Do I despair for the New York Times? No, but I’m often disappointed and pleased

A comment from New York Times Standards Editor Phil Corbett struck me in an email this week:

I hope you don’t despair of The Times as a whole.

I don’t despair. But I’m troubled by some things I see at the Times, and I do blog critically occasionally about journalism’s most important newsroom.

That’s not just my opinion that the Times is journalism’s most important newsroom. Our Path Forward, an 11-page strategy document published Wednesday, makes clear that the Times regards itself as the pinnacle of journalism, not just in the United States, but in the world.

I had written most of this post before reading Our Path Forward, and briefly pondered blogging first about that document. But my plate is too full right now, and I’m just going to acknowledge it here and dig into it in more depth later, maybe next week. But the opening paragraph of the document explains why the Times warrants the scrutiny of everyone interested in journalism:

From our earliest days, The New York Times has committed itself to the idea that investing in the best journalism would ensure the loyalty of a large and discerning audience, which in turn would drive the revenue needed to support our ambitions. This virtuous circle reinforced itself for over 150 years.

Another Times editor suggested earlier this year that I was singling the Times out for criticism. That suggestion came in a private email, so I won’t quote it or name the editor here, but some of this post was edited from one of my messages in that exchange. After reading Corbett’s comment, I thought I should elaborate on my view of the Times and its place in journalism and why I blog about it frequently.

No organization enjoys a loftier perch in journalism than the Times, or is watched more closely for its business strategy. Those facts demand that I comment on it more frequently than any other news organization. If you boast that you’re producing “the best journalism,” you invite scrutiny and I’m happy to oblige.

Most of my criticism of the Times comes in the context of topics I address frequently, targeting a variety of news organizations:

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Wall Street Journal lets cowardly sources avoid accountability in Goldman Sachs story

Update: Wall Street Journal reporter David Enrich has responded. I have added his response below.

Jay Rosen is absolutely right to call out the Wall Street Journal on its inexcusable use of unnamed sources in the Goldman Sachs story.

Who is the first of the 5 W’s, one of journalism’s fundamentals. You need a compelling reason to withhold a source’s identity, and the Wall Street Journal had no such reason to withhold names in reporting the Goldman Sachs response to a New York Times op-ed piece about the ethics and culture of Goldman Sachs by Greg Smith.

Here’s one of the passages in question:

“We disagree with the views expressed, which we don’t think reflect the way we run our business,” a Goldman spokeswoman said. “In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful. This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves.”

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Washington Post ‘news alert’ tells me electorate is frustrated. Really

Update: The Wall Street Journal sent an email news alert at 6:37 Monday with this subject: “WSJ NEWS ALERT: WSJ/NBC News Poll Finds Voters Deeply Torn.”

The text:

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found an electorate that is convinced the country’s economic structures favor an affluent elite and is still deeply torn as to whether President Barack Obama or any of his leading Republican rivals can pull the nation out of decline.

In case you want to read more (and I can’t imagine why you would), a link takes you to the Journal story: Poll Finds Voters Deeply Torn.

We can disagree about whether these polls stating the obvious merit “news alerts.” But there’s no question the Post kicked the Journal’s ass on the story, whatever its value.

Picking up my original post: When I awoke this morning and checked my email, I saw a news alert from the Washington Post:

Really? A poll that reveals nothing new and just confirms what everyone knows about the country’s mood deserves a news alert? At 12:18 a.m.?

In the ensuing discussion, at least a couple people thought I was commenting on a tweet from the Post. I was commenting on the email news alert, but the Post did tweet the news at about the same time:

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AP offers some good social media advice, but not enough

You may have read this from me before about other news organizations: The Associated Press social media guidelines raise important issues but stop short of providing the excellent advice I would hope for from the AP.

I won’t go into chapter and verse on the AP guidelines. They are an improvement on the fear-laden guidelines I have criticized from the American Society of News Editors (like ASNE, AP’s policy is a pdf, an odd choice), Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. But they show too many glimpses of fear for me to support them.

