if needed.

The writing's on the wall

Photo by the justified sinner

Why is blogging different from a conversation?

This is a topic that's come up frequently in class. And usually when this discussion starts, it has to be forcibly shut down in order for the class to continue.

When do bloggers cross the line? When does expressing opinion become committing libel?

A thought experiment: Say you had a classroom with a giant white board in it. The white board served no real purpose - it was not an announcement board or anything of that sort - but everyone who came into the class could see it. Everyone can write on the board but no one can erase what someone else has written. No one can see you when you write on the board. People like to leave messages for each other as they come and go from the class or maybe just thoughts.
A:"How's class going?"
B:"Not bad, how about you?"
You walk into the class one day and some one has written something mean about you.
"Clare is a slut who cheats on her work."
It's not true. You cannot erase it. Everyone who comes and goes from the class can read this. Your teacher will read this. There is no point at which the comment will expire and fade away, even if the person who's written it is gone. When new people come into the class they will read it too. They will read that comment before they've even met you.

Will the new people coming into the class judge you according to this statement?
Will your teacher wonder if you really do cheat on your work?

This is why blogs are different from conversations.

Blogs used to be dumpsters into which people would purge their inner turmoil. They hated their bosses. They hated their lives. They would write it down and a small reading community would commiserate with them.

But blogs are more than that now. People rely on them for news. Blogs are now written by experts or pseudo-experts. They are sometimes-reputable places from which the growing internet community can access information. And you can find one on any given topic thanks to the all-powerful Google.

This is why lawsuits against bloggers are on the rise.

It's now pretty common practice for employers to Google prospective employees. And if your would-be-employer finds a blogpost calling you a thief or a maniac, even if they don't trust the information, it will at least give them pause.

Trial employment is increasingly rare. People want to know right away if you're fit for the job or not - no wasted time on training or getting to know you. One venomous blog post could ruin everything.

In a reputation economy , reputation is everything.

Tell It Like It Is Or Don't Tell It

I happened across this article today. Later, while reading the Silverman interview, I found myself thinking back to a quote in this Post article that had stuck out to me as a good example of bad journalism. I think that Silverman is right about the importance of verification as it pertains to a journalist's credibility, but he neglects another important aspect of reporting: source reliability.

Ensuring it is perhaps an even more difficult task than fact-checking and using your spell checker properly.

Here's the line I have a problem with:

It is common to find people of French Canadian descent to be related to large numbers of other French Canadians, including these notables,' said Child in a statement.

Let's look at this statement. What does it really say? From where I'm sitting, nothing at all. It's like saying "It's common to find people named MacDonald related to other people named MacDonald." In other words, a no-brainer.

If Christopher Child of the The New England Historic Genealogical Society means something more specific, he should say it. Instead, he gets quoted as an expert and doesn't give us any information we don't already know. That's not his fault.

I don't know if this comment was made in a press release, at a press conference, or in an exclusive interview. I do know that if I were the person writing this story, I'd want my source to elaborate. Here we have a story which really has little to no consequence on our lives, and yet it's out there. Instead of informing, it only leaves the reader with more questions - if he or she really stops to look at what is being said.

(The NEHGS study) found Illinois Senator Barack Obama, whose mother is from Kansas, can claim at least six U.S. presidents as distant cousins, including George W. Bush and his father, Gerald R. Ford, Lyndon B. Johnson, Harry S. Truman, and James Madison.

Okay. Amazing. This guy is related to no less than six US former presidents. How many more people are in this family tree? How many were postmen and axe murderers and Average Joes? How far back did researchers have to root around to establish these family ties? Perhaps most importantly, where can we see the research, if we are so inclined?

Oh, never mind any of that - Hillary is related to Angelina and Barack is related to Brad. Stop the presses.

I'm not saying that Child and the NEHGS aren't reliable sources. They probably are. But based on this anonymous Reuters reporter's choice of quotes, and apparent indifference to asking follow-up questions, we're left with too much information and not enough attribution. This type of sloppy reporting is why people don't trust journalists. We don't even know who wrote this article, so we can't be expected to take it as gospel. If the story is worth telling it must be given the consideration it deserves.

Healthy Taste Buds

*enjoy this rather hilarious picture of me cooking for my host family in Cuba...


Just a reminder to everyone about my blog.

I now have 2 videos on there and a few more posts. Please comment and give me some feedback.

I will be posting more videos soon

gabe

enjoy

the videos right now are poor quality in terms of production and editing. I've never made any before and am improvising with Windows Media Maker. they'll get better soon!

