Neil McIntosh has damned good advice for journalism students, following up on a report about the state of j-schools and technology, below:
Again, for those at the back: if you think you want to be a journalist, I now don’t think there’s any excuse not to have a blog. The closer you get to looking around for jobs, the better it should be maintained. If you enter the jobs market without one, no matter how good your degree, you’re increasingly likely to lose out to people who better present all they can do, and have the experience of creating and curating their own site.
Ethan Zuckerman shares his considerable experience and wisdom on liveblogging. I like liveblogging conferences but will confess that I often run out of gas halfway through.
This is like sending weapons to the Mujahideen to get them to attack your real enemy: Robert Greenwald, Fox News attacker, mashes together every Fox attack on blogs that he can find: red meat to the link army — and pretty damned funny.
Pardon me if I brag for a moment about my friends and former colleagues at the Star-Ledger in New Jersey and the work they’ve been doing with blogs. Full disclosure: I’ve been consulting with them on this, so this is not only blogrolling but is also self-serving. So sprinkle on those grains of salt.
Take a look at five Ledger projects:
* Yesterday, the Ledger launched NJVoices, a local version of the Guardian’s Comment is Free and HuffingtonPost. It’s the same idea: Invite in some opinion leaders — including the paper’s own columnists — and give them a platform to have their say and interact with their public. The idea behind NJVoices is that it’s entirely local. And it is also a means to blow up the notions of the op-ed page, the letter to the editor, the column, and even the editorial. I remember when I first showed CiF and HuffPo to my friend Jim Willse, the Ledger’s editor, it clicked with him; he saw the future of local opinion. And now it is launched. I next look forward to seeing how this feeds back into the paper.
* They tried to figure out how to get involved with local bloggers and the first step is a blog of blogs. Staffer Kelly Heyboer tracks and writes about local bloggers, which also establishes a relationship with them and creates an expertise within the paper about the scene (’Is anybody blogging about _____?’ ‘Go ask Kelly’).
* Last week, they invited a bunch of prominent local bloggers to go along on the paper’s beloved Munchmobile — a van with a big hot dog on top, dear to the editor’s heart, that goes around the state taste-testing local treats. Inviting the bloggers meant that the paper was writing about the bloggers, the bloggers were writing about the paper, pizza and links were had by all. Smart.
* One of their first moves was to take a beat reporter covering the pharma industry, which is huge in Jersey, and have him start a Romenesko-plus blog covering the news through links and more: Pharmalot. It has gained traffic, links, respect, and now targeted advertising.
* When the paper wanted to show off more and more video, we talked about using existing tools to do video. They put up video on YouTube as well as on NJ.com. Then they invite readers to make their local videos and put them on YouTube, tagged TV Jersey. All this goes up on a blog at TVJersey.com, “the television station New Jersey doesn’t have.”
Lots of papers are now starting their own blogs; that’s an important element of the strategy. But it’s also important to use this as a way to have a new relationship with the public and you see some attempts at that here: steps in the right direction.
Read this post by Saul Hansell about Yahoo on the NY Times’ new tech blog. It is opinionated, filled with opinion, and that’s what makes it so good. I doubt that this would appear in the paper but I certainly don’t know why. Hansell rips into Yahoo and its new/old CEO, Jerry Yang, for his buzzwordy performance in his first earnings call.
If any Yahoo users — and there are half a billion of them — listened to Jerry Yang’s debut earnings conference call as chief executive, they would have heard not a single reason to get excited about going back to Yahoo.com. . . .
“So many people want Yahoo to win,†he said. “I’m committed to making that happen.†. . .
The top buzzword today at Yahoo was “ecosystem.†Mr. Yang and Ms. Decker said they wanted to make Yahoo a “marketplace†where advertisers sell their products, publishers distribute their content and developers run their programs.
Why would an advertiser, publisher or developer choose Yahoo rather than, say, Google, Facebook or even Microsoft?
Mr. Yang’s answer had more buzzwords: “Insight,†“openness,†and “partnership.â€
: LATER: Hansell responds in the comments:
Thanks for noticing what we’re doing over at Bits, Jeff.
