A Web of Deception, or Just Tough Competition?
By Native
In the Sunday edition of today's Standard-Examiner, there is an interesting article on blogs and bloggers. The title, "Be wary of bloggers who weave… a web of deception" sets the tone for an article that seems aimed at warning the reader of the rumors, gossip, and misinformation that permeates some blogs.
There were, I think, some interesting and apropos points made in the article. Such as that there seems to be a lack of sourcing and referencing, especially when it comes to the "comments" posted in blogs. Another interesting stat in the article is that it is estimated that one quarter of all Americans obtain information from blogs. This percentage is probably due to increase as the capabilities of traditional print journalism decrease and the interest and reach of the internet increases.
Then, in a very interesting example chosen by the author, Brad Gillman, he tells the story of a local blog, Davis County Watch, started by Tyler Farrer. This is a blog that really took off when Mr. Farrer investigated some of the financial issues of the South Davis Recreation Center and uncovered some controversial costs to the citizens of Davis County. Where have we seen an example of this before?
The article seems to admit that blogs represent a potent, new form of electronic journalism, and that the younger generation has embraced its power and dynamic response. However, the article warns the blog-consumer to consider the credibility of all blogs and blog posting by looking for external links to other sources and to consider the credibility of sources. Additionally, that media outlets will sometimes pick up rumors from blogs and publish them in an attempt to get the story.
The article ends with the tragic story of a Funny Car driver whose life tragically ends after a racing accident. The driver's family decided to pull life-support five days after the accident, however his death had already been reported on blogs. The unfounded rumors added to the hurt and anguish of the family. A very sad story indeed.
As a Weber County Forum regular, I found it hard not to see this article as a dig at my very own favorite blog. Although I would not expect the Standard-Examiner to use wcforum as the example of a local blog (never give your competition free ink), it was interesting how similar the example used (Davis County Watch) was to wcforum. I tend to agree with the author with regard to checking sources and external links, but does this not apply to all information we receive? Your thoughts?
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15 comments:
The blog site has only as much integrity as the persons posting on it.
The reader has the responsibility of checking out the facts for themselves.
The Weber County Blog has presented and continues to present very good information that local citizens would not be privy to without it.
I am very critical of what I read anywhere. I have found nothing on this Blog to be a deliberate fabrication except when it was intended to be and when critics deliberately posted their own version of the facts knowing that the facts were distorted to suit their particular purpose.
Thanks for all the time that a few of you spend with the policing of this Blog.
You are providing a great source of information that we get no place else.
I know for a fact that the reporters and editors at the Standard read this blog every day. I also believe that it has prompted certain reporters to become better reporters for having this Blog available to offer inspiration.
Mr. Dan S.,
Your comments at the end of the last section were so relevant to this discussion, I am reproducing them here. I hope you don't mind.
Today's anti-blog article is part of an entrenched pattern of anti-blog bias at the Standard-Examiner.
It's understandable enough: They know that blogs can sometimes make them look bad by beating them to important stories or by filling in details that they don't bother to print. Blogs also provide a forum for direct public criticism of the newspaper and its staff, whether justified or not--and the S-E editors seem to have thin skins about this. They also must view blogs as competition for their readers, though I would argue that blogs also send readers to the newspaper (at least its online version) an awful lot.
For the most part, the S-E has dealt with blogs by publicly pretending they don't exist. For example, I went to the S-E digital archives, which you can access through the Weber County Library web site if you have a library card number. Did a pretty thorough search for references to Weber County Forum by name, and came up with four hits: A news article by John Wright about Dori Mosher's posts when she ran against Jesse Garcia in '05; Dian's obituary last December; and two opinion columns, both more than a year ago. (Our blogmeister tells me that the S-E actually did a story about wcforum when it was first starting up, but I can't find that story.)
I find this lack of coverage pretty astonishing, when you consider the amount of space the S-E devotes to Ogden City politics and the amount of information (and rumor and gossip and name-calling) about Ogden City politics that appears on this blog. In this respect the S-E reminds me of Sergeant Schultz: "I see nothing!"
Every once in a while the editors must realize how ridiculous it looks for them to ignore blogs, so they lash out with an anti-blog editorial, or in this case, with an anti-blog feature story. But they still can't quite bring themselves to mention Weber County Forum, the most relevant blog to their news coverage. At least not by name. So they pick on some other blog that's totally irrelevant to Ogden politics. Sheesh.
I wonder if newspapers treated television the same way, back when TV was new. If they did, they've since outgrown it. Now it's quite common for newspaper articles to acknowledge that something has already been reported on TV. The newspaper also distributes TV program listings to its readers, and devotes two whole pages in every Sunday's feature section to articles about TV shows.
It's about time for the S-E editors to grow up and start treating the internet in a similar way.
I thought the article in today's S-E was pretty much content-free, even for a feature article.
It has been known for a long time that we, as citizens, have a responsibility to filter the information we take in. Everyone must develop their own criteria and ranking of credibility.
Even claims in sources known to be reliable (in my professional life, that would be peer-reviewed scientific journals) need to be checked out independently, if the information's accuracy is of critical importance. Even papers published in the scientific literature can be wrong, just because it's a human endeavor and humans make mistakes.
Like Curm, I find the article to be a sort of "Sun Rises in the East" piece.
Curmudgeon said...
Nice piece, Native. Chewy.
This whole matter of the relationship of community and independent blogs the main stream media [MSM] is getting really interesting. Some of the most successful of the national blogs, like Josh Marshall's "Talking Points Memo" have had the same problem. TPM broke several major political stories over the past two years, which were then picked up by the MSM but not credited. Lately, though, that's been changing.