Lending a helping hand

The current news landscape is an exciting one which is rapidly shifting and evolving to adapt to the new realities it is facing. On Regret the Error, Craig Silverman is performing a very important task which is improving journalism in the world today.

There's been much debate on the legitimacy of bloggers vs. traditional journalists. I find that Craig Silverman is a perfect example of how both mediums can work together to improve each other's "performances". Craig Silverman is right to point out that mistakes and errors are unavoidable; humans aren't perfect, and the world of journalism isn't either.

As is pointed out in the Poynter interview with Silverman, errors erode credibility and in a democratic society, public belief in big media is an absolute necessity. Through blogs, and independant citizen journalists such as Craig Silverman, traditional media has a mirror to view itself with and a mirror which criticizes and participates in the creative process. This is incredibly useful for traditional media. Errors made and not corrected are reproduced, copied and reiterated and rooted into eternity.

The role of traditional journalists, who have financial support and a generaly more professional education on journalism, needs to reflect this by producing better texts, with more nuanced opinions, more facts, and less mistakes.

Society needs to feel that they can turn to media sources with integrity for information whether it subscribes to their perspective or not. I want to read relevant pieces from the left, the right bu more importantly from people and sources which have analysed the subject from a variety of perspectives and made sure to properly fact-check.

Traditional media and bloggers for that matter need to invest more time into looking into their information sources.

Accuracy and Relevancy

. Imagine the message we could send to the public if we began unveiling vastly more effective prevention and correction programs.

Imagine the resources we could waste if we took already shrinking newsrooms and news gathering institutions and burdened them with incessant fact checking? Okay so maybe I'm being too harsh, the error identification and correction process can (like everything else) be outsourced to a readership via the internet for free or pennies or pepsi points or something. What bothers me is that we're worrying about figures, surnames, times of day, and other relatively minor things but not the overall quality of our news.

Sure the facts may be more accurate, and the material more technically correct but doesn't that seem like a kind of veil for quality when compared to the generally toothless, dumbed down, and irrelevant content and coverage major news organizations provide anyway? Silverman treats the lameness of current mainstream media as an elephant in the room, and for what? Some factual errors?

Besides isn't it possible that over-checking facts could delay the flow and pertinence of news?

So maybe gross errors are caused, at their roots, by poor reporting practices. This gentleman may be a thorough reporter in a traditional sense who is known for accuracy and thoughtfulness in his work, in a practical sense though he's wildly ignorant. Postering, something which has gone on for decades and has been integral to popular youth music since even he was a teen, seemed a crime to him. I can't decide which was more pathetic, his ignorance of street teaming or his antiquated 30's new dealing take on the activity.

Who cares about mainstream newsmedia anyway? Especially when we have things like this taking their place. Before you write this post off know I'm not a vice lover. But VBS is pretty much proof that many of the broadcast formalities we're taught aren't the only way. That an effective and moving message, here a picture of cultural and political life in North Korea, can be created easily and viewed on demand. Watch that clip and think of the tired adage "show me don't tell me".

I welcome a time when a touching newscast is no longer Dan Rather tearing up at his copy but instead a North American alcoholic screaming Anarchy in the U.K. at people who've never heard rock n' roll.

Let's keep on sharing!

I was very interested in the chapters we had to read from the Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture. The history of copyright in various mediums and the changes that came with new technologies which allowed for new distribution methods allow us today to look at the contemporary internet situation and theorize on how things will change in the future.

Lawrence Lessig makes a very interesting argument on the need for more adaptable and nuanced laws in order to avoid a generation of people who essentially are criminals under the current law system.

The internet is a fascinating and challenging new development in society and the creation of file sharing programs do harm artists in many respects. However, the current fight to criminalize all file sharing is pointless and immoral. As Lessing correctly points out, the file sharing which takes place is not only the illegal kind. For many users, file sharing is a means of advertisement, research, exploration and a nostalgic means of reexploring their pasts.

Given the power of computers and related technologies to save information easily and for eternity, file sharing allows society to access more information and allows pieces that haven't received much attention to remain in the public sphere, to exist... File sharing allows for users to scour the web for diverging opinions, rare culture, past culture and different culture.

This new distribution model is inescapable and the fallacy of trying to illegalize it because some harm is done is wrong. The harm done is also balanced with positives; the space for rare works, the ability to market yourself even without large corporate backing, the access to more variety....