I think that blogs in fact do give us lots of great tools to do our traditional job better: We can be quick, say as much or as little as we need to, and of course connect to the broader conversation through outbound links and comments.
But I don’t think that blogs are as much of a revolution in the way that opinion and analysis is expressed as you and others may say. My watchword, as the editor ofBbits, is to work in the same voice long used by columnists in news pages, such as Floyd Norris, David Leonhardt, Joe Nocera and David Carr (not that I am putting my blogging on a par with any of them).
I can do that because in my new role I am no longer the beat reporter covering any companies. So I can step back and be a second voice on some technology topics.
Bits is a bit of a combination because it also includes posts from the rest of the reporters, who sometimes need to use a slightly different tone. The blog is less formal than the paper, and allows for first person writing. But for a beat reporter, it is a way to marshal curiosity and conversation. And again these forms of writing –news analysis pieces and reporters notebook collections–have long existed in our pages and others.
I won’t say that’s false humility. I’d say it’s politics. I do think Saul is changing the voice of the paper, one peep at a time.
Openness and partnership are taken for granted in Silicon Valley these days. No one says they want to be an island, even if they do. Insight is a code word for one of Yahoo’s differentiations: its data about its users and willingness to use it in order to target ads. Microsoft is also building targeting capability, but has fewer and less engaged users. Google is building up a vast repository of data, but it has been conflicted about what to do with it.
But Mr. Yang didn’t even try to explain — in words of any number of syllables — why users would want to visit his ecosystem: Is it warm, beautiful, exciting, relaxing?
Until Mr. Yang is able to say what Yahoo stands for and why people should use its services, he is going to reviewing and reorganizing and buzzwording as the company he founded continues to wither.
I would go farther — but then, I’m just a blogger; I’m dripping with opinion. I think that Yang needs a strategy to take Yahoo into the distributed web and away from the old-media model or he will fail. It’s not about convincing people to come to Yahoo. It’s about finding the ways to take Yahoo to the people. In other words, the question isn’t whether I Yahoo. The question is whether Yahoo Jarvises.
But that’s not the point of this post. I find it fascinating that Hansell, a respected reporter who, I believe, helped invent this blog, took on a new voice. Now in one sense, that could be said to misinterpret blogs; just because a blog, doesn’t mean it has to be snarky (as I have to tell my students). But on the other hand, I will say that having a blog opened up a reporter to a new voice that got to the point directly and quickly and didn’t make me read between lines or guess what he thinks. I like hearing what Hansell thinks and I’m glad I now can.
In the comments on the post/book immediately below, my friend Fred Wilson said I was sticking with old-school notions. I left this comment in response and think it’s worth bringing the discussion out here:
In journalism education, I talk a lot about the need to rewrite and break rules, to end old assumptions, to work with new realities. I talk about it far too much for the taste of some (many, actually).
But I also talk about the values that are worth maintaining and preserving. Credibility is the essence of that. Not selling your voice is the key to credibility. It is the foundation of independence. There are other worthy values I talk about, too: fairness, accuracy, completeness. And this week on Newshour, I included in the discussion the ethics I have learned from the blogosphere: the ethic of the correction, of the link, and of transparency.
In the professional arena, I also talk a lot about the need to reexamine the wall between church and state, the need for journalists themselves to take responsibility for the sustainability of journalism.
But that makes is all the more important that we understand how to maintain independence and credibility. That makes these selected “old-school†values all the more critical.
It doesn’t matter whether one considers oneself a journalist, though. Credibility is the same for all of us. Our readers expect us to speak with them directly, as trusted friends. My neighbors aren’t paid to speak to me. No one is (yet) trying to buy their voices. I expect the same here.
I don’t want to tear down all the old schools. I want to update them.
And I clearly believe in the importance of advertiser support for media, including the media of the people. But that, too, is why I think it is important to have these discussions openly and in detail, so that bloggers will build and maintain their credibility. For if they lose their credibility, they lose their value both to their readers and to their advertisers. That much has not changed: Advertisers, including Microsoft, want to be associated with people of who have the respect of their shared public.
