Anonymous sources: Factors to consider in using them (and don’t call them anonymous)

Granting confidentiality to sources is one of the grayest areas of journalism ethics and one of the areas where we need extensive discussions of standards.

Nearly every journalist agrees that it’s better to name our sources than to withhold their identities. And nearly every journalist agrees that we sometimes have to agree not to name sources in order to tell some important stories. But we don’t all agree on when to grant confidentiality. And we’re not always consistent in deciding when to grant confidentiality and whether to publish information based on unnamed sources.

Since I blogged that we need more detailed advice on ethical issues, I’ve been planning to update the ethics handouts I developed for the two series of ethics seminars I presented for the American Press Institute from 2005 to 2009, under a pair of grants from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. I’ve gathered my detailed discussions of ethical issues into a category on the blog and will make them a series that will continue for a while.

I’m also posting my handout from those workshops on dealing with confidential sources, but here I’ll outline and discuss factors journalists should consider in whether to grant confidentiality to a source and whether to publish or broadcast stories based on confidential sources:

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Multiple views about changes at TBD

I still don’t have a lot to say about this week’s changes at TBD. But I know people who follow this blog are interested in business models for news and in the TBD experience.

So, in the spirit of TBD’s model of linking to other content, I will pass along links to other people’s analysis of the business aspects of what has happened here (I don’t agree with all of them; just passing them along):

• Added Feb. 28: Rick Robinson on Business Insider
• Added Feb. 27: David Kaplan of paidContent
• Added Feb. 26: Michael Boyd Clark
• Added Feb. 26: Jane Stevens of World Co.
• Added Feb. 26: Jonathan Weber of Bay Area Citizen
• Added Feb. 25: Mathew Ingram of GigaOm
• Added Feb. 25: Emily Bell of Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism
  
• Added Feb. 25: CJR Q&A with Jim Brady
  
• Added Feb. 25: Dan Conover
• Paul Farhi of the Washington Post
• Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter
• Cory Bergman of Lost Remote
• Poynter’s Mallary Tenore
• Poynter’s Rick Edmonds
• Journal Register’s John Paton (responding to Edmonds, with comment from Edmonds)
• Mike Orren (a 2009 blog post, but he tweeted today that it was relevant to TBD developments)

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A public-relations rookie’s handling of the TBD launch

In the days of my callow youth, I remember referring to journalists who ventured into public relations as having “sold out.”

Never mind that many in PR toiled for pay as low as many journalists. Never mind that PR ethics also insist on getting the facts right. We like our world simplified into us and them, and to a journalist, the PR world was always them: trying to keep us from the story, trying to manipulate us somehow.

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Reviewing a year’s blogging

Reviewing 2009 on my blog (mostly for my own information, but I share it because that’s what bloggers do):

My most popular post by far (more than twice as many views as anything else) was my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection, posted April 27. I proposed a detailed new business model for community news organizations. It received more links from other blogs and more tweets than anything else I’ve written this year. And interest in C3 remains strong. (After traffic on that post declined from June through September, it increased in October and November. December didn’t quite match November, but exceeded August, September and October). C3 gets more attention in a slow month than my average post gets total.

Everyone wants a blog post to go viral, but I’m glad I didn’t write something quirky that went off the charts. C3 was one of the most important things I’ve written this year (or in my career), so I’m pleased that it received more attention than any other post. I’ve been invited to make presentations dealing with C3 in Florida, Nevada, California, Texas, Siberia and Canada. I hope in 2010 to be writing about how Gazette Communications and other organizations are carrying out the vision of C3.

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Storytellers are challenged, not limited, by Twitter and other digital tools

When I read Philip Lee’s ignorant anti-Twitter rant, Notes on the triviality of Twitter, my first reaction was that I needed to write another anti-anti-Twitter-rant rant.

But I’m getting tired of those rants (maybe you are, too). I previously noted how Leonard Pitts, Edward Wasserman and Paul Farhi wrote foolish things about Twitter without bothering to learn what they were talking about. Do I repeat myself just because Lee has echoed their whining, or could I find something new to say?

Lee did say lots of ignorant things about Twitter, but they are things I’ve addressed before, so I won’t dwell on them here. He has tried Twitter out (barely, 34 tweets in nearly a year), which the others noted above had not.

I want to address Lee’s concern about Twitter and storytelling:

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Yet another anti-Twitter piece written in ignorance

It’s OK to be sick and tired of Twitter rants by journalists who don’t understand it.

The same day I posted about Edward Wasserman writing about Twitter without really learning about it, I read another piece from another journalist I respect, Paul Farhi of the Washington Post, writing The Twitter Explosion in the American Journalism Review. 

Farhi, to his credit, did a fairly thorough job of researching Twitter by reading about it online and by interviewing journalists who use it. He just didn’t bother, from what I can tell, to learn anything firsthand by actually using it. And his writing revealed his ignorance.

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