Copyright laws need to take into account the emergence of these trends, and find a system where what is punished is not the technology which allows us to share files but the illegal d/l and use of information that has been copyrighted with the explicit purpose of not allowing such behavior. For the rest of information out there, let the sharing continue.

Regretting the Error: Journalism's Shame Economy

Craig Silverman on Reliable Source
It may surprise some people, but journalists are people too. And being human, journalists are liable to make mistakes. Should the public scrutinize a media outlet's journalistic integrity based off their errors? Well, to a certain extent, yes.

Craig Silverman, of Regret the Error, feels that it is how journalists handle their discrepancy that is important. Do they "regret the error" so to speak? Or do they simply let it pass? The sad reality is that, according to Scott Maier, only 2% of factual errors are corrected.

What proves to be most problematic is how many newspapers skim over their error. It is quite pathetic when only 2% of errors are revised. Some newspapers highlight their errors and make them available online while others hide them somewhere in the back of the A section. Unless there is a persistent follow-up in news gathering and reporting, a typical audience will be misinformed.


Does Fox News really regret its error? Considering how fast this clip is, I don't really think so.
With the rise in the relevance and importance of online news, audiences are treated to even more errors. With our publish then select doctrine dictating how to structure our online news, it is no wonder that our cyber world is filled with mistakes.

But what is truly wonderful about the ethos of the Internet is how stories don't end once they're published. As Craig Silverman mentions, "...we are responsible for correcting and updating them". Actually, there is an accepted blogger's code used to admit/highlight their errors.

Stephan Harper kicks likes puppies. See? Easy. Not only am I, the journalist, holding myself accountable to my error, I'm also proving that I'm not infallible and that I am humble. Instant points in the accountability department.

Readers can also easily leave some feedback to challenge a story that they have read. If I don't make myself accountable, my readers will. Unlike in traditional venues where a reader might just call a news agency, online participants post their responses for all to see. This democratic forum truly allows a story to expand as new developments occur and actually contextualizes the information and the argument.

Error pointed out by Evan G.

I think it is important to understand that I'm not trying to excuse journalists when they make mistakes. I get annoyed with typos and when stories cite wrong names. But humans are fallible so mistakes happen. I feel that we should cast away with the shame that mistakes inherently have and bring back accountability. After all, it is how a person deals with their error that relays their regret.

Regret The Error is a step in the right direction to combat this veil of secrecy when it comes to reporting errors. Craig Silverman's work is forcing newspapers to be held accountable for their errors and showcasing them to the general public. But it is still not enough; traditional news outlets need to look to the democratic vision of the Internet and allow a more participatory response to their errors. Until then, audiences will continue to see the small (and forced) apologies like from the Fox News video that I embedded above and we'll be stuck at the paltry 2% correction rate.

New financial structures of the internet

Photo by FastFords

A lot of speculation has been going on concerning the new financial structure that the internet will adopt. We've heard a lot about the gift economy.

Some, like Austin, see the gift economy as an unspoken quid pro
quo arrangement where gifts will automatically be reciprocated.

Others, such as Hunt, believe that the gift economy hinges on everyone just doing good deeds and releasing them into the ether in the hopes that the good vibrations will be bounced back.

No one knows what shape the gift economy will take but lots of people are making guesses. My problem with this is that most of the time, they're basing their guesses off of hybrid situations.

Radiohead and their release of In Rainbows sparked endless talk of how profitable the online economy might become.

My problem is this. Radiohead and most of the people who are taking advantage of the new economic possibilities are remnants of the old economy. Radiohead is the product of the old Label system. They are where they are because they were picked up by a mega corporation and marketed, to the exclusion of other bands.

With the weakening of Music Labels and the growing crowd of independent, non-affiliated music, no one coming on to the scene today can expect the kind of exposure that Radiohead had. No one launching an album for free can expect the kind of returns that Radiohead has received.

Radiohead may have jumped on a new distribution model that's rocked the industry, but I feel it's a flash in the pan model. This incarnation of the gift economy cannot, necessarily, sustain itself. It relies too heavily on the vestiges of the last paradigm.
What's coming will be different. It will have a different scale. It will be a different animal. And you will not find the germ of the new system figuring anywhere prominently in the old one.

Interview with Patrice Caron on the future of online arts reporting

This is the second part of the interview I did with Patrice Caron, the editor-in-chief of Bang Bang this morning.

Another topic he discussed in depth was how arts journalism will change in the future, especially with respect to online media.

The concept he put forth corresponds directly to Long Tail economics. he suggested a sort of Wikipedia for the arts.

He talked about the amount of time he spends online, sifting through the abundance of information on up-and-coming musicians.

