Citizen Paine | Citizen Journalism

Greensboro N-R talks trolls with its readers

Greensboro (North Carolina) News-Record Editor John Robinson and readers are wrestling the question of message board moderation in "The Silence of the Trolls."

The discussion illustrates the challenge: One reader complains that reader comments containing profanity have been allowed to stay on the site, while another says that to remove such comments would be a heavy-handed "hall monitor approach."

The positive thing happening here is that Robinson and the site's readers are discussing this problem and possible solutions. That kind of interaction is what makes readers feel a sense of ownership and empowerment. Sorry for the buzzwords, but, hey, that's the difference between static shovelware (another buzzword) news sites and those that are making an effort to connect with readers -- not just for the sake of connecting but for building a better online experience.

More on Comments and Message Boards.

LA Times launches the wikitorial

The LA Times this morning debuted its first wikitorial, "War and Consequences." Er, make that "War & Consequences," as the "and" in the original has been edited to an ampersand -- at least for now.

As feared, the Times is using the typical wiki format, limiting though it does limit the editing only to registered users. It's hard to imagine this process producing any added value on an opinion piece, but I'm certainly willing to watch this wikitorial experiment evolve before passing final judgment.

Even the Times notes, in A Wiki for Your Thoughts, that this model may have problems:

To be sure, encyclopedias and newspaper editorials are very different literary forms. Contributors to Wikipedia share in some general way a commitment to accuracy. By contrast, strong disagreement is built into the concept of an editorial. Plenty of skeptics are predicting embarrassment; like an arthritic old lady who takes to the dance floor, they say, the Los Angeles Times is more likely to break a hip than to be hip. We acknowledge that possibility.

I've got to think that the suggestions of Robert Niles, editor of Online Journalism Review, would have made for a better wiki as applied to an editorial.

Word count: The original Times editorial was 1,064 words (according to MS Word's word count). The current edited version is at 1,767.

UPDATE: Editor&Publisher interviews Michael Kinsley about the launch.

A different take on the LA Times 'wikitorial'

Robert Niles, editor of Online Journalism Review, offers some good ideas of how the LA Times' wikitorial concept might work. He suggests variations that differ from the wiki free-for-all that I was envisioning and suspect would be unworkable.

Niles writes:

Talk of wikis inevitably elicit rants about Wikipedia, the free-for-all dictionary where users can create and revise entries, even to the point of rewriting history. Neither (Editorial Page Editor Andrés) Martinez nor (Opinion Editor Michael) Kinsley have publicly revealed details of how their "wikitorials" will work. But the Wikipedia model need not be the only one to guide wiki publishers.

• At OJR, we restrict editing access on our wikis to our registered users, who must provide a working e-mail address to register.

• A news publisher could limit write access on the wiki to an invited group of readers with first-hand experience on a topic.

• Or, a publisher could adopt an "open source journalism" model, opening a wiki to revision for a limited time, with an editor stitching together the best evidence and arguments from its versions for later print publication.

I'd like to see those second and third options in action.

Citizen-Times' use of local columnists is baby step

Just the name, Asheville Citizen-Times, conjures thoughts of citizen journalism. However, it's a stretch for this Gannett paper to apply that term to its publication of work from a select group of local columnists:

... The AC-T is about halfway through our year with this round of citizen journalists (we call them local columnists), and so far, I’d have to say it has been an overwhelming success. ...

About 40 people submitted material to us. All four of us here in the editorial corner read each piece and picked eight, then we got together and talked and talked about it. I think we had so many good candidates that we could have picked eight different people out of that 40 and still had a group with similar talent.

Keep an eye on this space. If you don’t see eye to eye with a given day’s local writer, there’s a good possibility the next day’s submission will be a bit more agreeable.

I give the paper credit for bringing more voices into the mix; it's certainly in the spirit of citizen journalism. However, as people are commenting here and here, the Citizen-Times is applying the traditional gatekeeper role when it could have used its web site as a true citizen journalism playground. Matt Duffy suggests on PJNet Today, "Why not publish all 40 of them on their web site and allow readers to determine what they want to read. Perhaps they could pick the most read or most favorably judged (by readers) to determine which columnists get into print."

Even the paper acknowledges that these writers are simply "local columnists," the kind of material newspapers have included for years.

The newspaper does show signs that it is views journalism as a conversation. Executive Editor Bob Gabordi has been engaging CitizenTimes.com readers in a discussion about  followup reporting on the selection of Asheville's new city manager. That back-and-forth is what's reshaping how journalism is done.

