Monday, January 03, 2005

A Morning Coffee Notes recorded this morning on Inkerstate 95 and uploaded from Miami Beach. Adam and I arrived at the hotel within 5 minutes of each other. He came from London, I came from Seattle.  

Good morning everybody! Another travel day, this time the final leg of the Seattle-Miami trip. Our one-week meeting starts tonight.  

Bringing the press into the story 

Yesterday, walking on the beach, I had a minor epiphany about the press that I thought I should share asap. Talking to a reporter recently, about the difference between bloggers and pros, I tell a story I often tell, the interchange between David Weinberger and Walter Mears at the blogger's breakfast at the Democratic National Convention in July.

Weinberger asked Mears who he planned to vote for in the presidential election. Mears said he couldn't say because that would bring his biases into the discussion, and he writes objectively, his biases are irrelevant. This was about as clear a distinction as I've seen, because bloggers seem to view it exactly the other way. I can't trust you until I know where you're coming from. So a blogger always discloses his opinion on something he's reporting on, so we can triangulate, get a variety of points of view to determine what's really going on. Triangulation is something bloggers and their readers depend on. In the world of the pro, apparently triangulation is not necessary, because in theory every reporter is objective.

So, the reporter I was talking with says he is not part of the story. This is where the epiphany begins. That's why the various attempts to self-enforce integrity have been awful failures for the pros. We tested the self-enforcement system put in place by The Guardian last spring, we're not exactly nobodies, and got blown off, summarily and rudely. This is not what we would expect from a QA department at any organization, and surely not a newspaper of high repute. We wouldn't tolerate this from government, nor industry, but these days, when a campaign can be deleted, and its supporters disenfranchised, by cable networks because a candidate showed enthusiasm, consider how much progress we can make until we systematically watch the pros and judge the quality of their work. We're fools if we believe they can be trusted to watch over themselves. We have the empirical evidence that proves otherwise.

Net-net: the professional journalist is totally part of the story he or she is writing. That they believe otherwise is the major bug in their process.