A Subjective Transcript

The September 17, 2002, Panel Sponsored by the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Entitled "Weblogs — Challenging Mass Media and Society"

Part 1 (of 2)

At first, I write my impressions and thoughts longhand in a notebook I've brought for the occasion when I Iearned I couldn't get wireless or Ethernet access to blog the panel live, which I now think is just as well. Once the novelty of instant soundbites wears off, there's no shortcut for taking time to digest an experience as a whole. Still, "you are there" is a compelling angle.

People begin arriving and eventually Scot Hacker, a writer and tech superhero who spends his days as a mildmannered webmaster for a small graduate school of journalism in a large west-coast state, comes in and sits next to me. As the panel gets going, I will occasionally jot down Scot's interjections or my own amidst the statements coming from the dais.

Paul Grabowicz, Director of the New Media Program at the Graduate School of Journalism, and co-teacher (with John Battelle, and assisted by Scot) of the class sponsoring the panel, says the panel will discuss "the relationship between blogging and journalism" and introduces the participants:

• Rebecca Blood, author of the The Weblog Handbook, and the weblog Rebecca's Pocket
• Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News technical columnist and author of the daily ejournal weblog, possibly the first sponsored official blog
• Meg Hourihan, one of the authors of We Blog, one of the founders of Pyra, the company that invented Blogger, and author of the popular megnut weblog.
• J.D. Lasica, senior editor of the Online Journalism Review, and author of the New Media Musings weblog
• Scott Rosenberg, managing editor of Salon, and author of the Links & Comment weblog, designated leader of the Salon Blogs community

Paul mentions the class's IP Weblog, saying it's "in progress."

The class's topic is intellectual property (IP) and copyright, he explains, and John Battelle had the idea to "use weblog method" in the class. Says Grabowicz, "A blogger found the class description" on the web, "blogged it," a few days later Wired news picked it up, and "all hell broke loose."

(I jot in my notes "blogging ecosystem.")

Paul goes on: "This provoked a lot of negative response." He reads the "Altamont of the blogging movement" quotation, and then asks Rebecca why the class evoked that reaction from bloggers, was it typical?

Can't we all get along?

Rebecca and Meg both draw analogies. Blood compares the class's reception to the reaction to her handbook from the early, self-taught wave of webloggers. "The software is easy and mostly free. They are offended by instruction manual concept."

(This by the way is a classic early-adopter fallacy. Also, when did early-adapter start showing up as an alternative to early-adopter?)

Meg agrees, pointing out that the d.i.y. (the punk/zine "do it yourself" ethos) attitude was part of the early blogging community. The release of Blogger got the response: "why does anyone need a tool for this? It's just HTML and FTP."

(Well, yes, and archives, and a database backend. I think, "Let's answer the question!" Why does anyone need such a tool? I remind Scot, sotto voce, that when I first discussed Blogger with him two years ago, he said, "isn't that just automated FTP?")

"Webloggers tend to be resistant to being told what do do," says Meg and we independent-minded people in the audience all nodd appreciatively, and I wonder all webloggers or just early webloggers? ... Do they mind being told HOW to do?

J.D. adds that the negative reaction reflects a fear of mass media moving into "our turf." Media monopolies, he observes, are the antithesis of the blog spirit thus far. "The fear is that this gets coopted and becomes a traditional media outlet."

I think about how a server is what a printing press used to be to freedom of the press.

Paul throws out another question: Is it a good idea for journalists to do this, assuming they will be (or have been) accepted on some level? Are there advantages for reporters? How should journalists interact with other webloggers?

Should journalists do this?

Meg says yes, because the more information, the more sources the better: "I think it's fabulous. I think it can change the way people do their stories. It can bring a new dynamic to reporting."

I wonder, is there not a dialectic going on between these two sets of practices? Neither will subsume the other but each may have something to teach the other?

Dan says, "Clearly journalists should never do these things," (big laughter) and then, "Sorry to be flippant.

"I teach in Hong Kong each fall a new media class at the University of Hong Kong. It's my fourth year of doing weblogs with that class (so this is not new). The class is mostly pro journalists getting master's degrees, some from mainland.I do this to remind them that they can be publishers. They don't need permission."

I write in all caps: THAT'S THE PART I LIKE BEST ABOUT WEBLOGS.

"Journalists should do them in large numbers. I'm amazed I'm one of the few" who's doing it, Dan goes on, but he has some cautions for reporters. "It's a lot easier for a columnist," and he mentions Steve Olafson, the Houston Chronicle report "fired for annoying editors about people he covered."