Federated Media stepped in it with their latest campaign, getting some of its bloggers to issue not so bon mots on behalf of a not so bon advertiser, Microsoft.
I tried to warn Federated when I adamantly turned down two prior similar campaigns, telling them that this would reflect poorly on the bloggers who do it, possibly on bloggers as a whole, on the network itself, and in the end on the advertisers. But they kept trying to push the boundaries, because that’s what advertisers and thus sales people do.
So ultimately, this is a cautionary tale for all bloggers who take ads: You must set your own boundaries and not let them be pushed. When you do — whatever those boundaries are — that is the very definition of selling out.
In each of these cases, the advertiser’s effort is to get more closely associated with us, our content, our reputations, our brands. They’d like get into our pants mouths. They want us to speak their names. Nicely. Or at least be near them, associated with them. This happens at every editorial product I know and it becomes incumbent upon their editors to resist and to protect their integrity from integration — if, indeed, that matters to them (and in many cases, such as entertainment shows — Coke glasses on the American Idol desk — it doesn’t). Advertisers can’t get us to endorse their products directly — unless we’re PayPerPosties or actors — and so they try to find some way that we can say something nice somewhere else. That’s what happened in this case, after much Talmudic wrestling that still strikes me as the congregant asking the rabbi for permission to have an affair… with a shiksa… on a pig farm… on a Saturday… for money.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now: The rules are obvious. Our readers should not be confused about the source of what they read. If it is paid for, that should be labeled as advertising. In editorial environments, our voice and our space cannot be bought — or it is not editorial; it is, by definition, advertising. Not every media property needs to follow these rules; entertainment, for example, is not editorial. But this is the essential rule that allows us to accept advertising to support publications without losing our credibility.
First, I’ll give the background of the current case to those who, having taken a weekend day off, had not seen it on Techmeme. And then (at the three asterisks below) I will give you my history and the emails I sent to Federated on this last year.
The current case: On Friday, Nick Denton at Valleywag gave proper a tongue-lashing to Federated and the prominent bloggers in the ad network — Om Malik, Michael Arrington, Fred Wilson, Paul Kedrosky, Matt Marshall (plus Richard MacManus, Mike Davidson, and Federated founder John Battelle) — who agreed to give pappy quotes over their names for a platitudinous campaign about business that is “people-ready,” said quotes appearing on a minisite Federated made for Microsoft and on banner ads. We, the public, are supposed to become so engaged in this fit of interactivity that we vote for our favorite cant (does the winner go on a bumper sticker? a t-shirt? a blimp?) and submit our own people-ready stories. If this felt any more stretched, it’d be taffy. But note how they try to get the bloggers to lend their names and voices even if not on their sites and not about the product but still under the advertiser’s brand. Didn’t fool Denton:
I can’t blame Battelle’s team for latching on to this idea. The campaign is slick; and Microsoft is a deep-pocketed client. But it’s disappointing that so many of his most reputable writers have signed on as spokespeople. One would have thought that tech opinion-leaders as influential as Om Malik and Paul Kedrosky would ration their credibility more carefully, and reserve it for companies and products for which they felt real enthusiasm.
So without making any excuses, to my readers, if participation in Microsoft’s advertising campaign has made you doubt my integrity even for a second, then I apologize.
I have requested Federated Media, our sales partners, suspend the campaign on our network of sites, and they have. We are turning off any such campaigns that might be running on our network. Would I participate in a similar campaign again? Nothing is worth gambling the readers’ trust. Conversational marketing is a developing format, and clearly the rules are not fully defined. If the readers feel a line was crossed, I’ll will defer to their better judgement.
The fact of the matter is that the original premise of the campaign was to give my thoughts by what People Ready meant to me – it wasn’t an endorsement of a specific Microsoft product. (You can read it here, and judge for yourself.) Nor did my words run in any portion of our editorial space. Microsoft asked us to join a conversation, and we did. I wasn’t paid to participate in the conversation, but Microsoft ran an ad-campaign that paid us on the basis of CPM.
But today the campaign, which has been running for close to two months, brought up doubt about my editorial integrity for some of you.
