Newsweek changes sourcing policy, strengthens publication guidelines

Newsweek editor-in-chief Richard M. Smith used 985 words of this week’s magazine to apologize again for publishing what turned out to be an unconfirmed report about mistreatment of the Quran — and then he went  a very big step further by explaining the changes being made as a result. His goal: "to share my thoughts with you and to affirm—and reaffirm—some important
principles that will guide our news gathering in the future."

One of the more frustrating things for me as I’ve watched the coverage of Newsweek has been the assumption by many that this was a cavalier, thoughtless, possibly rash move on the newsweekly’s part. It wasn’t. It was a bad decision based on a faulty foundation but it wasn’t like one reporter got a tip and it was rushed into print. One of Smith’s frustrations is that "we seem to have taken so many appropriate steps in reporting the Guantanamo story." They did push beyond a single source as they vetted the story; they thought they had confirmation. It’s happened before and, I hate to say, it will happen again whenever the reporter and sources aren’t completely clear with other other. (Anyone else remember the scene in "All The President’s Men" when they go with a story they think has been been confirmed but  wasn’t?")

The important aspect here is that Newsweek understands not only where the story went wrong, but what must be done to strengthen reporting and editing. As Smith writes, "if our traditional procedures did not prevent the mistake, then it is time to clarify and strengthen a number of our policies." The review process continues — also important —  but these are the immediate changes:

  • "… only the editor or the managing editor, or other top editors they
    specifically appoint, will have the authority to sign off on the use of
    an anonymous source."
  • "The cryptic phrase "sources said" will never again be the sole attribution for a story in NEWSWEEK."
  • "When information provided by a source wishing to remain anonymous is
    essential to a sensitive story—alleging misconduct or reflecting a
    highly contentious point of view, for example—we pledge a renewed
    effort to seek a second independent source or other corroborating
    evidence."
  • "Tacit affirmation, by anyone, no matter how highly placed or apparently knowledgeable, will not qualify as a secondary source."

Beyond sourcing, Smith underscored guiding principles:

  • holding stories for as long as necessary in order to be confident of the facts, regardless of competition.
  • ensure that sensitive stories receive appropriate refelection and discussion.
  • mistakes are inevitable but must confronted, corrected quickly, and treated as a learning experience. (Smith doesn’t say it but I will, once is a mistake, twice is a bad habit.)

Read the full letter.

Technical difficulties

The not-so-perfect end to a crazy week: our cable modem service is out, something to do with an unhappy RF signal not being able to make a commitment. I’m actually on 45.2 kbps dial-up right now. Charter Communications is going to see if someone can drop by tomorrow — Saturday — sometime during the day. No guarantees since my psychic powers didn’t kick in, warning to me to make an appointment in advance because my service was going out. But they did promise to call my cell phone with a warning, allowing me to wander a short distance from home.

On the bright side, the Clayton Farmer’s Market opens in the morning down the street from two hotspots (Starbucks, Krispy Kreme) and around the corner from "my" usual hotspot  (Northwest Coffee), in case  I have to mix business with pure pleasure.

Interview with Martin Nisenholtz

Just finished posting an interview at paidContent with NYTCO’s Martin Nisenholtz. The company announced today it would start charging in September for access to columnists and a significant amount of other content. The $49.95 annual TimesSelect also includes  access to the archives and some other preimums. In a very smart move — writing as a print subscriber — TimesSelect will be included automatically with the print subscription.

May 15, 1963

Hard to believe — it’s 42 years since Gordon Cooper set off on the last Mercury mission, last solo trip into space and a record 22 orbits around the earth. Cooper died last October. I grew up with the space program and Cooper was "my" astronaut as a kid but the anniversary might have passed by unremembered if not for an accidental re-viewing of "The Right Stuff" over the weekend.

The press doesn’t come off too well in this movie, featured as a pack most of the time in one of the first feeding frenzies of the modern journalism era. Gratuitous Huffington Post mention: Harry Shearer, who’s writing about the media for the HP, plays one of the clueless recruiters in the movie.

JD Lasica’s Darknet Is Released

I’m working on the copy JD literally tossed my way after BlogNashville and hope to finish it this weekend. If you want to understand the intersection between user rights and copyrights, I think you’ll want to read Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation. Don’t skip the foreward by Howard Rheingold, whose commentary about fair use lays a good foundation.

Beyond the book itself, I appreciate the way JD, a long-time colleague at the Online Journalism Review, used the web as he wrote — it’s the first book I ever tried to "edit" via a wiki — and is trying to use it post-publication as an extension of the book. Some of the links aren’t live or have error messages now, but the site is supposed to offer source material for the book, including interviews, and other resources.

A little strange: Amazon includes book  blurb copy as editorial reviews. I think the comments should be labeled as "blurbs" or as reviews solicited by the publisher or auther, etc. — not lumped in with editorial reviews.    

 

Welcome, Bayosphere

As I reported late yesterday on paidContent, Dan Gillmor’s first Grassroots Media project is underway: Bayosphere.com. The first phase — moving Dan’s blog from Typepad to Bayosphere — was close enough to being accomplished to go live last night.  (No RSS feeds yet.) Registration is required for comments, as part of the community-building effort. This makes particular sense for Dan, who has been plagued by a troll and comment spam. I’m all for a high quality-to-noise ratio although registration, particularly when anonymity is allowed,  is no guarantee of quality. Good luck on all counts, Dan — and please give "wretchedaccess.com" a home as soon as you can.