He says all the information out there is "worth reading", but it comes down to how much time you have.

"That's my job," he said. "But my brother, an accountant, doesn't have that time. he wants to know what the best band to listen to is, but he doesn't want to spend three hours to find out."

He says there needs to be a resource that will link all the information, similar to how Chris Anderson talks about Amazon in the Long Tail article . That's what he sees the changing role of journalists evolving to. As someone to compile all the information, and to comment on it, but to let people sort through it, make the connections and to let them comment on things as well.

Interview with Patrice Caron on crowdsourcing

I interviewed Patrice Caron, the editor in chief of Bang Bang this morning.
He talked a lot about the importance of online media in arts reporting, and a lot of what he said corresponded with the readings from this class.

In this post, I'll discuss some of the things he said about the importance of participatory journalism.

He says that a real problem with arts reporting, is it's often tough to make advertising dollars. That, he says, is where online media comes in. About 99% of what's going on isn't picked up by the media, he says. But people will talk about it online and make it public. The news desk doesn't have the time to sift through all the press releases and e-mails. But people passionate about it do.

He argues that this can even be more valid that reports from journalism, as often people are so passionate about what they're blogging about, that they have more background knowledge.

"Blogging is worthy," he said. "Because people are passionate about what they write about." He gave the example of a reporter who covers rock, punk rock, hardcore and metal, because the magazine has hired only them to cover those genres. He said he's much rather read about metal from someone who listens exclusively to metal, because of their dedication to the genre.

Bang Bang also uses crowdsourcing, as discussed by Jeff Howe, with their blogs. Caron talked about how the magazine will give resources, like a camera to a bad, and ask them to report back and share their story.

"We need the participation of other people, " he said. "There is a distance built between media and readers. It has to be destroyed."

Caron's blog can be found here.

Blogging, Coming to a TV Near You

Before taking this class I knew virtually nothing about citizen journalism, almost nothing about blogging, and I would have considered myself uninterested in the ways of new media.

That was before.

As I grow and learn in our class, I am continuously baffled by the sheer power of the Internet and all of its capabilities. Just a few short weeks ago I would have dismissed blogging (minus perezhilton, but does he count?) as a fad directed at freaks and geeks- nothing up my alley.

I now see citizen journalism as the way of our future and blogging as a cultural and political force to be reckoned with.

When I stumbled upon Quarterlife I immediately became hooked, but it also reiterated that the ideas learned in class, that blogging is beginning to dominate mainstream media.  

Quarterlife was originally a show aired on myspace and quarterlife.com and focuses on a group of college graduates and their life post-university. Quarterlife's plot centers around the main character, Dylan who blogs about her life and friends. Dylan's new blogging addiction causes problems with the people in her life as they find out what she says about them and react accordingly.

Quarterlife is an example of the blogging phenomenon, its power, influence, and growing trend in popular culture. It is also proof that people are not only interested in reading and contributing to blogs that they have realized that they will become an essential part of our future  As a journalism student though, I keep asking myself how will my profession be a part of this?

When Craig Silverman spoke to our class he addressed this very topic and assured us the there are solutions.  Silverman stressed that, "We need to stop thinking about ourselves as gatekeepers and the sole providers of news", and we need to think of a future where amateurs and professionals will collaborate in unison.   

As journalists, we might be better, more qualified, and more experienced, but times are changing and we need to learn how to adjust and adapt. 

  

Regret the flat earth

A good journalist will always regret the error, but printing complete fallacies is really the result of a larger calamity that is corroding the newsroom: Flat Earth News.

photo by Nico Macdonald

I interviewed Nick Davies at 6 a.m. earlier this semester, only to find my voice recorder didn’t capture anything. We talked about his recently released bombshell on journalism, Flat Earth News: An Award Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. And in many ways, his book describes the reasoning behind Silverman’s noble crusade.

Flat Earth News. Can you explain the title of your book?

His title implies that the structural problems of journalism run so deep that journalists are likely to publish absolute lies. For the longest time people believed the earth was flat, just as, for the longest time, people believed there were WMDs in Iraq.

You funded some research conducted at Cardiff University. What was researched, and what did the findings reveal?

“I commissioned research from specialists at Cardiff University, who surveyed more than 2,000 UK news stories from the four quality dailies (Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent) and the Daily Mail,” Davies told The Guardian. “They found two striking things. First, when they tried to trace the origins of their ‘facts,’ they discovered that only 12% of the stories were wholly composed of material researched by reporters.

