Wired News Report On Michelle Delio Raises Issues With 24 Stories

This hits close to home as a contributor to Wired News since August 2003, albeit a much less prolific one than Michelle Delio, who wrote more than 700 articles from 2000 through March 2005. Wired News asked columnist and NYU professor Adam Penenberg (who unmasked Stephen Glass as a fabulist) to review Delio’s work after the MIT Technology Review Online removed two of her articles from its web site following questions about the existence of a source. The results of the first part of the review are in: Penenberg and his grad students could not find all or some of the sources for 24 stories  — approximately 15 percent of the 160 articles reviewed. Delio stands by her work; she was interviewed by AP.

Unlike MIT, Wired News will not remove the articles: "By keeping these stories posted and clearly marked, we hope that our readers can help identify any sources whom we cannot track down, opting instead to append them and leave." The remaining  Delio articles will be reviewed, with notes added to the archived versions "as appropriate."

As a result of the questions surrounding some of Delio’s work, Wired News will require all freelancers to submit contact information with every story and will allow anonymous sources only with "justification."

Wired News managing editor Marty Cortinas told me via IM that staffers will be held to the same anonymity standards but will be required to provide contact info only "on demand." When I expressed concern about presenting an image that freelancers are somehow more prone to problems than staffers, Marty replied: "They are not. But we have less control over what they do and how they do it."

The bulk of this was posted first on paidContent.org, then deleted and moved here.

Assume Nothing, Presume Nothing

… to borrow a phrase from the more experienced editor in my house.  I’ve seen a few posts that seem to be looking at the composition of the attendance at BlogNashville and assuming it can be extrapolated to show the composition of the blogosphere.  Yes, it was a lot more white and male than I might prefer.  It also, with the exception of the session leaders, was a completely self-selecting group with the time, money and inclination for whatever reason to spend an intense weekend (or just a day) in Nashville with blogging as the common interest. The location tipped the balance in some directions but anyone who wanted to come had an equal shot at attending. I had the same reaction when there were complaints about the small number of conservatives at BloggerCon III. Last time I checked California was full of Republicans and Palo Alto doesn’t require a visa. 

That doesn’t mean we have to be satisfied with the results when broadly based conferences wind up with a narrow attendance pool.  (No matter what you do, odds are at least a third,
if not more, will come from within a few hours of the location.) What can be done? Publicize conferences as widely as possible in as many different venues as possible. Encourage people who might not otherwise choose to attend or might not know about the opportunity. Look for ways to offer scholarships.  Make sure the marketing language is inclusive, not exclusive. Ditto for the conference site. Other ideas? Please add them in the comments area.

BlogNashville: “Commiting Journalism”: Real-time Notes

These are my real-time notes from the session we just finished on "committing journalism." I’ll add and expand later — and I hope others at the session will contribute via their own blogs or here. If you post something on the session, the tags are and BlogNashville. Josh Hallett live blogged the session. Update: K.Paul mentions that this is sparse. These were the notes I posted on the screen while I was leading the  session so it’s closer to a collection of bullet points  than a live blog. Frank Paynter writes up some highlights.

Journalism
is an activity

— can be verified

— can be trusted

— transparency
— who, background
Journalism is the presentation of news in an organized fashion
deal with, credible<

Can
be in the form of an opinion column — with facts

Lash:
The lost art of political argument

Decline of political process with rose of professional
journalism

Struggle between argument and myth of objectivity

Presenting observations as a journalist

 

History: professional journalism

 

Jeff brown — presentation of news and events in an
organizaed fashion supported by facst and indepdenent verification balanced by
editorial review

Journalism — popular presentation of information

Pulse: Live blogged mayoral election

How blogging has changed what we do:

— sources

— experts

— blogging — sources available at any given time, makes
them have to think

blogs at the root are a technology

Journalism —

Fact

Opinion journalism

Couldn’t be friends with people you’re writing about

Uncovering hypocrisy

Lot of chumminess — friend of mine

Pre-telegraph: Very hard to get basic facts

Internet has accelerated that process

Not only available but overwhelming

Context to information

Brands add instant credibility

Opp to have information provided context 

deconstruction

From the SPJ Code of Ethics:

