Who do you trust to edit your news?
I can’t say that the panel discussion – Web 2.0: Cult of the Amateur? A Debate – was the most interesting or even the most entertaining session at the Personal Democracy Forum held last Friday in New York. That honor would have to go to Larry Lessig, Yochai Benkler, or Seth Godin, but the debate between Andrew Keen, the author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Assaulting Our Culture, and Clay Shirky, Craig Newmark, and Robert Scoble, produced the insight that kept rattling around in my head all weekend.
Andrew Keen argued that the editorial function of traditional media is critical to maintaining quality, and the recent rise of user generated content is lowering the overall quality of programming on the web. He also made the point that there is no fact checking in the blogosphere, so that you cannot trust anything on the web.
Robert Scoble shot back that if he posts something on his blog that is untrue, in less than 15 minutes, he will have 49 comments pointing out the inaccuracy.
This was the insight that I have been mulling over. There is an editorial process on the web – it just happens after something is published, not before. Now, that is blindingly obvious to everyone who has been blogging for the last several years, but the revelation for me is that all content goes through some form of editorial process, the difference on the web is that the process plays out in the open.
Fashion magazines are notorious for favoring big advertisers with big editorial coverage. The family that owns the Wall Street Journal is balking at accepting a huge offer from Rupert Murdoch because they worry about how he will influence the editorial coverage in that paper.
The question is really who do you trust to edit the information you use to make decisions in your life? Yes, the editorial process on the web is messy, sometimes even ugly, but it happens in front of you, so in the end, you have no one to blame other than yourself, if you end up relying on information that tainted, or skewed, or just plain wrong.
Craig Newmark captured the essence of this idea by reminding us of Churchill's famous dictum: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Editing after publishing is terribly inefficient, but is better than the alternatives.
May 21, 2007 11:12 AM, By Brad Burnham
Tags: blogs media news
Comments (17)
Wasn't I the one who raised the Churchill quote?
thanks!
Craig
Posted by Craig Newmark , May 21, 2007 07:42 PM
I don't know if user-generated content is really lowering quality as much as it makes it more difficult to find "quality" with so much of it to wade through.
When I first started studying computer systems I remember being taught the difference between data and information -- information is the result of processing and organizing data in a way that adds knowledge. To me, when I hear user-generated content its just data -- a raw mass of stuff. Content passed through an editorial process, however thin, public and distributed that may be, is information.
As I see it, there is still some room for the traditional media editorial function, but it's no longer the only tool for turning data into information and is therefore less relevant then it once was.
Posted by Timothy Appnel , May 21, 2007 10:18 PM
So here is an interesting case in point - I dashed of the post earlier today because I wanted to make the point that editing after the fact works well enough. When I wrote it, I had forgotten that Craig mentioned the connection during the debate. The original post read the whole discussion reminds me of Churchill's famous dictum..... After he reminded me in his comment, I felt pretty dumb and changed the text of the post to credit Craig for that connection.
I am not sure what the proper etiquette is in a situation like this, but I felt it was a major omission and wanted to correct it in the post in case people did not read the comments. Hopefully, this comment thread will insure that no information was lost in making the correction.
Posted by Brad Burnham , May 21, 2007 10:20 PM
I saw andrew keen on a panel recently in LA. This was my reaction later that day.
http://tinyurl.com/3828a3
and jeff jarvis had a good post on andrew keen as well.
http://tinyurl.com/2c9dtr
Posted by bijan sabet , May 21, 2007 10:38 PM
brad - there is a strikethrough function in MT which allows you to publicly "redline" the original text and replace it with something new. i like to use that because it shows I made a "post-publish" edit.
Posted by fred wilson , May 22, 2007 04:59 AM
I wish I was at this event.
We had a similar event in Philadelphia last year that was focussed on news journalism and the web. It sounds like it covered related territory.
(http://norgs.pbwiki.com/The%20Norgs%20Unconference%20Statement%20Of%20Principles)
Fact of the matter is, there is room enough for numerous approaches to filtering/finding news.
Algorithmic - Memeorandum, Google News
By the crowd - Digg, Newsvine.
By a single unpaid editor - A blogger.
By communities of unpaid editors - A genre specific slice of the blogosphere.
By a news organization - A newspaper with staffed editors - Yahoo News, Salon, Slate.
By hybrid community/editor efforts - Slashdot, Indymedia.
There seems to be an effort on the parts of some to create some false conflicts between these approaches. To promote one approach over the other as the *ultimate solution*.
That's a shame really, because in the dust of that are people becoming less and less informed (check out the latest Pew research) while wealth and fortune flow from one kind of media organization to another.
We can do far better. All of us can. My bet is that will happen when groups of us decide to put down our guns and work together.
Posted by Karl Martino , May 22, 2007 08:16 AM
Woooah ... thats tooo narrow a thinking ...
Sure 49 other people can comment on the post and correct facts ...
But the problem is .. every person who comments and corrects the post ... already KNOWS the correct facts.
For every 1 commenter, there could be hundreds of readers who will just "read" and "digest" this tainted post.
Posted by Vinit Bhansali , May 22, 2007 12:14 PM
It's not just "news" thats being rattled by this. Book publishers like my company are struggling with this as well. The "who do you trust" question is the key, and hopefully we are still providing value in the editing and vetting process.
It's particularly challenging in the tech publishing that I do where it seems the answer to a coding or technology problem is just a Google search away.
