Forget The Front Page. Compared to the electronic age, the old days of print journalism sometimes seem to online reporters-some of whom are required to file hourl y updates-almost relaxed. Some lucky journalists still work for publications like The Atlantic and have a whole month between deadlines to conceptualize, write, edit, revise and submit their stories.
Headline News and news radio promise their audiences a full refresh 48 times a da y. High-traffic news sites on the Web often indicate the last update to the minut e. It’s gotten to the point where if at 1 pm you’re reading a page that hasn’t be en updated since, say, 11:30, you think you’re reading old news.
To meet these deadlines, journalists cut corners. Unfortunately, their cost-savin g tricks are hard to miss. Reporters often talk to spokespeople on one side of a dispute (usually the side that generated the story), but don’t have time to inves tigate the other side. Analysts’ opinions are cited without arudimentary fact ch eck or unnamed sources are used. Worst of all, fact often mingles with opinion, p rivileging editorialization over straight news reportage.
Like most people whose writing is published on the Web, I’m arguing from inside a very rickety glass house. After all, this is an opinion piece, not a work of reporting. But even the most obvious opinion needs to be backed up by some fact, and , finally, Web publishers are starting to make that happen.
Muckraker wanna-be Matt Drudge’s recent brush with libel-law reality (he looks mo re like the character played by Danny DeVito in L.A. Confidential with each passi ng day) is heartening: reporters for the Web can’t cut ethical corners just becau se publication is so available. All journalists must operate by the same rules, n o matter what the media.
Even more heartening is that c/net’s flagship news.com service now publishes a co rrections page. Some of the corrections so far have been minor retractions intend ed to mollify potential advertisers, but the page should be welcomed by all in th e publishing and Web communities, because it signals that one of the Web’s leadin g news organizations is taking itself seriously enough as a purveyor of news to d o this. Expectations are getting higher, finally. These corrections can be upload ed almost immediately. It’s a rare example of a new technology assisting the caus e of editorial excellence. Technology in the service of content: Now there’s a co ncept.