Seek Truth & Report It 

Minimize Harm 

Act Independently

Be Accountable

John Jay Hooker

Most important thing that’s happened in democracy

Journalism is a form of communication — no more, no less

It is the backbone of democracy, the key part of the first
amendment

Our ultimate ability to protect ourselves against the
government

Exposure of malfeasance

The first essential to journalism

Most imp thing is a sense of relevance

To be able to distinguish between the ache in your finger and
ache in your heart

Ability to say something 

The opportunity to blog is like a gift from g-d, the ultimate
aspect of freedom

We are journalists to the extent you want to be

Better journalism —

I know bad j when I see it

Obligation to reach beyond usual suspects?

Get out of the echo chamber

TRANSPARENCY

How far do you go with transparency? 

Cynicism 

Filling in the gaps

Expand coverage

Encourage community interaction

JJH — grade your own journalism …

Art is art

Sources you choose

Chris Nolan —

It’s not doing journalism or committing journalism — it’s
reporting

Your loyalty is to the reader and the story

Unambiguous bases (foundation)

What you add to that is journalism

———————-

Opens, not closes

———————

Trust 

Nashville’s talking —

Hoder —

Filling the gap between the local media in Iran, mainly in
Persian, and international media

Hoder.com — blogs in two languages

Three functions:

presenting facts or
reporting –MSM

Challenging 

Creating public debate (highest level?)

Web logs performing functions msm doesn’t do -challenging and
creating debates

Middleware — if it works well you don’t hear about it —
blogging host system at usc, entire campus community 

On the road to BlogNashville

We’re leaving home base in University City, Missouri in the next few minutes for Nashville. We should be there by late afternoon and hope to make it to the journalism and blogging panel at Belmont this evening — even though, framed as blogging vs. journalism,  the topic goes against the grain of what I hope to accomplish tomorrow morning.

Here’s the list of scheduled attendees this weekend, a great mix stuffed with a lot of usual suspects and lots of new faces. And here’s the handy-dandy discussion page, set up to aggregate BlogNahshville posts and pix. 

Mislede-ing

There’s a vast difference between defining simply and flat out leaving the wrong impression. Here’s the lede from Tuesday’s WSJ story by Brian Steinberg about corporate blogging:

"Found amid the unvarnished opinion and helter-skelter discussion on Web logs, or blogs, is something crucial to any marketer: raw consumer feedback. With that in mind, companies are embarking on the delicate task of turning ‘corporate blog’ from an oxymoron into the latest channel for direct marketing to customers and prospects."

Well, yes. There’s a lot of journalism, too, and a lot of information and a lot of thoughtful discussion and a lot of consumer feedback that falls between raw and professional. Blogs run the gamut, and I don’t mean the one Dorothy Parker used when she said Katherine Hepburn ran the gamut from A to B.  I doubt Steinberg was trying to leave the impression that all blogging falls into the boundaries he used but that’s the problem with a lot of well-meaning journalism about blogs. Even a place like the Journal that’s working with blogs of its own and working with bloggers too often misses the mark in its own coverage. 

Is Blogging Journalism?

Corante’s Dana Blankenhorn brings up the question I most hope to avoid at BlogNashville. His response, in part:

"Short answer. No. It can be, of course. When journalists blog, when we ask hard questions, dig for facts,
and take mistakes seriously, well then yes journalism can happen on a
blog. … To say a blog is journalism is like saying web pages are journalism.
Journalism can happen on Web pages, and on blogs, in lots of places.
Not everything that’s printed is journalism. Not everything that’s
broadcast is journalism. Yet we have print and broadcast journalism.
It’s the same with blogging software."

Don’t stop at Dana’s post. Be sure to read the comments. I particularly like this from Chris Daly, a journalism professor at  BU:  "the definition of a journalist depends on the activity, not the medium. Try this tentative definition: If you seek factual, contemporary truths for an audience (of any size), you are a journalist." His full take on the subject.