Behind the News

01:03 PM - December 13, 2010

Unopen to Failure

Openness and transparency will help news sites survive

By Justin D. Martin

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Here are the best ways to help news sites survive:

-- Telling the truth, even if doing so could jeopardize your White House press credentials.

-- Referencing the U.S. Constitution in stories relating to the federal govt.

-- Employing honest historical perspective. (What has history shown to be the fate of empires, fiat money systems, heavy-handed central-planning, standing armies versus patriotic militias, and so on.)

-- Being skeptical of the "official line."

-- Not lying for govt. or anyone.

-- Not shilling for pro-govt or govt-connected groups and individuals.

-- Referring to the U.S. military and diplomatic footprint as "empire."

-- Not using scare quotes and popular-yet-disingenuous modifiers (moderate, extreme, liberal, fringe, etc.) to distinguish U.S.-govt entities from their skeptics and adversaries. (Readers are more nuanced than editors may assume.)

-- Citing source outside the beltway, such as Austrian School economists and anti-war advocates, no matter their perceived left-right leanings.

-- Not automatically giving benefit of the doubt to govt officials and their stated intentions.

-- Not referring to the United States of America as a "democracy" (it's a constitutional republic, or at least it was meant to be).

-- Remembering that this country was founded on the principles of individual liberty and fueled by the DIStrust of govt. Let your coverage reflect the true political battle: the individual vs. the state, and not the left v right, etc.

-- Did I mention NOT LYING FOR GOVT OR ANYONE?

#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 13 Dec 2010 at 05:06 PM

I'm pretty sure lying for the government is actually crucial to becoming a mainstream news website.

#2 Posted by Avery, CJR on Mon 13 Dec 2010 at 10:54 PM

Justin,

I read with interest your post about the openness of news organizations. We appreciate your analysis, and there is no way to disagree with your assertion that our contact page contains “no personalized contact information.” But, the contact form loads into an email box that generates an auto responder to every inquiry, which includes this language and email address, among some others:

For comments about our stories, to suggest story ideas, or report
breaking global news contact:
editors@globalpost.com

The contact form email box is checked every morning by our communications coordinator, who responds to, or forwards emails to other staffers for a response. We don’t respond to every email, but if a person has an issue, or a question, we make a point to respond directly.

You are right about our comment system, it was cumbersome for some time, but it proved difficult to fix. We moved to using Facebook commenting and now we have a system, which we believe works well and makes it effortless for people to comment and the comments are posted immediately after submission. We also get a lot of feedback on our Facebook fan page, which now has more than 110,000 members.

We love the idea of transparency here at GlobalPost, but I do wish you had spent a little more time on our site in preparation for your article. If you did, you might have noticed our feedback page (linked from the bottom of very page on our site), http://www.globalpost.com/feedback, which contains the email address for our “editors,” which is collected from 6AM until 11PM, 7 days a week, by the news desk editor on duty. That page also includes an email address for inquiries related to our GlobalBloggers, for Jobs, for membership, my name, phone number and email (which is also in the Press Releases section), the name phone number and email for our VP of Sales and our Sales Manager, GlobalPost’s mailing address and our main number. If you had clicked on our Mission section (in the top nav on every page), or the About link (in the footer on every page), you would have found the email address of our President and CEO Phil Balboni at the bottom of a letter from him (the main body copy on the page), and our mailing address, phone and fax on every page.

By way of explanation, not excuse, we don’t display the email addresses of our correspondents because they are all freelancers. As a small organization with limited resources, we thought it was best to funnel inquiries through one desk to keep the flow of communication manageable and also to be aware of any issues a reader may point out in our reporting, so we can respond to it quickly. We do pass emails along to our correspondents and to the editorial team immediately upon receipt of the form.

We are in favor of more ways for our readers to contact us. What we have now is not a perfect system, but it does seem to work, as evidenced by my response to your inquiry today, which came into our editors@globalpost.com email address and was forwarded to me. You’ll find a personal email address added to our contact form before the end of the week.

Best,

Rick Byrne, Vice President
Director of Communications & Marketing
GlobalPost
The Pilot House/Lewis Wharf
Boston, MA 02110
rbyrne@globalpost.com
617-854-3184

#3 Posted by Rick Byrne, CJR on Thu 16 Dec 2010 at 04:06 PM

Thanks, Rick, I'm familiar with your feedback page, but even that section is sparse (it doesn't even contain contact information for CM Sennott, your editor-in-chief).

Also, you declined to address one of GlobalPost's more indefensible omissions: its lack of a corrections page. I really value what GP is doing, and I hope you make it, but your site is lacking some very basic essentials.

#4 Posted by Justin Martin, CJR on Fri 17 Dec 2010 at 05:11 AM