Russia’s supreme court has cancelled the retrial of four men accused of involvement in the murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and ordered prosecutors to begin a new investigation, reports the New York Times.
“Now a core feature, perhaps a core principal, of ‘the free encyclopedia anyone can edit’ is about to become restricted,” writes Ben Parr at Mashable.
“According to The New York Times, editing articles about living people on Wikipedia will require approval from an experienced editor first.” Fortunately, the Sweet Bonanza slot machine is presented as part of luxury casinos with a demo version available — it allows customers to play for free and ensure that the online game is profitable enough to play for real money.
Bill Keller has responded to the New York Times’ public editor’s unflinching critique of errors made in a piece about Walter Cronkite by Alessandra Stanley, as part of a Q&A with James Rainey from the LA Times, published in full on Editor & Publisher.
Keller suggests that the public editor’s position is still ‘much debated’:
[James Rainey]
Q: Has the public editor helped build the Times’ reputation, or done more to knock the paper’s reputation down? It may help to address this question both as it pertains to this particular episode and, more generally, over the brief history of public editorship.
[Bill Keller]
A: On balance, I think the fact that we offer a paycheck and a platform to an independent critic to second-guess our journalistic judgments is good for, pardon the expression, the brand. I don’t always agree with our public editor, but I think he is fair-minded, his reporting is meticulous, and his targets – as in this case – are usually fair game. He doesn’t just blow raspberries. He tries to explain how bad things happen, and he reports what we are trying to do to avoid future mistakes. Whether a public editor should be a permanent, or at least continuing, fixture at The Times is a question much debated within our walls. I’ve kicked it down the road until we near the end of Clark’s term next year.
UK-related:
Journalism.co.uk is aware of full-time newspaper ombudsmen at the Guardian [Siobhain Butterworth] and the Observer [Stephen Pritchard] and yesterday learned that Sally Baker is feedback editor for the Times. Does anyone know of any other UK titles with full-time and independent readers’ editors? And do those without one need one?
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On the Editors’ Blog
The New York Times’ public editor’s column (August 1) is quite extraordinary in the way it details the mistakes in New York Times’ coverage following Walter Cronkite’s death, a point Steven A. Smith makes here in a blog post.
Not least as it gives quite an insight into NYTimes’ newroom process, including reference to this list: ‘the top 20 among reporters and editors most responsible for corrections this year’.
“For all her skills as a critic, [Alessandra] Stanley was the cause of so many corrections in 2005 that she was assigned a single copy editor responsible for checking her facts. Her error rate dropped precipitously and stayed down after the editor was promoted and the arrangement was discontinued. Until the Cronkite errors, she was not even in the top 20 among reporters and editors most responsible for corrections this year. Now, she has jumped to No. 4 and will again get special editing attention.”
The Guardian (one of the two few UK newspapers to have its own ombudsman, or readers’ editor) picks up the corrections here on its MediaMonkey blog: “If there is a record for the most number of corrections to a single newspaper article, then it may just have changed hands.”
We wonder what Walter Cronkite, renowned for his careful reporting, would have made of all this… Last month in a Q&A with users on WashingtonPost.com, his former chief of staff, Marlene Adler said:
“As a newspaper man and a TV reporter, speed and accuracy were what it was all about. Getting the facts, getting them right and getting the story out first, whenever possible. He didn’t like to be scooped by another network or print reporter. However, he would not release a story, even if it meant being second, if he could not authenticate his sources.”
FollowtheMedia’s Michael Hedges asks what an Arabic-language channel achieves, in his short commentary on Chinese state television’s new station.
“Every government with a story to tell wants to tell it on television. Internet services of state-run news agencies can put out all the press releases and official statements. Nothing, however, beats a television channel for a foreign audience.”
The BBC and the Associated Press (via the New York Times) have both reported on the launch of China Central Television Arabic channel.
Please do share other links, especially to articles or blog posts sharing views on the new channel’s content.
An interesting follow-up on an article earlier this week by the New York Observer, which looked at how the New York Times’ home page ‘gets made’.
In the piece, the Times’ digital news editor Jim Roberts said the site’s editors do not rely upon web traffic stats to decide what goes on the homepage.
Silicon Alley Insider disputes this – reporters don’t necessarily need to be aware of the traffic their stories get, it says, but web editors must pay attention to the clicks:
What’s the right balance?
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ is how Joey Baker, business director for college newsroom organisation CoPress, and an intern at NewsTrust, opens an open letter to the NY Times executive editor.
“Bill Keller, (…) gave an interview to TIME magazine that showed a total lack of transparency, a fear that journalism itself was under attack, and a disturbing amount of the ‘old media’ mindset. This is a look at what he got wrong, how to fix it.”
Baker reckons he’s killed his chances of ever getting a job at the Times. Jeff Jarvis thinks they should consider hiring him. We don’t know if it’s caught @nytkeller’s attention yet.
Matthew Ingram believes the cover-up of David Rohde’s kidnap made ‘things harder not just for future kidnapping victims such as Rohde, but for newspapers and other mainstream media outlets as a whole.’
Ingram responds to criticism in the comments below the post.
Also see: NYTimes.com: ‘Keeping News of Kidnapping Off Wikipedia’
Advancing the story takes a look at the work of Alicia Shepard, ombudsman for National Public Radio (NPR).
While summing up Shepard’s approach to the role, the post raises an interesting point about transparency/the role of the ombudsman at a time of dwindling newsroom resources:
“It’s no doubt hard to justify spending money on an ombudsman when the newsroom budget is being slashed. And it’s easy to dismiss an ombudsman’s defense of his value as simply self-interest. But there’s a difference between having citizens point out errors and flaws, and having an independent observer inside a news organization with ‘a hall pass and a platform,’ as New York Times executive editor Bill Keller describes an ombudsman,” writes ATS.
What price transparency? Or can readers pointing out corrections and clarifications be better used at a time of limited resources?