“With 8% of the stories, they just couldn't be sure. The remaining 80%, they found, were wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry. Second, when they looked for evidence that these ‘facts’ had been thoroughly checked, they found this was happening in only 12% of the stories.”

So, with only 12% of facts being checked, it is not difficult to see why Silverman can publish a 288 page book on errors in the press. Silverman notes in his interview with Chip Scanlan that “between 40 and 60 percent of newspaper news stories have some type of error, be it factual or something of a more subjective nature.”

This is where Davies’ work becomes crucial, complementing Silverman's work so well.

Churanlism is the term Davies has taken to. He explained to me that journalists are under such time constraints as a result of their corporation’s belt tightening that all they can do in churn out lies fed to them by PR machines and politicians. You take a press release, trim a few words and slap it on the page. Never mind checking the facts.

If Davies is looking at the machine that causes the chaos, Silverman is looking at the carnage left behind.

So an honest reporter like Silverman (at least we'd hope he's honest, having staked his career in honesty) says he doesn't want to put advertisements on his website because, “I [...] don't want to appear to be making money off of the mistakes of others.” Yet, the newspaper he works for is doing exactly that, making money off of the mistakes of others. Forcing journalists to become churnalists, printing lies that lead to rape, war and torture.

Davies closed by telling me that as journalists, we work in an field that is “structurally likely” to produce absolute lies. I asked him, what he would say to now disillusioned student journalists?

And this was a truly sincere moment in the interview–the rest was, ironically, PR. Davies said he is hopeful for student journalists that are eager and really looking for the truth. He said a battle is won every-time you tell your editor that you need more time.

Lawmakers Still in the Dark on Copyright Laws

http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/research/lliang/open_content_guide

While copyright laws have evolved over recent decades, as explained in the Free Culture article, the evolution of copyright laws has actually had an inverse relationship with modern media sharing and piracy.

While Lawrence Lessig addresses the history of these laws, he fails to offer huge details about how these laws need to change to totally reflect the needs of current users.

Until 1992, copyright laws dictated that owners could renew their rights after a given number of years. As such, the average lifetime of a copyright was around 32 years. However, under the new laws established in 1992, the average lifetime of a copyright has increased to a set 95%.

Ironically, these more stringent copyright laws were established just as the Internet was becoming increasingly popular and used more widely in both businesses and homes.

As explained by the video we watched in class today, (Matt if you can send me the URL I’d love to link to it from this post), copyright laws simply don’t make sense with technology today and the norms of how files are shared, etc.

There was a great quote in today’s in-class video: “Current laws are making our kids criminals.” If you considering when current copyright laws were made, and by “when” I don’t just mean what year, I mean also the technological context of the time, it becomes extremely evident that the current laws are not appropriate for the current state of technology. The technology has advanced far more rapidly than the laws; creating an disconnect between the two, and forcing people to break the law in order to use current technologies to their full capacity.

This considered, it appears that the fossils who control copyright laws will eventually have to revolutionize the laws to match the capabilities of modern technology. In doing so, many – including Lawrence Lessig – have suggested that lawmakers adopt a Creative Commons license in order to allow users to employ the technology to its full capabilities without breaking laws that are becoming increasingly obsolete.

www.wirednextfest.com

While the Creative Commons License, which allows non-commercial use of a given work, so long as attribution is given, is a somewhat new concept, and to date isn’t widely accepted by law and policy makers.

Hopefully soon, they’ll get on the bandwagon and come out of the 20^th century. Check out this awesome website about the issue.

Big bad conglomerates strike again!

© A*A*R*O*N

The acquisition of Double-Click in 2006 ruffled a lot of feathers. People were uncertain whether they liked that THE biggest information gathering online agency was now moving into the advertising sector. And boy, you just can’t stunt that kind of progress.

By some strange twist of fate, an overwhelming percentage of my friends work in the gaming industry, as game designers or something or other. It’s not really work in the first place right? You play all day…But Tuesday morning, I came across an article in the Globe and Mail titled “In-game ads come of age” which reported on a new trend on the horizon – live streaming of ads into games as users play. From the insider’s perspective, some games require false advertisements for cityscapes, so why not use real companies, paying top dollar, instead of bogus ones?

Well, Massive Inc., a subsidiary company of Microsoft, is a leading broker in the burgeoning industry of dynamic in-game advertising. And like the rest of online advertising brutes these days, they’re not wasting any time offering their services to potential clients. According to Matt Hartley’s article, Massive brokered a multi-year deal with Electronics Arts Inc., the world's largest video game producer, to sell rotating ad space in EA's online games. The move not only provides Massive's network with long-term stability, but also legitimizes the in-game advertising industry in the eyes of the marketing world. Yay!

