Speaking Back to the NY Times
In his column today, Dan Okrent, the New York Times' Public Editor (read: ombudsman), offers some valuable ideas on how the newspaper can use the Web better to have a conversation with the readers, especially readers who feel aggrieved for one reason or another about the coverage. He writes, among other things:
The better use of the Web site could also give readers the chance to see letters from The Times. One of the great frustrations of my job is seeing the thoughtful letters that go out from Times reporters to readers who have taken issue with something they've written. Why frustration? Because one reader gets the benefit of the thoughtfulness (and, sometimes, the writer's candid acknowledgment that he or she might have done something better), and a couple of million others who might appreciate it do not.The caveat in the second paragraph -- "wary of posting for the millions" -- is inadvertently revealing. It assumes that a letter from a Times reporter to an individual reader is likely to remain a communication only between the two of them.There are many at The Times who really dislike some of these ideas. Al Siegal understandably worries that the paper's authority, the staff's morale and the honest pursuit of truth could be severely undermined by deceitful or disingenuous attacks on specific articles by interested parties. And some reporters are very wary of posting for the millions their own letters to individual readers, fearing they would soon be forced (by editors, by competitive reporters, by me) into an endless public confessional.
I wouldn't count on that, Times-folk. In fact, I'd count on something else: that the recipient of the letter might feel entirely free to post it online for those millions.
When I was a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, I implictly assumed that every e-mail I sent to a reader might someday be published somewhere else. No doubt I said some things very occasionally (especially with trollish folks who just wanted to bait me) that might make me cringe later on, but in general I always knew that what I said might reflect in some way on my employer, not just me -- even though a quick e-mail response was extremely different from my carefully written and edited columns.
Times reporters have an added burden. They represent the newspaper of record for the top tier of U.S. society. What they say, in the paper or otherwise, has weight beyond their individual authority. If they and their editors have to exercise the same amount of journalistic due diligence in having a conversation with readers that they do in publishing the newspaper, the conversation will never even begin.
An online discussion in which Times people were responding directly to readers would have to be understood -- by readers and everyone else -- as something quite different from what ends up in the newspaper. But would the top editors, much less the lawyers, let it happen? They should, and in the end they'll have to.
How could the Times begin to move into this conversational world? For starters, it might emulate what one forward-looking newspaper has done. The Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record publishes letters to the editor in blog format, with comments enabled under them. It's a smart experiment.
We recently added comments at the bottom of our stories, and while I know this has been done elsewhere before, the exercise has been most revealing ... some fascinating discussion threads have started and in some cases, stories have been better told by the combination of our reporting and the comments. We've been encouraging reporters to respond to any comments where they can help clarify, expand or respond to a point.
Also, we'll be doing the letters to the editor as a blog, as well.
Furthermore, we've started a blog where our AME for new media discusses what we're working on for the next day's paper and we encourage reader feedback.
Posted by: Howard Owens | February 20, 2005 at 12:32 PM
Only one thing separates the NY Times from a tabloid: the former you can talk about with friends, the latter you can't.
Why do you think the all time classic first date is dinner and a movie? It's because you go to the movie, and then you have something to talk about during dinner even if you have nothing else in common. Being able to talk about the movie is what gives it value, even though the events in the movie are (usually) fictional.
Being able to talk about something is what makes it real, and talking about something adds value to it. The New York Times has this great asset, and by not allowing users to comment on and talk about the articles on their site they are only half capitalizing on what they have.
Because they are asleep at the wheel, sites like slashdot and fark are making money on what should be a huge cash cow for the Times. Of course the reason the Times can't allow users to comment is because there is no accountability, i.e. anyone can post anything so there could potentially be some liability issues. However this problem will be solved within the next couple of years...
Someone in the last thread said the Times may have finally jumped on the Clue Train, to me it looks more like they got run over by it.
This post shows that the Times thinks we are all against them, but they don't get it; we are all rooting for them to succeed! The Times has the potential here to be the biggest company in the history of big companies, and it makes me ill to know that they can't see what I and a lot of other people can. Give me an hour and I could fix this company myself, but of course none of us are going to get the chance and they will probably continue to flounder their way into obscurity.
Posted by: Alex Krupp | February 20, 2005 at 07:14 PM
I've actually got an example of the kind of thing Okrent mentions on my site regarding their decision to kill the Bush "bulge" story.
Posted by: murky | February 21, 2005 at 05:39 AM