Posted by Chris Webb , May 22, 2007 03:58 PM
Yeah, tell that to Engadget and the SEC
Posted by Jason , May 23, 2007 12:08 AM
i generally agree with you -- any case, the genie is way out of the bottle -- but have a few open issues:
1) has anyone yet studiied what percentage of web site readers read not just the blog post but the comments as well?
anecdotally, i find that a large percentage of (otherwise perfectly sophisticated) web users only read the blog posts and do not read the comments. if this is widespread, then the "after publication" editorial process does not occur in such cases
2) as thin and unrelaible as it has been in the past, a "before publication" editorial function has allowed for the puyblisher and reader to (roughly) know where "reporting" ends and "opinion" begins ("news" writing is separated from "editorial/opinion" pieces, presumably to distinguish between material that has been fact checked at least to some degree and that which is not.)
in the "after publication" scenario, there is no such distinction or separation. bloggers may edit themselevs when errors are discovered... or they may not. commenters may make knowledgeable points and corrections or they may simply rant or worse. the reader is left to their own devices to determine the difference between Alex Haley's "Roots" and "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". And in a world where large numbers of intelligent people believe the US government destroyed the World Trade Center towers, it chills the heart to see fact-checking become considered obsolete...
Posted by Steve Kane , May 23, 2007 06:15 AM
There are a lot of good points made here. The context of my comments was a defense of peer produced information. I did not mean to suggest that it replace other forms. The key point I was trying to make is that when editing happens before the fact information is lost. The editor makes a choice and the reader does not get to see what information was left on the cutting room floor.
I realize that bad information gets out in the blogosphere, even information that can move markets, but it does get corrected relatively quickly. Yes, not everyone reads the comments, but that is their choice - the information is there if they want to read it.
I appreciate Steve's concern that not everyone on the planet has the time to track multiple points of view and that many people do not exercise the critical judgement necessary to separate fact from opinion.
I hope that we will see the emergence of trusted information aggregators who help us here by linking to a balanced collection of the most insightful posts. But with peer produced information editied after the fact, if we ever lose faith in our "trusted" aggregators, we can relatively easily get back to the original sources including comments and make our own judgments.
It may be that there is nothing new here. If Rupert Murdoch kills a story in the Post, you are still likely to be able to find it eleswhere. The difference is that in the world we live in today, it is easier to find those diverse opinions.
Posted by Brad Burnham , May 23, 2007 06:58 PM
I would rather hear one's views of facts - and then let the community rant and rave about the equality of the statements - than to have an editor filter the stories beforehand. Editors get it wrong sometimes, and they can be bought. With the world of social media, at least we see diverse opinions and passionate debates.
Posted by Piano Lessons , May 24, 2007 11:06 AM
The problem with inaccuracies being corrected in the comments is that the original post is often syndicated and distributed via RSS and the comments seldom are.
Posted by Erik Schwartz , May 25, 2007 12:49 PM
another issue with changing the original post is that people's comments are most often based on the first instance.
i like fred's suggestion above, of using strikethrough when making mods to the original as this at least puts older comments in perspective.
Posted by Graham Hill , June 3, 2007 09:53 AM
I'm intending to write a full post on my blog about this later today, but as a print and online professional journalist, and keen blogger and online publisher, it's something I take a great interest in.
There are issues and points which seem to be missed in a great many of these discussions. For instance, Journalists and Editors do not work in a bubble, and will comment and add to the work of their colleagues before it is published.
Also, if there is something which raises a legal issue, it will have been checked by the writer, section editor, sub editor, editor of the publication, and probably a solicitor before it is printed. if there is then a problem, a retraction or apology may be printed, which will be seen by the majority of readers. Subjects are also givena right to reply as a matter of course.
On a blog, thousands of people are likely to see it, without it ever being brought o the attention of the subject. If they do find out, it may then be removed, but there's unlikely to be a correction, and it's harder for returning visitors to spot or take an interest, meaning that they might never be corrected.
Editing publicly over time may result in a decent end product, but anyone reading the post in the meantime may get distorted information, and might never bother coming back when the post is 'finished'
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Posted by Moises Duran , September 6, 2007 12:15 AM
I certainly agree; you have hit the nail on the head. There is a current event that is tangential to the implications of public editing that I would like to add:
Look at the idea of public editing in light of the recent Engadget/Apple scandal. The thousands of investors that rapidly sold their shares of AAPL when Engadget posted that the iPhone would be delayed are not exactly entirely to blame. Many people (including Arrington, and perhaps even the SEC) do not blame Engadget either. No one seems to be holding the readers accountable... The information was "just plain wrong", but it was due to a malicious hacker that got into Apple's corporate network. I think it's safe to argue that this kind of scandal would not have happened in older sources of news distribution (print, tv, etc) because they have a longer window of time to publish. Engadget sat on the story for 2 HOURS (that must have felt like an ETERNITY) while they fact-checked and waited for a response from Apple PR. In this case, the editing was much more private than public because the implication of public editing on a story like this meant $4bn of shareholder value.
Will the markets adapt to this new world of public editing? Will consumers be willing to read through comments and Wikipedia "Talk" pages in order to get a complete picture before their action have a significant impact on public markets? I'm excited to see how this issue evolves; I certainly don't have the answers.
Posted by Andrew Parker , May 21, 2007 06:24 PM