In the future I shall focus on what I know best – reporting and writing.
Good on Om. He was clearly seduced by some silver-tongued ad sales guy but has thought better of it. So has Paul Kedrosky: “…I still should have taken more time and said “No” to an ad whose style could so easily be misconstrued.” Fred Wilson has not thought better of it and called Nick so old school for sticking to these rules (Fred, some rules are worth keeping). Ditto Michael Arrington, who tells critics to “pound sand” and argues that it’s clearly an ad. Absolutely right, but it’s still an ad with your words in it. Except then Mike reveals these aren’t necessarily their words: “…generally FM suggests some language and we approve or tweak it to make it less lame. The ads go up, we get paid.”
Clearly, Federated has not thought better of it. Their new VP of author relations, Neil Chase, a topnotch editor who just left the New York Times for this gig, responded to Denton trying to justify this self-delusion by taking lipstick and writing the label “conversational marketing” on the pig:
ValleyWag today suggests that one of FM’s conversational marketing campaigns is hurting the editorial integrity of our authors. It says that Microsoft paid them to write, which is simply not true. They were invited to join a conversation with readers about Microsoft’s new theme, and they did so, but they didn’t write about it on their blogs. The only money they get from Microsoft is from ads running on their sites, for which they’re paid by the page view.
Well, but they were paid. Mike Arrington’s laudably candid on that point. They were paid for the media rather than the creative, as we say. In publishing, we call this “value added.” Some media companies insist that they won’t negotiate their rates but then they throw in extra stuff — parties, goodies, extra ads elsewhere — to essentially lower the price. The value-added in this case was the bloggers’ words. Neil continues in his comment to Nick:
Welcome to the birth of conversational marketing.
It’s making people like you and me, who came from the world of traditional newspapers, have to learn about three-way conversations. We have already witnessed the evolution of the two-way conversation among authors and readers that is replacing old-fashioned one-way journalism. Even our old employers (yours at the Financial Times, mine at The New York Times) are now actively bringing their readers into two-way conversations.
So the next step, naturally, is for marketers to want to join the conversation. It can be done in ethical, responsible ways, and FM’s authors are among the first to figure out how to do it.
Uh, Neil, I think you’re jumping to a conclusion there and if you listen to the conversation about this “conversation,” you might think otherwise. Hear Charles Cooper at CNet: “Why would ostensibly independent voices come across as Microsoft shills?” Here’s Ashkan Karbasfrooshan joining the discussion: “Frankly, it makes me distance from MSFT, dislike Battelle’s tactic (note singular John) and distrust what the bloggers have to say.” Neil continues:
We’re carefully expanding conversational marketing based on all kinds of new ideas that are coming from authors, marketers and our sales reps. We’re drafting a set of principles for conversational marketing that will help everyone, inside FM and across the industry, frame the discussion about how we do this the right way. And we’re taking care at every step of the process to make sure we don’t compromise the editorial integrity of our authors.
I’d say it should have been drafted long ago.
* * *
I pulled out email from September 11, 2006, from a Federated rep trying to get me into a similar program, this one with Cisco trying to get such bromides from bloggers for its effort to associate itself with the phrase “human network.” Worse, in this case, they wanted to write a Wikipedia article about the network to get their brand in there. I call that knowledge spam. I was told that if I chose to participate, my definition of “human network” — which I would deliver after they gave me a “seed definition” — would appear in an ad on Buzzmachine. The net to me for this opportunity would have been $559. I said no. And I gave them some free advice:
This will get them KILLED in the net. It is wikipedia spam. It is not transparent. It is wrong for them and wrong for me and I would say for FM.
I was told in email that the client decided to change how the Wikipedia entry was made, but they still made it. The original is here; the latest here. [*See note below.] I pressed on in a subsequent email:
I’m afraid they are still on the dark side. You just can’t put something with commercial motive into Wikipedia. Admitting it is hardly better; it is still a crime. The Wikipedians and bloggers will attack hard and they will deserve what they get.