Reaction to 'Alicia's Story' raises questions about newroom transparency

"Would have LOVED to be at the editors meeting where this project was hashed out ... ." That post on SFGate.com -- by a reader who criticized the San Francisco Chronicle's allocation of resources to "Alicia's Story," a seven-day, first-person account of a copy editor's struggle with cancer -- raises the question of how far MSM will go in engaging readers in discussions about news coverage and play.

The Spokane Spokesman-Review, which already is blogging its news meetings, plans to begin webcasting them late this summer. The Daily Briefing, the S-R's news meeting blog, isn't attracting many reader comments yet. I'm not being critical of the effort, as the paper clearly is striving to be more transparent. The lack of comments may be because most of the posts reflect the positions editors have staked out at the news meetings, rather than inviting readers to help shape the decision-making. (Many of the other posts are of the Monday morning quarterbacking variety.) Webcasts won't be much more engaging unless they include a live interactive component, such as a chat that enables readers to comment or question during the meeting.

Fortunately, the Spokesman-Review's means of being transparent go much further: The comments are more lively in another S-R blog, News is a Converstion, where five readers lead a discussion about "what they like, what they don't like, and what they'd like to see more of." That blog just started in May, and online publisher Ken Sands reported that after its first two weeks, it was one of the most-read blogs on the site.

Sands' ideas on the "Transparent Newsroom" appear in a couple posts at morph (American Press Institute's Media Center blog).

For a look at how a non-MSM site lets readers drive coverage, check out NowPublic.com, where users can suggest story ideas and vote on which stories deserve more attention.

So, do the readers commenting on "Alicia's Story" in the Chronicle get heard? Some do. In response to the reaction to "Alicia's Story," the Chronicle on Sunday published an article that summarized the emails, message board posts, phone calls and letters.

Because the SFGate message board simply strings the posts chronologically, the 1,000-plus comments on Alicia's Story are daunting. It's a place for readers for vent, but doesn't feel like a place for interaction with editors.

Where do you find responses to the critics -- who took issue with the amount of space devoted to the series and the focus of attention on a newspaper employee? In the blogosphere, of course.

Gary Goldhammer, writing at Below the Fold, says:

Why focus on just one cancer victim when there are so many?

Well, I’ll tell you why: Because Alicia Parlette works for the San Francisco Chronicle and she has cancer. And because of that, thousands of other cancer victims will gain confidence, find courage and muster strength to continue to fight.

Some of that criticism may have been softened had the Chronicle and SFGate used the series as an opportunity to highlight the plights of others who wanted to tell their stories. The message board is a good first step, but isn't an adequate filter for quality content when so many people post. Other options: Set up blogs for a few other readers with cancer, selecting them based on message board postings that resonated with readers: or create a separate moderated section of the message board for those people to share their stories.

Goldhammer also has some interesting comments about the style of the Alicia series:

The story is something else, too – a bridge between traditional and modern journalism.

Alicia’s Story reads like a long blog post or e-mail to her closest friends. Yet here it is, on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s hard to see where the AP style ends and the freestyle writing of a blogger begins.

The comment brings to mind another option: The Chron could have had Parlette blog the entire series online, while the paper published excerpts and promoted SFGate. 

LA Times' wikitorials concept already stirring skepticism

The LA Times on Sunday announced a couple new avenues -- a "Thinking Out Loud" feature and wikitorials -- for editorial page readers to enter the dialogue.

The description of the wikitorials is sketchy -- "an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials" -- so reaction has been based on speculation as to how this concept will work:

• Ross Mayfield, posting at Many2Many, notes that wikis work best on unfinished reference material and suggests this experiment could lead to edit wars.
• Ernest Miller suggests that perhaps the Times is planning wikis that will fork into two or more different viewpoints.
• Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly says, "It seems like interactivity just for the sake of interactivity."

Michael Kinsley, LA Times editorial and opinion editor, told the New York Times (registration required), "It may be a complete mess but it's going to be interesting to try. Wikitorials may be one of those things that within six months will be standard. It's the ultimate in reader participation."

While I share some of the skepticism about how a wikitorial will work -- I echo Mayfield's comment about the wiki being best suited to reference material -- I'd rather see a news site experimenting than doing nothing. Even if this effort fails, the LA Times will have learned some tricks that it can use in its next experiment.