Open Letter to WebCred Conference

Paul Lukasiak has posted an open letter on the Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility conference web site in a comment thread where it might get lost.  (Update: 1/20 - here is the link to the comment thread where the "open letter" first appeared).  It speaks to the financial interests of one blogger, but there are many bloggers attending who have interests to advance.  The market for innovation on the web remains wide open, and the potential for discussing the merits of options for investment in the blogging community is probably greater in the blogs than in the dead-tree financial pages that necessarily focus on large cap enterprise with a nuanced treatment of venture and start-up efforts.

This is the fourth estate that's under discussion, a part of our culture that arguably should be publicly financed and not for profit... there's a strong sentiment and good arguments for a public press that go back to the 18th century. Paul's issues deserve an airing even though I don't really agree with him.  I think credibility is an implicit conveyance of truth.  I don't see why market based local web pubs shouldn't have a place in the panoply of news products available on the net.  Still, it would be interesting to hear from people at the conference how they think market driven funding issues will affect our ability to communicate credibly.

Here is the letter Paul wrote:

Jeff Jarvis, JoBloCred, and Conflicts of interest

An Open Letter to the Journalism, Blogging, and Credibility Conference:

This is not about Jarvis’ political views. Its about how his personal financial interests interact with the JoBloCred conference.

Jarvis’s latest scheme is related to his involvement in “Advance Internet”. Advance is connected to a number of media companies. And they’ve decided to get into the community blogging business.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_01_17.html#008902

Everyone recognizes that journalism has deteriorated because media corporations no longer see “news” as the product they produce, but are in the business of manufacturing audiences for advertisers. And these corporations are scared to death of the internet, and what it means in terms of audience control.

So Jarvis has come up with a “solution”, an aspect of a “new business model”. That solution involves creating “a half-dozen town blogs in those markets – new, group blogs (using iUpload) to which any neighbor can contribute. …The idea is that… people may not want to start their own blog but they have plenty of news to contribute to their communities: opinions, news updates, sports reports, photos, calendar items, and so on.”

Jarvis is upfront about the real goal here….not information dissemination, but advertising. “The hope is also that once we have a critical mass of content in a town from all these sources, a critical mass of audience is sure to follow. This means, we hope, that we can target ads down to the town level and automate them, saving the cost of sales and production, and price them in such a way that we can serve local advertisers who heretofore could not afford to market in big papers.’

Now, the implications for journalism, and blogging credibility are immense here. First off, its going to eliminate a buttload of jobs for journalists, as “bloggers” do the “reporting” from town council meetings, football games, etc. And when that happens, very real questions of “blog credibility” will come into play. The average journalist has no personal stake in whether East Podunk decides to change its zoning laws, but the “news bloggers”, the people who will be blogging about the town council meetings where the zoning decisions are made will have a decided interest in those laws. But not only is the very idea of objective local journalism at risk—the opportunity for corruption of information rises exponentially when a community relies on “news bloggers.”

Then, of course, there are the obvious questions about what happens when a blogger criticizes “Joe’s Meat Market” when “Joe” is advertising on the site.

Now, these are all very important questions….but you are giving someone who has a specific financial interest on these questions the “leadership” role in the discussion of “new business models” and how “ethics and standards” will be affected by them. Do you really expect that he is there to discuss this from an intellectually honest position? Or is his intention to give you a sales pitch for an idea that is going to line his pockets if it receives your endorsement?

It is people like Jeff Jarvis who are trying to destroy what it best about the blogosphere, and what little remains of journalistic standards. And I don’t understand why you are letting him get away with it!

Paul Lukasiak
awol@glcq.com

Comments

[Susan Mernit]

Actually, many of the people at the conference are profiting from the blogosphere more directly than Jeff--why focus on him because he is currently an executive at a large corporation, rather than the founder of a start-up? While it is true that many people attending the conference will profit directly or indirectly from blogging, that does not diminish their authority--it just means everyone, as always, has a more complicated agenda.

[Jeff Jarvis]

I can't find Paul's letter on the webcred site (because he has so many comments and I'm having connectivity problems; please send me the link so I can post this response at the right spot there as well).

Paul:

A few points:

I hope this will do just the opposite of what you expect: It will create more support for more journalism from more sources and more viewpoints.

Large newspapers cannot afford to -- never could and certainly in an age of falling classified revenue cannot now -- have reporters in every town, at every meeting. If we can help support citizens adding reporting, then everyone benefits: the citizens have a voice; the community has more information.

As for the business relationship with these local blogs:

There are many choices. There is nothing at all stopping you from blogging on your town without me; that's not just fine, that's great.... I have held MeetUps in our local towns encouraging people to do just that. I have said that once we upgrade a feature we're working on, we will put up RSS feeds from those blogs and send them traffic and we will offer them RSS feeds of our headlines to give them more content. The more the better. All blogs rise on a tide of links.