And I cannot stand behind an advertiser getting me to write something for pay. In most quarters — in quality, reliable, editorial, credible blogs — that is equally a crime. You cannot buy my editorial voice or space; that is the very essence of church/state in any journalistic context; that is what I have told everyone who has ever worked for me whether on a newspaper, on a magazine, or online. . . .
I want to stay as far away from this as possible. And I will still counsel that FM should also. If you’re going to sell your soul, I suggest doing it for a fuck of a lot more than $559! Not that someone cannot choose PR and press-release writing as a career, but I would hope that is not what FM stands for.
This tactic came up again in a campaign for a gadget (I don’t know whether the campaign ever ran, so I’ll keep the brand confidential). This time, we were expected to write directly about the product with positive sentiment. I’d say that’s the definition of a product endorsement. I turned it down and responded: “This is pay-for-post and I will not do it and condemned it today on my blog.” They came back and said, well, it’s not an endorsement but a personal anecdote of a time when I appreciated the kind of ability this device afforded — if I owned that brand of device. I came back and said: “I fear that this could blow up in Federated’s face.” I laid out the same rules I repeated above and added: “It’s one matter for an advertiser to pick up something we say as a blurb; happens to movie critics all the time. It’s another to assign and pay for a blogger to write something about the product. You can say that’s not endorsement but I’d say it sure smells like it.”
My real advice to them, relevant today:
I suggest that Federated have a policy on the relationship of its bloggers with advertisers. I would argue that in the church-v-state of this media and journalism world, you need to be the state and create a wall that allows us to be the church. You have the contact with the advertisers; we don’t. And I would further suggest that the editorial voice and space of Federated bloggers is not for sale. Whether you want that policy is up to you and the FM bloggers; but that will remain my policy. I think there is an opportunity to pull up above others and work on a higher plain. I also think that having such a policy makes it easier with advertisers: You have something to point to. I’d be happy to help with brainstorming such a policy. . . . My two cents. Just trying to be helpful. . .
Never had that brainstorming.
So now I’m disagreeing with myself. In that last email, I put the onus on Federated to come up with that policy. And though I still think that would be principled and wise, I shift at the top of this too-long post when I say that I now believe it’s the bloggers who must make these calls. That’s because advertisers will be advertisers; they will try to push for more integration with us (and we should beware taking that as flattery). And sales people will be sales people; they will try hard to get the sale. So we bloggers are left, inevitably, with the need to say no. I also generally oppose efforts to create omnibus codes. I can wish others would operate in a certain way and I can judge them accordingly. But I’ll just speak for myself with my advertising policy in greater detail:
1. My voice is not for sale. No one can pay me to say what they want me to say.
2. My editorial space is not for sale. I accept advertising and it must be clearly labeled.
3. When I am paid to write (as in a freelance article) or to speak, I will still determine what I say and I will disclose that relationship.
4. I will attempt to disclose relevant financial relationships so you are free to judge me and my words accordingly.
5. In some cases, such a relationship will prevent me from speaking on a subject (as in talking in detail about an employer). However, I will not be compelled to speak because of such a relationship.
6. If I say something openly and freely here, it may be quoted by a commercial entity (the blurb) but I will not be compensated for that.
7. My acceptance of advertising here does not constitute an endorsement of the advertiser. However, I will at times turn down advertising I find unacceptable.
8. I recognize that many blog, vlogs, etc. do not pretend to live by editorial standards and that is their right and freedom. But when they say some things, I will need to take when they say with appropriate salt.
9. I have financial relationships with others who do not follow these rules and in many cases I do not believe these rules apply to them (e.g., entertainment). I enjoy and respect many sites and products that do not follow these rules, but I expect to be able to find out what rules they operate by. I believe one’s rules and relationships should be disclosed.
10. I do not believe I have a price at which I would sell out. But if I did, I can say I certainly haven’t seen it yet.
* * *
Some more blog comment on this. From Sam Harrelson:
And here’s the lesson to be learned from all of this, whether you’re in the Technorati 100 or Technorati 100,000…
Pay Per Post, Review Me, or accepting money in exchange for some sort of content production (whether a full post or a small block of text) comes across as slimy to your readers, hurts your credibility and does more long term brand damage to your blog and your brand than short term (monetary) good.