But he isn't willing to limit the applicability to columnists, saying "Anybody in the business could do one. You just have to be careful and recognize some constraints. As far as communicating with the weblog community goes: that's part of the process. I do it to take advantage of the fact that readers know more than I do."

Dan talks about embracing blogging as an opportunity and not a threat, saying how the feedback process, the contant back-and-forth with readers, enables him to learn more about whatever he's writing about.

And I write in my notes: An interactive writing medium

J.D. can't resist: "I completely agree that 'readers know more than Dan does.' " and then asks the audience two questions: (1) How many want to be working in a news room some day. (2) How many have blogs? And then, (3) How many will be blogging this conference later? ("Or now?" shouted someone from the audience.)

"Newsrooms," says J.D., "have no transparency, no interactivity. They are divorced from ordinary life. The letters to the editor is too narrow a stream. This brings readers into participatory journalism."

He also says, "Reporters should do weblogs." If few so far have followed dan's footsteps, some of the best have: he names Doc Searls and Andrew Sullivan, and he sais "emotionalism/creative/intelligent works well on a weblog." That increases the authority of the reporters in the eyes of the readers. So that's one benefit to doing it: it increases credibility.

J.D. says weblogs are already used much more as a reporter's resource and reporting tool. He talked about phone calls and usually e-mails from mainstream journalists (New York Times Magazine, Dallas Morning News), asking about things appearing in his weblog. Most of these came for a piece on a friend trapped in the World Trade Center. So journalists are now beginning to use weblogs to gather information.

(Metafilter, I write. Blogdex.)

Paul redirects the question to Scott Rosenberg, citing the way Salon is now hosting weblogs by "real people" vs. "journalists":

Scott says he's not at all surprised we haven't seen more journalists doing weblogs, for practical reasons. Twenty years in newsrooms for 20 years have taught him that "no one is underworked." Who has the time for it? "At Salon today, for example, if you want to do a weblog, you can. You do it in your spare time." Scott says he didn't stop doing any other tasks to make room for his Links & Comment blog.

"Should they be?" Scott goes on. "Probably... over time institutions committed to a strong online presence will realize they need to devote some time to it. This blogging thing is a real online media format.

"I don't view it as a movement. I view it as a form of writing and a form of medium that's native to the web" (as opposed to paper or TV). People are doing things with it today you couldn't have predicted a few years ago, and a few years from now we'll see things we didn't imagine now, says Scott.

Editorial standards or lack thereof

Scott also brings up the differences in editing practices. "Blogging tools don't allow for too much editorial process." What's attractive, he says, is the lack of censorship. But having more eyes reviewing content is one of the things that distinguished journalism from broadsheeting.

Rebecca raises an issue she's watching: journalistic ethics, fairness and accuracy. "No personal weblog," she says, "seems to be trying to completely cover stories." She mentions the differences between journalist with personal weblogs and journalists doing weblogs for their publications, and for the latter, she asks, What standards apply? How much does the journalist need to know about something before putting it up on the web. When do issues of individual defamation and libel come into play? When will we be hearing from the lawyers?

Scott points out that at Salon they have two staffer blogs: his own, which is personal, and Joe Conason's journal, which is edited through the usual editorial process at Salon.

I find myself wondering if paid for, edited, blog-shaped columns really are blogs or are they a hybrid (like Altercation which gets edited and Kaus which at least has editorial comments interspersed sometimes, an old-school convention I like).

I blurt out that Conason has no permalinks, as if this is a sin. Rebecca assures me that permalinks are not a defining characteristic of weblogs.

Conason's journal is a blog, says Blood, because it is updated on a daily-or-more schedule and the items are posted in reverse chronological order.

Dan says he posts what he wants but if he has the slightest doubt about something he runs it by his editor first. He writes less formally for the weblog (than for the newspaper column). "One difference," he says, "is I write my own headlines."

He agrees with Scott that these things take a lot of time. "It's a beast that demands feeeding all the time," he says," a momentum thing."

As for his workload, before the weblog Dan had three columns a week. Now he only does two traditional columns a week, but then once a week he develops a column from stuff that's been floated in the weblog, with more reporting and perhaps influenced by reader feedback from the blog. So the effort in doing the blog is justified a part of the development process for the third column.

(Great model!)

Paul poses a question to Meg and Rebecca: Do you feel like your readers are your editors? Do webloggers improve over time through getting feedback from regular people?

