Plagiarism, falsified news, and why journalism shouldn’t be a ‘profession’
How I define my job as a reporter and editor: “Gathering and organizing information my readers are perfectly capable of finding on their own but don’t have time to dig up and sort through for themselves.”
Gathering information is the heart of a reporter’s job. Journalism isn’t about pushing a political agenda or turning out stories filled with so many cute figures of speech that they shine in the sun as if they were sprinkled with diamonds. Elegant (or at least clear) writing is nothing but a means of communicating the information you have gathered. To use a construction metaphor, fancy writing is a story’s trim and paint, while its organization — hopefully as a narrative with a beginning and end rather than that inverted pyramid crap many newspapers use to drive readers away — is its structure. And, of course, the information the story presents is the foundation on which everything else rests.
Note that if the base of the story — and therefore the base of the journalist’s job — is gathering information, there is no room for plagiarism or made-up nonsense. There is no room for regurgitating press releases or taking money from vendors or governments to slant a piece so it is favorable to them. It is only when a journalist starts thinking of his or her job as a “profession” and starts worrying about “professional advancement” that he or she cuts corners. I treat journalism as a responsibility instead of a career. Most newspapers and TV stations only hire professional, career jourmalists, so it’s no wonder that they occaisionally have problems with plagiarism and faked research.
Dialogue, not monologue
The most important recent evolution in the way news is delivered is the Internet’s ability to give reporters and editors instant feedback about their work. By allowing readers to share that feedback directly with other readers in the form of comments attached to each story, as we do on sites owned by my employer, OSTG, errors get spotted and corrected faster and more often than in any other mass-delivery news medium.
It is not easy to operate a news medium where your audience can — and does — notice and comment on every mistake you make, no matter how trivial. But after eight years of writing primarily on the Internet, I have gotten used to the idea that readers’ comments often contribute as much to a story as the reporters and editors who originally produced it. I have learned that most of my readers are at least as smart as I am, and that at least a few of them know more than I do about any particular topic. Once I understood this fact, it dawned on me that I shouldn’t get upset by their criticisms but should welcome them as valuable contributions.
This is why I shake my head when old-media reporters and editors stereotype Internet news operations as sloppy because we are not subject to the same level of editorial scrutiny and fact-checking as a “paper” publication. Those poor people haven’t figured out that a news Web site that encourages reader postings is subject to a much higher level of scrutiny than they are. We are forced to be more accurate than traditional media because we don’t have one or two editors commenting on each story, but thousands.
I once tried to participate in a Credibility Roundtable project sponsored by the Associated Press Managing Editors. The idea was to hold reader meetings, write down reader concerns (especially those about accuracy in our reporting), and report back to the project organizers about what we had found. I dropped out because the Web sites I work on are so full of reader feedback that holding meetings to ask readers what they wanted was pointless; they were already telling us what they wanted every day via email and postings on our sites.
For the newspaper people taking part in the Credibility Roundtables, listening to readers was a once-in-a-while thing. For those of us who work on the Internet and use it as the two-way medium it was intended to be, reader interaction is part of a day’s work. We are engaged in a dialogue, not a monologue. This is why our collective audience is growing while traditional media audiences are shrinking.
Blogs change nothing
Blogging is as hot-hot today as CB radio was for a while in the 1970s. Any minute now we can expect a movie called “Smokey and the Blog-dit.” I can see it now: Rebel blogger Leonardo Penn puts his mouse to the metal to deliver news of oppressed farmworkers out west to Washington D.C., where an eager Congress will instantly solve the problem once they find out about it. Penn is aided by goofy sidekick Murphy Sandler and temptress Gwyneth Kidman, but for a while it looks like Denzel Nicholson, an evil network sheriff, will keep their message from spreading through the blogosphere.
When that movie comes out, we’ll know that the “blogosphere” has run its course. There will still be personal blogs and blogs run by small special-interest groups. These ultra-niche blogs are replacing letters and printed newsletters — and deliver essentially the same content. No one expects these little blogs to accumulate large readerships or have any major influence on the world. The “blogosphere” that seems to worry old-line journalists is composed of blogs meant for the world at large, that at least theoretically tackle The Major Issues Of The Day in a manner once reserved for newspaper columnists and TV commentators.
The funny thing is, the people best qualified to produce issue-oriented blogs are the journalists who report on those issues professionally now. Some have figured this out, and some newspapers are starting to add reporters’ and editors’ blogs to their Web sites, but hardly any of these that I have seen allow readers to make comments directly attached to the original authors’ posts, which defeats the idea of the Internet as a two-way communications medium.
What makes a blog a blog, anyway?
You’re reading “my blog” right now, except it’s not a typical blog that contains many short entries or little blurbs that link to stories published elsewhere. Roblimo.com is where I dash off whatever *I* want to write whenever I feel like it. If you and four other people read this essay, that’s fine. If it catches thousands of eyes, that’s fine, too. The point is, most of the writing I do is under pressure of one sort or another. This site — this “blog” — is where I have no pressure. It is mine. It is personal. I can say whatever I want.
But why couldn’t I fill a blog with real reporting? Couldn’t I go to city council meetings, take notes, and publish reports of those meetings on a blog-format Web site?
Couldn’t I also go to other community events and meetings, take notes and pictures, and publish stories about those events on my site?
What if I added a calendar of community meetings and live performances?
What if several local merchants sponsored my blog, and I got other people to help write and edit it?
At what point would my site stop being a “blog” and become an “online newspaper” or “online magazine?”
Would that online publication become more legitimate if I made paper copies available monthly or weekly (perhaps for a fee to cover printing and postage) to people who don’t enjoy reading on a computer screen or don’t own computers?
What if I published — on paper — all comments readers added to stories on the Web site?
Would I be publishing a “paper blog?” Would it be a “newspaper” instead of a “blog” because I spent money to have it printed?
I have no solid answers to these questions. Neither does anyone else. The fun part of my job as a reporter and editor specializing in technology is watching things like “blogs” evolve. There is no way I would make up or plagiarize stories in this field. Aside from betraying my readers’ trust, that would be boring. We’re in territory where truth truly is stranger than fiction, and anyone who can’t get plenty of interesting true stories out of this little tech niche alone should get out of journalism and go into another line of work.