The only reason to engage in these sorts of schemes is to make a few quick bucks… but it’s not worth your blog’s soul. . . .
In our post-modern world, ideas such as “trust,†“objectivity,†“disclosure,†and “reliability†have been turned over and rendered subjective. That doesn’t mean that these terms are meaningless, it means that things like trust are now subjective in the eyes of the beholders. Authorial (or editorial), on the other hand, is meaningless. How I perceive you means everything.
t’s about whether or not you want to be the blogosphere equivalent of Suzanne Somers hawking a ThighMaster. It’s about the crossroads between cash and credibility.
All we have as bloggers is our reputation and our track record. No ad campaign is worth risking that, regardless of whether it crosses any ethical line. This is more about common sense than ethics.
… But to imply that everyone knows they’re doing it is wrong. I didn’t. I’m sure others didn’t as well.
Second, and this is the really important one. It’s one thing to let Microsoft buy space on your site (it’s called advertising) and quite another to accept Microsoft money for words coming out of your mouth. Next month when we read something positive on these sites about Microsoft, how are we supposed to know if it’s an opinion, or just another example of being paid to say something supportive of Microsoft.
The only one of the people involved who showed any interest in what others think is Om Malik, and even his interest was conditional. In public writing, what people think of your writing is very important. They may not agree with you, they may not like what you say, they may not like you, but you want to be sure they know where you’re coming from. Any doubt about that removes value from your work. Do it often enough and it removes all value.
Mike says that this discussion cost him money that he needs to make payroll. I encourage him to look at a bigger picture. Any cloud over his integrity with readers will have a much bigger impact, imho.
: * LATER: John Battelle left this comment, which he also sent in email:
Jeff -
In fact, on the Cisco campaign, in now way did Cisco spam Wikipedia. They wanted to post a wiki version of their definition, and naturally their first thought was Wikipedia. Thanks to input like yours and many others, they did it on Wikia, the commercial cousin to Wikipedia. In fact, they sought out Jimmy Wales’ advice on the matter. The entry was later put up on Wikipedia by one it its editors, independently. Why? Because Cisco sponsored an honest conversation. Is it somehow illegal for companies to be part of a conversation? I really find that presumption offensive. Why can’t companies, which as the Cluetrain reminds us are just made up of people, be part of a conversation, and invite leader into that conversation? I’ll be posting more on this later, but I wanted to clear that up.
I never said “illegal.” I’m also taken aback by Battelle’s effort to be the offended party. I don’t know who posted the “article” and how it got there, yet it got there and the end result is the same. But there is Battelle’s stand.
: See also Fred Wilson’s response in the comments and my two responses, in turn.
: And here is Battelle’s post defending what he sees as “conversational marketing.” He says it’s new. I think it’s very old: It’s advertorial. I, for one, won’t contribute to advertorials. He also says that advertisers have a right to be part of the conversation. Of course; I don’t hear anyone arguing with that. The question is how they get there.
: THE NEXT DAY: Jackie Danicki asks why I didn’t write about this at the time. I did here. As I explain in the comments on Jackie’s post, I didn’t reveal the parties involved because this was business; they were just pitches at the time; I didn’t think the campaigns had actually gone through (my bad assumption); and I think discussing the issues is what matters here. This isn’t an expose. It’s a necessary discussion for bloggers. See also my response to Scoble on that point in the comments below.
Pete Hamill made an outrageous ruling on blogs and journalistic education on Brian Lehrer’s show on WNYC yesterday. Ready, aim, flame:
You know blogging, the blogosphere. When I teach at NYU I try to tell these young potential journalists: don’t waste your time with blogs because you need to be somewhere where there are editors, where you are getting paid. A blog might be useful therapy, but it’s not, at this stage of its development, journalism. I think that is a big mistake to be doing that kind of stuff.
I think I’ll just let that sit there.