Are your readers your editors?

Meg tells a story about a post she made a few years ago. It had a typo, maybe a comma splice. Someone wrote back right away to tell her. She fixed it. Then she posted, "Omigod the grammer queen is after me today," and sure enough the same reader quickly wrote her again to correct her spelling of grammar. "So, yes."

Rebecca makes a distinction between readers (presumably passive) and webloggers (presumably also readers but as webloggers themselves, active rather than passive readers?): "Other webloggers tell me about things, give me feedback. I get thoughtful commentary," she says, "not a lot of pushback or 'you're wrong.' My content is thoughtful and so are the notes that come back."

"Readers are sources," says Dan. He posts his thoughts in progress and invites feedback from readers

(I think again about the inherently interactive nature of this medium, about how openness or transparency represents a different route to credibility, different from polish, monied production values, etc., and "There's always someone who knows more about something than you do.")

Meg notes that journalism looks complete, neatly formed. A weblog is always in process. Scott notes that Grabowicz called the IP class weblog "in progress" at the beginning of the event, pointing out "They're all in progress."

Paul explains that they wanted to take students through the issues before launching. Because they are plunging into intellectual property and copyright, they thought learning something before spouting off about it would be a good idea. Scott said, "That's not in the spirit of weblogs!" (laughter). Paul says, "I guess the Altamont guy was right!"

Paul then raises the issues they are considering (remember this will be a group blog): Who edits it? What is the voice? Does it have multiple voices? Are there length issues? What do we do with late-nght rants. He says they want to sort through these issues to avoid complete chaos out of the box.

J.D. points out that "the more a weblog reads like a traditional newspaper article, the less interesting and relevant it is." They are different media. Even an official newspaper-sanctioned weblog is different from an unofficial personal weblog a journalist can keep. There is a difference, he says. Some colleagues disagree.

"Glenn Fleischmann asks, 'How can you publish something on your weblog if you're not sure whether it's true or not?' "

(I jot "More of a dialogue? Ask if readers think something is true"? Then I wonder to myself, will journalists constitute a "class" of webloggers [like high priests]?)

Dan, I think, mentions other sanctioned weblogs in this two-year old "tradition." Apparently the Christian Scien Monitor has one (wouldn't a real journalist have tracked this down by now to add a link or at least delete this unprofessionally self-conscious admonishment after doing so?), and of course MSNBC, but "writers pull back a little bit. You don't see the same sort of complete openness or honesty. Dan mentioned that he can't use profanity on his blog.

Rebecca said, "I don't use bad language on my weblog." J.D. asked her, "Why not?" to which she replied, "I don't represent myself that way. I want to be credible." She added, "I think I have a lot of personality on my site (even though I never talk about myself)."

(I note that "AUTHENTICITY" is more important in this medium?)

The next question is about staying power. Paul rattles off buzzwords: Portals, b2b, b2c, the waves, how some things become mainstream, others disappear. Is this another fad? Something different? Does it have legs? What impact will it have? Is it just more people chattering or will it raise the level of public discourse?

Will it raise the level of public discourse?

(I think to myself, yes, it will, somewhat, on average, all things being equal, but less than utopians would say, every time.)

Rosenberg mentions his1998 article on diaries (which makes me reflexively want to cite my journal site from 1997), and his first piece on weblogging, written before Blogger was released. He talks about home pages. Scot Hacker mentioned Angelfire in my right ear. Scott Rosenberg cites short cycles in the tech industry and tech press's attention span. It's a wave pattern.

(But there are nodes, I think, or pulses, thresholds. There is a phenomenon of enabling technology often called the killer app. MP3 was never the perfect media format but it fit under a threshold that unleashed digital music trading and burning.)

Rebecca points out that portals are not gone, citing Yahoo. (Of course, the portal buzzword has been applied now to at least three different concepts, partly as Yahoo itself evolved, but also along with the my.blahblah digital dashboard concept.)

Blood says, "Everyone is adopting the weblog format now, but that people will find out what they're good for: filtering, contextualizing. The format is ubiquitous and people who like it will do it. It may not be a trend forever but the weblog will keep doing the things it's good at.

"It's the easiest way to have a personal place on the web. If Pyra had made e-zine software, everyone would have e-zines now." She cites the "easiness" and the fact that "people all have stories to tell."

Then comes the inevitable question: Are webloggers reporters?

{Transcript continued in Part 2}