The SE itself runs some community discussion blogs, but they don't seem to get much action. Very little, in fact. [Note to anyone with an agenda to push: you can probably get some visibility for whatever your agenda is by posting on the SE blogs. You won't have much competition for attention.] But they've not become, the SE blogs, venues for any kind of timely on-going discussions such as happen here with some frequency.
Mostly, the SE "blogs" seem to be, instead, venues for the occasional posting of an extra column by SE staff. If they expect ever to develop them as active discussion sites, they need to be worked a lot more often than that, and have fresh items posted for comment daily or nearly so.
Were I Ogden's Rupert Murdoch, I think I'd be looking for ways to make the independent community blogs work for my paper's benefit. I'd think of them not as competition so much as supplementary venues for disseminating news and increasing my paper's visibility [and significance] and for [and at this, the independent blogs are much better than the paper] triggering broad discussion of the news. Look how often threads here begin with the posting of a link to an SE story... as this one does. I'd be thinking about ways to --- to use the phrase of an un-lamented former Dean at a Megaversity far far away] --- "fold them into my planning horizon."
As for expecting papers to credit blogs for breaking local stories: don't hold your breath. Generally speaking, print editors hate having to do that [because it inevitably gets readers wondering why the other guys got it first]. When an editor I knew many many moons ago was forced to lead a story in his paper "In a copyrighted story in the Alexandria Town Talk yesterday, it was reported that..." the staff knew to keep kittens, small dogs, children and the reporters who should have gotten whatever it was before the Alexandria Town Talk got it well out of his sight. Not a good time to ask for a raise. I suspect things are no different at the SE.
Going to be very interesting to see how this all works out.
Greatly Exaggerated Deaths
A couple of "housekeeping" points . . .
First, although it said that Dan's research has been uploaded, I couldn't find the link to it . . .
Second, the election countdown on the front page mentions "11/06." This appears to be a typo, and I would point out there is an important primary before the 11/07 election, and that primary is September 11, 2007. We hope people will remember that one too.
The primary is important because there are enough Godfrey supporters that a low turnout in the primary could leave few options for us in the general election (I'm thinking of Amy Wicks' very important city council at-large race, and the mayor's race.)
danny,
I furnished our blogmeister with scanned images of 29 pages of documents. (In all, the city provided me with about ten times as many pages, but many were redundant or relatively uninteresting. So I selected what seemed worth the trouble of scanning.) Apparently, all he's posted are small excerpts from these 29 pages, to substantiate what I had quoted directly in the summary that I sent earlier. See the links within the body of the summary. I'm not sure why he didn't post the whole 29 pages, but it might be because many of the scanned emails contain personal contact information and this stuff should probably be deleted to protect peoples' privacy. Stay tuned and I'll see if I can solve this problem and get him to post more.
NEWS RELEASE
Senator Hillary Clinton was invited to address a major gathering of The American Indian Nation two weeks ago in upper New York State.
She spoke for almost an hour on her future plans for increasing every Native American's present standard of living, should she one day become the first female President.
She referred to her career as a New York Senator, how she had signed "YES" for every Indian issue that came to her desk for approval. Although the Senator was vague on the details of her plan, she seemed most enthusiastic about her future ideas for helping her "red sisters and brothers".
At the conclusion of her speech, the Tribes presented the Senator with a plaque inscribed with her new Indian name - Walking Eagle.
The proud Senator then departed in her motorcade, waving to the crowds. A news reporter later inquired of the group of chiefs wondering how they had come
to select the new name given to the Senator.
They explained that Walking Eagle is the name given to a bird so "full of crap" that it can no longer fly.
That's right, Dan. Our initial document uploads were merely intended to augment the bullet-point statements within the Ogden Sierra Club press release.
We do anticipate publication of the full document collection, once we've had the opportunity to carefully examine all documents, and to resolve certain "pesky" editorial problems.
Dan,
OK. I didn't see the blue hyperlinks before.
Wow, reading them from the original documents is very illuminating.
Quote from Ogden's Finance Manager in the Controller's Office:
"This is really going to require a complete effort to get this paid without Ogden City's trackable involvement."
The memos consist of UTA trying politely to get Ogden officials to comply with the laws, and Ogden officials trying to find ways not to, and trying to basically do a cover up.
And so today, the local paper tells us it's the BLOGS that we need to be suspicious of. Yeah, thanks guys.
Curm, thanks for the compliment. I hope to contribute more in the future. You also said,
"Mostly, the SE "blogs" seem to be, instead, venues for the occasional posting of an extra column by SE staff. If they expect ever to develop them as active discussion sites, they need to be worked a lot more often than that, and have fresh items posted for comment daily or nearly so."
And I agree with you. The S-E website is mediocre to the point of being nearly lamentable. After all, they DO have a considerable amount of content. Fundamentally, I don't think they "get it". If their editorial staff made more of a contribution it might go somewhere. But it's probably hopeless for them at this point. I think there's a finite amount of interest in the local blogspace at this point, and I don't see that this readership will migrate away from wcforum any time soon.
The S-E needs to just try and be a better print newspaper at this point. Maybe double up thier efforts in the investigative journalism department, although they have improved some of late.
And... as an addendum to my last post, I want to say that Charles Trentleman is a rare bright spot for that paper. Probably the only reason I still allow the thing to deposit itself on my front step.
api:
Go take one of your Rush Limbaugh prescribed oxi-coten and get some sleep. If you want to hear or see something funny, watch Bill’O.
The reason blogs like these are so important. Cops like me can't speak their mind any other way. Remember Officer Matt Jones and his family!
A little off topic for this thread, did anyone notice from the article last Thursday about Barnes Aerospace, that this company was already located in Ogden? It's moving from its facility in the Ogden City Industrial Park located adjacent to West Haven (2550 S. 1900 W.). Its great that they are expanding, but I want to know who is going to fill another vacant building in Ogden?
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