Lehrer and Hamill were talking about local reporters:
LEHRER: When I think about newspaper columnists, it seems to me there’s a lost generation. That the entire art has changed. There were people like you and Jimmy Breslin, Murray Kempton and others. Who were going out to neighborhood bars, writing about individuals. Or writing about policy through the story of individuals. Now there are lots of policy columnists today and some very good ones, even in the present day New York tabloids. But I don’t think there’s the same emphasis on the individual story. And very much the individual immigrant story. Do you think?
HAMILL: I agree with you. I think one reason for it is the overdependence on the internet: to sit in a building and call up all the statements from politician x y or z or think tank a b or c is not the same as going to 116th street and seeing the change over from Puerto Rican culture to Mexican culture.
So the internet and blogs are bad for journalism. Or is that just bad for columnists? Or Hamill? Or journalism students?
Here’s the audio:
I spoke later with Lehrer producer Jim Colgan. We didn’t bother with that blog bigotry. But I said that there is now more reporting going on at least in some neighborhoods and towns thanks to local bloggers. Lehrer is having one of them, Bob Guskind, who blogs at Gowanus Lounge and is the Brooklyn editor of Curbed, on the show today at 11a to talk about this. But I also pointed out that blogs also give us the voice of the people directly; they need not go through the filters of columnists and editors to be heard. If you want to listen. Which is what I thought journalists were supposed to do.
Journalism students: I wouldn’t waste your time with this advice about blogs.
The Wall Street Journal reports today on TV networks and studios currying favor with bloggers. Blogola, they call it. Back when I was a TV critic, I never went on the network junkets; I wanted to be just another member of the audience and not get starstruck; when I started Entertainment Weekly, in my brief reign, I wouldn’t allow TV critics to write features about the stars they criticized. But, Lord knows, times have changed. Critics matter less. Shows are smaller. Bloggers are, truly, just viewers and fans: real people. So who’s going to pass up a chance to hobnob with a star and take home some TV schwag? All this also indicates that mass TV continues to fade as even the networks realize they are selling to niches.
Speaking of shrinking TV, note that NBC — which last season essentially surrendered the 8 o’clock hour to reality junk rather than producing fictional and comedy TV — now continues to skulk:
NBC made it own schedule public yesterday, and it was, by its executive’s admission, a conservative lineup with only four new hours set for the fall. Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, said that adding more new series now was unwise because it is so difficult to market new shows in the fall.
Yes, you can only bribe so many bloggers and that takes you only so far.
Jay Rosen sends a link to Wired’s report that the military has clamped down on blogs with new rules that essentially silence them, requiring approval before posting. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. I was amazed that the military allowed blogs in the first place. Oh, it seemed to make sense: We heard the voice of the soldier at the front line telling us his own story, giving us that other side of the war. But now that there isn’t an other side, things have changed. They have reverted to their natural state: The military is the ultimate control structure and open communication always challenges control.
At Milblogging, a commenter, Rachel, says: “This would have have a negative effect not only on our soldiers’ morale, but on their loved ones as well. Just the possibility of “this silence”is so saddening.”
: THURSDAY UPDATE: Now Wired says the military says it won’t enforce the rules.
Tim O’Reilly’s foolhardy effort to wash the blogosphere’s mouth out with soap has a dangerous new ally: Tessa Jowell, the UK’s secretary of state for culture, media and sport. The peril is great: government deciding what is civilized conversation. In my Guardian column on O’Reilly’s proposed blogger code of conduct, I said that I did not want schoolmarms telling me what to say. It is all the worse for that schoolmarm to have the power of government behind her.
But change never comes without challenges.
I welcome the initiative by Web pioneer Tim O’Reilly and Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, for a “Blogging Code of Conduct”.
The wonderful, anarchic, creative world of the Blogosphere shouldn’t be a licence for abuse, bullying and threats.
There is a need for serious discussion about maintaining civilised parameters for debate, so that more people (and women and older people in particular) feel comfortable to participate.
And just who sets those parameters? Who defines civil conversation? Who enforces that? How? Where are the limits of that interference with free speech? It there is not a license for abuse, do you favor licenses for civility? Who issues those? Who can revoke them? Yes, I know the UK does not have the privilege of a First Amendment, but surely a government minister should understand the principles of free speech. Apparently not. In her Comment is Free post, Jowell said:
The internet is a vigorous and now invaluable part of the public realm, or what I prefer to call “ourspace”. Ourspace, whether physical or virtual, includes those places and spaces where people meet as equals; where public engagement and debate takes place.