But I have also seen that some citizens don't want to make the committment of a full blog. I learned that clearly when we underwrote the GoSkokie.com hyperlocal project at Northwestern. So we had the idea of creating a town blog to which anyone can post. That is what this is about. And, yes, I do hope that we can support it with advertising and that's why I explained as transparently as possible our motives in doing this.

We also host a good number of town bloggers for free.

And because I've written about this before, I did not go into it here but my real hope is that we can create a network of local bloggers and sell ads across that network and thus help underwrite and support the work of those local bloggers. That is quite unproven but that is where I would like to see this go.

So this is all about supporting the growth of blogging.

Note importantly that thanks to the internet and blogging, big, established media companies no longer control the means of distribution. So it's not an issue that we blog, too. So can you. Everyone can. That is a bright new day for information.

Now you seem to object to financial support of blogs or even of news. That's fine. But without that financial support, how do you expect to get the news? Reporters need paychecks and the pay comes from advertising and because of that you get reporters. It's a very simple economic equation.

There are many, many bloggers who want to make a living at doing this and I hope that we can find ways to do that. At the second bloggercon, a session on making blogs make money that I led was absolutely packed with people who want to make money so they can quit their day jobs and blog instead. I think that's a good thing.

That is also why it is a good thing to have a discussion of the ethics of accepting payment and disclosing that payment so that readers can judge for themselves what a blogger's or journalist's (or activist's) motives and loyalties are. Yes, we need to discuss precisely what happens when you take money -- whether you are Joe blogger in a town or Kos speaking to the nation.

You are free to distrust everyone who accepts money for this. But if you read only those who do not, you will be reading a smaller universe of information.

Money is not the only relationship that can cause conflict.

Note, Paul, that I can't find out much about you. Your link sends me to a page about the Bush National Guard story and nothing else. I suspect -- I hope -- your life is about more than that. So I would say that you are less transparent and open than anyone at this conference; Rebecca is going to post our bios and you can read them here.

Who are you, Paul? What are your interests? What are your relationships? What are your business relationships? Where are your loyalties? I think we have a right to know that, don't we? That could have an impact on what you write, couldn't it? What's good for the goose is good for the goosed, Paul.

One more thing, Paul: I did not see this post on Webcred because, frankly, I stopped reading comments with your name on them. I gave up. You descended into personal attack and vitriol and did it in numbing volume and there is no law that says I have to stand there when someone spews spittle on me. I will not.

That's trolling and that's the price of trolling: People will stop paying attention.

I'm glad your letter was posted at Sandhill so it could rise above the noise and so I could respond. I'd be happy to have a civilized blog discussion about this ... like this.

-jeff

[paul_lukasiak]

Jeff:

There are two separate issues here --- the first are all those issues raised by the attempt by corporate media to dominate/control the distribution of information by co-opting the blogosphere. Personally, I think those issues deserve their own conference, and not just the 90 minutes they will be given at JoBloCred. And there are probably hundreds of thousands of people more qualified that I am to discuss those issues knowledgeably--including yourself. (That won't stop me from making snarky comments if I have the chance, of course :) )

The second issue is the one that I wanted to bring to people's attention -- that flashing neon sign that says "conflict of interest." My personal view is that someone with a financial interest in a particular "new business model" for journalism should not be leading the discussion of "[h]ow blogging & the growing web presence of conventional media changes the news media’s business model, and what this means for ethics and standards."

Maybe in a different environment (like Bloggercon), your leading such a discussion would be acceptable. But when a conference is focussing on credibility, ethics, and standards, the "appearance of a conflict of interest" bar has to be set very high if the conference itself is to be taken seriously.

as to "who am I?", well, I did provide a link on my homepage http://www.glcq.com/me.htm that explains who I am and answers most of your questions.

But the short version is: I'm nobody. Just a citizen who did what the mainstream media failed to do when the Bush records were released---determine precisely what was required of Bush by finding the relevant Federal Statutes, DoD regulations, and Air Force policies and procedures from that era. I came to certain conclusion, and I published my findings, but I did not want anyone to accept those conclusions on my say-so, so I posted all of the source materials in their entirely on my site at considerable (for someone who describes themselves as independently poor) personal expense.

As to why I did it---I saw something in one of the Bush records originally released that did not make sense, and I wanted to know why....and it snowballed from there because although I wasn't finding the explanation I was looking for, I was finding out a whole lot of other stuff in the process.

And for a while my life DID become about that---call it thoroughness, or call it a symptom of obsessive/compulsive disorder--- but I knew that what I had figured out was proof that Bush had NOT fulfilled his obligations, and that unless I did it in a way that was bulletproof, the "proof" would be dismissed as the ravings of just another internet maniac.