One more thing: I’ve grown increasingly disconcerted by use of the term "citizen journalism," which seems to suggest that professional journalists — those of us who do it for a living —  aren’t citizens. Grassroots media works in some instances, as do a few other terms (including we-media, as in Dan’s book "We The Media" ), but I’m going with "p2p media" or "peer media" for now.

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RSS & Information Management

I’m an RSS addict and pusher — it makes management of certain kinds of
information so much easier — but I’m not sure I want to live in an RSS
world where everything is weighted the same and context can be
elusive. It’s like the difference between libraries that bring books
to you and those that let you roam through the stacks. Sometimes, I
want that one book and I want it immediately. Most of the time, I want
to wander, trusting instinct and serendipity. 

This
morning I went offline and took some newspapers (we still get four delivered)
to my favorite bakery and oatmeal provider,
where I wish they’d install WiFi and often appreciate the lack of it.
I battled the wind  to sit outside, eat and read the papers, picking up bits
and pieces that probably wouldn’t have been in view otherwise. Could I live without them? Yes. But I often gain something — story ideas of my own, a sense of current culture, news outside of my usual realm. One of my favorite scenes in "Working Girl" is when Melanie Griffith’s character explains how she concocted a deal by playing mental hopscotch with published articles. Sure, you might get the same inspiration from collated, aggregated feeds but that sense of juxtaposition is much more elusive.

Similarly, looking at someone’s web site can be more rewarding than the streams of copy flowing through my RSS readers (Usually Feed Demon and Bloglines). I can see images, text, design coming together, a holistic look at someone’s personal space. I get a glimpse of how a public company treats its responsibilities to shareholders by how hard it makes it to find  information or whether earnings make the site’s front page.

It’s probably the same part of me that believes songs have a certain kind of resonance as singles but a different kind altogether as part of an album with songs placed by one another for particular reasons. Recent proof of that theory: Grey Seal on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road a few songs after "Funeral For A Friend" and "Candle In The Wind" provokes an entirely different, uplifting feeling for me than it does paired with different songs on the remaster of earlier album Elton John . I can — and do — mix my own playlists but some songs can’t be separated from their original company; splintered, Springsteen’s Nebraska, for one,  loses power.

RSS offers its own serendipity of my choices mixed together. But  information management alone would be a pretty spare diet for me.

Coda: I firmly believe if you  read USA Today’s  Life section at least three
times a week you’ll be conversant in pop culture even if you never turn
on a tv, something too many editors claim as a badge of honor. Editors who followed
that prescription wouldn’t have been caught off guard when Kurt Cobain
committed suicide. I don’t know why but it doesn’t  work the same online; in fact, of all the papers I read both in print and online, USA Today is the least satisfying electronically.

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Listen Up

Anyone who thinks they know Dave Winer based on the reports from BlogNashville should listen to this 25-minute podcast for a conference in Pisa.  But that’s not the real reason to spend a half-hour or so downloading and listening; listen if you want a clear understanding of the hows, whys and whats of today’s internet — blogs, RSS, podcasts — and how the "unconference" concept fits in.. 

Julie Leung transcribed a bit of it; her post, too, is worth reading for other reasons. This is another part that jumped out at me:

"We have moved from an age of information poverty into an age of information excess in an incredibly short period of time,  in 10 or 15 years. Not only has the amount of information gone up but our expectation of information has gone up dramatically. "

Dave goes on to talk about managing information and how that led to the popularity of RSS, which got me thinking about the side effects of information management.  More on that in the next post. In the meantime, listen up.

Techy note: This was the first time I used my Nokia 6620 to listen to a podcast. I didn’t want to wait until I got home from my WiFi-enabled coffeeshop and thought it would be good company for a round of errands.  I didn’t have the right cable to move it to the iRiver I’m testing so downloaded it to the laptop and ported it by infrared to the phone, popped in the bluetooth headest et voila. Little strange grocery shopping with Dave …

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Too many codes?

Jeff Jarvis wonders if we have too many codes of ethics.

"Methinks the volume of codes of ethics is, itself, a symptom of a
problem. Doth we protest too much? Are we overcomplicating it? Are we
overcompensating?
Doesn’t it pretty much add up to this: Don’t lie. Don’t sell out."

Nice idea but it’s a little more complicated than that. (If I were going for a one-liner I’d borrow from Hillel — "do not do to others what you would not do to yourself, the rest is
commentary.") I offered the SPJ Code of Ethics guiding principles during the "Committing Journalism" session at BlogNashville this weekend, for a couple of reasons: 1) I was one of the hundreds or more journalists involved in the creation of this version, which was approved in 1996 after much debate and a year’s postponement.  The ethics listserv I’ve operated for the past decade began as a place to discuss the proposed changes. 2) I still believe that the four  principles — especially when combined with the preamble but even on their own — form one of the simplest, best guides for ethical decisionmaking. You can go through all the steps and still come out with a decision others might question — see the Spokesman-Review for an example — but it’s a good, solid foundation.

  1. Seek Truth and Report It: Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous
    in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
  2. Minimize Harm: Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues
    as human beings deserving of respect.
  3. Act Independently: Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest
    other than the public’s right to know.
  4. Be Accountable: Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners,
    viewers and each other.

It wouldn’t hurt to read the full version, linked to above,  every now and then. You don’t have to agree with everything in it but thinking about ethics won’t hurt.  It also doesn’t hurt to talk to colleagues or others when you’re not sure about the decision you’re making. I was called by a student reporter a few weeks ago, who wasn’t sure his publication was going in the right direction. I tried not to answer it for him, instead asking the kind of questions I hoped he would be able to ask himself next time. Then I gave him the url for the SPJ code.

Usually, the problem isn’t too many. It’s the lack of one.
 

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