Ourspace is part of the “commons” of the UK and something that goes much wider than just the state to include, for example, public service broadcasting; the arts, culture and sports; parks and other public open spaces; and of course the internet - in short, spaces where all feel welcome to participate, to enjoy themselves and to learn.
That is a dangerous principle she puts forth there: the internet as the equivalent of government property. She continues:
User-generated content on the internet - citizen journalism - is just one welcome example of “virtual ourspace” being used in this way. But as power shifts increasingly into the hands of citizens, responsibility must follow. The internet is transforming the way the government interacts with people and the way people interact with one another. But change never comes without challenges. . . .
Blogging took off earlier in the US and the blogging community has become a powerful political force there - I hope the same happens here. But surely its full potential to benefit civil society cannot be realised unless the quality of online debate itself is civilised? Surely we do not want online discussions simply to mirror the often aggressive, boorish and pointless exchanges that sometimes pass for debate on the floor of the House of Commons, and which are such a turn-off for voters?
Note, then, that she is proposing holding the citizens to standards their “leaders” need not follow.
She concludes:
Some commentators have suggested that the idea of a code of conduct shows the growing maturity of the blogging community in the US, although some of the more virulent attacks on the suggestion (and on O’Reilly and Wales themselves) have shown nothing except the immaturity of some users. But perhaps, taken as a whole, this proposal is a rare example of a good lesson for us in Britain to learn from American politics?
Gotcha, Jowell: Right there you’re saying that people who disagree with O’Reilly and Wales show nothing but immaturity. Perhaps they just disagree. Who’s to say? You? God forbid.
How can people be so naive that they have decided that censoring is a method of “increase the quality of internet debates”?
Who decides whats offensive?
It amazes me that people actually think they are being progressive by proposing censorship. . . .
Why should the govt have a say-so on (a) the drafting of such a code (b) the enforcing/sanctions of it, beyond the laws of the land? . . .
Tessa - how very naive and middleclass and patronising of you. Whilst there may be some tedious and boorish voices on the ‘net they are generally outnumbered by the authentic voices of the many who feel unrepresented and disenfranchised by ‘professional’ politicos like yourself. Instead of trying to smuggle in censorship of the ‘net under the guise of ‘acceptability’ wouldn’t you be better employed lobbying for a code of behaviour for MPs that corresponds better with what most people outside of Westminster see as honesty and morality? . . .
I am all in favour of civility but am very concerned that the Government should be looking to enforce it. It could very easily turn into another kind of bullying. . . .
Yet again NuLabour seek to suppress voices that don’t fit with their incredibly narrow, self-interested views. Civility is down to the individual and the individual alone, not for the Govt to impose. The Govt itself is staggeringly rude and insulting to the populace time after time. What’s worse is the very real likelihood that ‘off-message’ posts get deemed rude or abusive simply because they do not tally with the establishment’s particular mindset. Is calling Patricia Hewitt a liar abusive? Certainly it can be demonstrated that she’s a liar (to the House of Commons too…see http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/ for how she has lied over the MTAS fiasco). I’d bet though that comments to such effect would fall foul of Jowell’s notions of civility. Tessa’s message is “Keep a civil tongue in your head while we crap on you from a great height” . . .
Do you not understand the perception the people of this country have of your government’s control-freak mentality, and the way this confirms many people’s worst fears about The Left and its tendency not to trust The People?
Considering the current political environment - where your government is perceived as increasingly authoritarian, and indeed considered by many to be encroaching on the territory usually occupied by those called ‘dictatorial’ by passing laws to fundamentally alter the relationship of citizen and state (ID databases, restrictions on legitimate protest within a mile of the seat of government, detention without trial, &c.) - do you really think it is a good idea to even be talking about State interference in Freedom of Expression? Do you not understand that this is an area best left to individual moderators, other users and the existing laws regarding (for instance) Libel? In short, self policing.