(and the fact is that my evidence was taken seriously by a number of mainstream journalists, and was part of the foundation for a number of articles that appeared in the MSM. And, IMHO, I don't think that CBS would have been as careless about vetting the memos if they did not know that the fact of Bush's dereliction had been established far beyond any reasonable doubt. )

Or you can just think of me the way I'm described by the Thornburgh/Boccardi commission...an "anti-Bush blogger" (I don't blog, btw) "who operates a website on which he posts disparaging analyses of President Bush’s TexANG service".

paul

[Jeff Jarvis]

Paul: Thanks to our host here, I now have the URI for the original post over at wecred and I posted my response there.
One response to this: I do not see how big media is trying to -- or, more important CAN -- dominate or control the blogosphere or the internet. That's impossible. And that's precisely what's so great about it. That makes it the domain of the citizens. But that doesn't mean that reporters can't join in, too.

[paul_lukasiak]

Jeff wrote:

One response to this: I do not see how big media is trying to -- or, more important CAN -- dominate or control the blogosphere or the internet.,

jeff, that is what finding "new business models" is all about, isn't it? Unless big media can "dominate or control the blogosphere or the internet", it isn't going to be able to manufacture the audiences it needs to sell advertising, and keep the stockholders happy.

So either big media is going to find "new business models" that can "dominate or control" the audience, OR it will work to create a regulatory environment in which it can exert that "dominance or control" under "new business models."

Here is what I see evolving

1) Big media creates "open" systems like the stuff Advance is working on (of course, setting up "blogger codes of conduct" along the way)

2) Big media supports and encourages internet regulation (including increased prices for bandwidth)

3) Big media provides "free bandwidth" to "approved" sites, thereby marginalizing independent bloggers.

[Ed Cone]

We're having this conversation in Greensboro, where the local daily is moving into blogging in a big way, giving them to staffers, talking about having independent bloggers linked from and perhaps contribute to the paper's site...some people fear that the corporate media will coopt and dominate the local blogosphere. I don't see it. I think that's an old media, zero-sum mentality. You can't dominate what you can't control, and there is room on the web for a much greater number of individual voices than you can have in print or broadcast.

[lukasiak]

You can't dominate what you can't control, and there is room on the web for a much greater number of individual voices than you can have in print or broadcast.

this is true today. But what concerns people is the day after tomorrow.

The profits of "big media" are dependent upon their ability to manufacture audiences for advertizers. It costs them a lot of money to do this---and they can charge lots of money for what they manufacture.

Right now, I'm writing a comment on a blog. Ten years ago, I would probably have been sitting in front of my television set. And that simple fact is a huge problem for big media. They need to sell me to advertisers, and here I am, on Sandhill's ad-free website, hanging out.

And this is all possible because its cheap for Sandhill to provide the content to me, and its cheap for me to access the content. How long do you think this situation is going to last?

[fp]

Paul... just an FYI. It ain't that cheap to provide this space, but I think of the work and the relationship building and the creativity as well as the few hundred dollars a year to software and service providers as an investment in my future. And when it becomes apparent how I can benefit materially from offering ads or whatever, I'll jump in. Right now, the micropayment construction around ads and link-throughs to Amazon don't make it worth my while to do the site maintenance and the bookkeeping. Great word bookkeeping. Only double k in the English language outside the game of polo. Definitely the only double k sandwiched between two double vowels. See, it's my site and I get to make that kind of observation and that makes it all worthwhile somehow.

But don't be surprised to see ads here someday, and don't expect any disclaimers. I'm a consultant and I'm already constrained not to write about clients. Also I have private relationships that are off limits for me to write about. These things are a matter of ethics for me, a protection of others' privacy. Imagine if I felt I had to disclose who I wasn't writing about and why!

Sound ethics boost credibility over time. Journalists actually have the opportunity at most j-schools for some rigorous training in the ethics of their profession. I was amused when I took an MBA a few years back and they were looking for ways to strengthen the program without broadening the curriculum. Forced to trade off some courses, they chose to strengthen the Finance offerings and eliminate the required ethics course.

Bidness.

[paul_lukasiak]

fp wrote "Paul... just an FYI. It ain't that cheap to provide this space"

its not? when I set up my website, I paid for two years based on $6.95/mo. That included 50 gig of bandwidth per month (since upgraded to 75gig).

Now, I can't imagine that if I was blogging about local events that I would come anywhere near that bandwidth limit, even if everyone in the community with a computer was checking out my site every day. (unless I was doing cat-blogging with high resolution photos, of course. :) )

So to me, the cost of doing independent "local" blogging is really less than $10 a month. But what happens if that price goes up to $50 a month? And you can do "local" blogging for free courtesy of Rupert Murdoch's media empire---as long as you follow "the rules."

That is what concerns me. Big Media is losing "market share" to "independent" bloggers and other internet content providers (Jarvis has a link to chart on newspaper circulation that is truly alarming) which is cutting into their profits. And because they are "big media" they pretty much control how "the internet" is perceived by the masses.

Because techies play a very big role in determining opinion of the internet ON the internet--especially amongst themselves---they often forget that the vast majority of Americans really don't care about these kinds of issues. Techie right-wingers and techie left-wingers all agree on "freedom to blog" issues, and have developed a "blind spot" when it comes to the threat that "Big Media" represents because regardless of their political persuasions, they all agree on the "internet freedom" issues.