In their own words, Massive’s network enables marketers to reach and engage the millions of young adult playing games every day. "Are you trying to connect your brand with this target audience? THEN IT’S TIME TO GET IN THE GAME…"

In the real world, meanwhile, designers have begun pushing free online gaming where a slew of advertisers make up for user capital. It’s a twisted version of the gift economy if you ask me.

Gaming is one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment. By presenting unique marketing opportunities advertisers can pitch their brands to those ‘hard to reach’ consumers – specifically young adult males. Latest developments promise a truly unique, ultra-imersive entertainment experience (in high-definition, too). It just seems insanely intrusive to me.

Massive’s business model reaches across titles, genres and game platforms to connect with gamers wherever they are. Invariably glued to their computers, a pray to campaigns that target specific geographics and timings.

What I found a little off was the list of clients. I mean I get the car companies, the film productions studios… but the Government of Ontario? It's right up there with the US Navy, Armed Forces and the National Highway Traffic Safety Association.

For the time being, ads only span for about 15 seconds. But with technology these days, who knows how soon we’ll have to endure the same bad Hollywood trailer looping in the background. If parents were concerned with the PG13 ratings on bestselling games, trying controlling which company advertises on Tony Hawk’s virtual skate-ramps.

And I'm left with a single question, is there any way to keep corporate giants out of my leisure time?

Make Me Pay For It

Photo by larimdaME

I produce content and I want to get paid. This is fair. I have a right to put food in my mouth by creating something people will pay for. Also fair. I have a right to control every aspect of my content insofar as the impact it has on society at large. Now I'm slipping. I have elected to make a contribution to said society but I want to make absolutely certain that it will only be used under my own terms. Why didn't I get a regular job and suffer with everyone else?

In these chapters Lawrence Lessig sorts through an awful lot of controversial subject matter pretty rapidly, and while I agree in principle with a lot of what he says, I still feel that he is leaving out an important aspect of piracy: why should I pay for something I can get free? (Maybe he touches on this in the other chapters, granted)

It's wonderful that you write a book, or record an album, or make a movie, or produce a graphic novel. For better or worse you have woven another stitch into the fabric of our culture. That people care to check it out must be a rewarding feeling. That they'll even pay for it makes you doubly lucky.

As an artist or media manipulator of any ilk, you are a proverbial drop in a vast ocean. That you cause a ripple is not enough, though. If I want to swim in the wave pool of your achievement, I'd better be ready to pay for the pleasure of it. Anything less is asking you to work for free. You're not having it. Rewarding feelings don't pay the bills.

Okay, again, all fair. But why should we swim in your wave pool when the guy beside you isn't charging? Hey, he might even be asking for a contribution, but he's content to see people enjoy the water. I know your name, and I know his name. But I'm going to remember him, because he threw the good pool party where more people came and no one pissed in the pool. The next time he throws a pool party, I'd even pay to get in. Your pools are the same size but his less shade over it.

Now I'm going to put the metaphor to bed and look at an important point Lessig brings up in Chapter 5.

If we have a property system, and that system is properly balanced to the technology of a time, then it is wrong to take property without the permission of a property owner. That is exactly what “property” means.

The part that's missing in the case of the internet and piracy issues is that the property system we have lacks any balance with the technologies at play. It's a case of old school v. new school, and neither side is sure of the rules, but the new school, being young, can afford more risks.

If I'm a new artist who came of age as the internet began to expand into the average household, then the old ways seem like a thing of the past. If I've been around longer than 10 years and don't know how to adapt to the new reality, of course I'm going to get defensive. And it's going to look like greed.

Why? It's not greed - an artist has a right to earn. It's just that now that people are giving it away for free, well, damn it, there's competition! That’s the problem. It's not the medium; it's the ability to adapt. Maybe Metallica have more to lose in terms of assets after 25 years in the recording industry than the Arcade Fire. But what they really stand to lose is their time-honoured, previously un-tampered-with equation for money making.

Young fans finding out about old Metallica aren't going to generate cash anymore, whereas Arcade Fire will never know another way besides giving it away and letting talent and perseverance on their part fill the venues and sell out the merch booth. They can’t rest on their laurels because their laurels have yet to be clearly identified. This is a complete lack of balance. It may be why it is seemingly so difficult to reconcile technology and profitability in terms of distribution.