The guidelines prompted enough internal questions that a managing editor, Lou Ferrara, sent out a memo saying the release of the guidelines was “coincidental” with the departure of Lauren McCullough as audience and engagement manager (she’s going to Breaking News).

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News Foo Camp: where TBD is ‘mainstream’

In another context, I might have protested being labeled part of the “mainstream media.”

We launched our website in August. We’re trying to be innovative and edgy in our mobile apps, use of social media, breaking-news coverage, blog network and other respects. If I were at an American Society of News Editors convention, I would be one of the digital upstarts. But at News Foo Camp, the label actually fit. Sort of.

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The Guardian shows newsrooms how to guide digital journalists

I have criticized other news organizations’ policies relating to social media and other digital journalism issues frequently in this blog:

• Wall Street Journal
• Washington Post
• New York Times
• Los Angeles Times

Time to lavish some praise on a news organization for it sensible approach. The Guardian shows why it is a leader in social media and digital journalism with its guidelines for blogging and commenting by journalists.

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Research shows Twitter’s value in questioning rumors

Readers of this blog know that Twitter is one of the best tools for covering breaking news.

But if you listen to and read the Twitter haters, you also hear that Twitter is a place where false rumors spread rapidly. My reply to that is that Twitter is a form of communication, and rumors spread on all forms of communication. A great example of that is the false report of Gordon Lightfoot’s death. Yes, it spread on Twitter. But it started by word of mouth, where rumors have been circulating since humans first mastered speech. And its big spread came when it was reported (without verification) by a professional news outlet. So how did that become Twitter’s fault?

My experience with the Gordon Lightfoot rumor was that I first saw a tweet shooting down the rumor, then saw one or two tweets spreading the rumor and dozens saying it wasn’t true. I noted at the time (on Twitter, of course) that Twitter was actually a great rumor-correcting platform.

Well, researchers from Yahoo! have confirmed both Twitter’s usefulness in spreading news and its effectiveness in correcting rumors.

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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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Los Angeles Times shows its fear of social media

I can’t keep blogging every time a major newspaper releases fear-driven social media guidelines. But once again, I can’t resist.

The Los Angeles Times is the latest major news organization to apparently tell its staff to beware the dangers of social media. I don’t have time to critique this in the same detail that I did the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post guidelines.

But I count 19 words of mild general encouragement to use social media and more than 600 words of thou-shalt-nots and warnings of the terrors lurking below the water, including subpoenas.

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The key to social media ethics: good judgment

When I lead seminars on digital journalism ethics, I start with some time-tested guidelines: The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, Bob Steele’s similar Guiding Principles for the Journalist and Bob’s 10 questions to guide ethical decisions.

My point is simple: Social media, blogs and other digital information present new and unfamiliar situations for journalists, but ethical principles don’t depend on technology.

So I was pleased to see that NPR’s new social media guidelines frequently urge staff members to act and think the same when they are using social media as when they use other tools.

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Washington Post needs social media conversation, not restrictions

When you’re choosing tools to help journalists make ethical decisions, conversations work better than rules.

Washington Post co-managing editor Raju Narisetti probably wasn’t exercising good judgment recently when he tweeted opinions* about health care and term limits. But he really exercised bad judgment when he closed his Twitter account. And it appears that his boss and colleagues have compounded that error with more bad judgment. 

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Newspapers’ Original Sin: Not failing to charge but failing to innovate

A mistaken matter-of-fact statement in an Associated Press story launched Chris O’Brien on an insightful blog post that had little to do with the original story.

In the same way, a statement in Chris’s post launched me on this post, which will start out in a different direction from his blog.

The AP story, about Microsoft, said, “If it doesn’t make the right calculation, the software maker could find itself in the same position as newspapers that gave online content away and now are struggling to replace print revenue.”

Chris, contributing to the MediaShift blog, wrote: “That second line is almost a throwaway, written with no attribution. That means that the notion has officially entered into conventional wisdom: Local newspapers screwed up by giving away for free the content everyone used to pay to consume.”

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