melanie mcbride online

“I don’t know how to run a newspaper.
I just try everything I can think of.”
- Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane

I recently had an interesting conversation with a journalist friend about the question of blogging and accountability. Like many of his colleagues, my friend believes in the role of gatekeepers from an ethical standpoint of public good - facts versus hearsay and that sort of thing. I agreed.

As I write this, I meditate on the fact that I do not have the luxury of a personal editor to go over this post - a post that might also benefit from a professional turnaround time (time to edit, refine and further research). At best, I can afford an hour or two for this non-paying work - and it is work.

That said, I welcome a set of basic standards appropriate to the realities of this particular writing context.Thing is, who gets to define them? And can we really apply the standards of an old paradigm to a very new (and different) one?

UPDATED: Jan. 10/2008
(Draft) Bloggers Code of Conduct from Tim O’Reilly. There are a bunch of other similar docs out there (that I might have referenced) but this is one of newest. Visit individual media sites for their own policies - CBC and BBC, in particular, are at the forefront.

As I see it, participatory media is about the cultivation and exchange of ideas - incomplete, unpolished and unrefined whereas professional media is a finished product, a commodity shaped by consumer contexts, profit models and marketing. These differences are further defined according to the interests of managers, editors and individual creators.

In the case of a large publication (whether participatory or profit driven), one that speaks on behalf of a larger community of interest, the editor serves as the people’s representative - an arbiter and judge. Traditionally, professional editors - like professional writers - are appointed according to their training, experience and credentials. But with the arrival of participatory media, older concepts of the editor may be in need of revision.

A new role for editors

As aggregated content models merge unregulated citizen voices with “professional” (i.e., regulated) content, web2.0-enabled publications must strike a balance between top down (old) and user-centric (new) models of content management. Traditionally, editors function as arbiters - those who make decisions based on expertise, specialised knowledge and received standards. John Burke of the Editors Weblog speculates about what type of editor is needed for web2.0 media:

“There is a serious predicament facing that century-tested bastion of journalism, the people who decide what the public should know, the ultimate conventional gatekeepers; news editors. Some believe that editors are more necessary than ever in sifting through the plethora of information on the Internet. Others feel that online interactivity could replace traditional editors with peer-to-peer suggestions.”

OJR’s Mark Glaser, further defines the purpose of the peer-to-peer editor:

“Part chat moderator, part copy editor and part ombudsman, the citizen media editor is such a new role that no one really has that title, yet. [...] before the CME has anything to work with, the news organization must first teach its audience what citizen journalism is and make them comfortable working together in a new way.”

While professional content publishers face new challenges when it comes to managing citizen voices, they may also discover infinite alternatives to the top down models of our information past.