The downside is that this material goes up online automatically, without editing or moderation. That’s problematic already, but the redesign makes it worse, by making it harder for the reader to know what content has been vetted and what has not. If the content is not going to be moderated and pre-approved, it should at least be put in a separate box and formatted slightly differently. That way, readers know what they’re getting, and the writers’ original reporting won’t get diluted and lost in the glut. Original content is what keeps people coming back, right?
News editors and Web developers have a lot of factors to take into consideration when designing an appealing news site. I’ll add one more thing for them to worry about: a site redesign that makes your Web site more “clean” can have the unintended side effect of making your content quite journalistically murky.
I liked the separate columns, but in fairness to the patch and its redesign, they seem to label each item as to whether it's news or an announcement.
#1 Posted by Richard Benfield, CJR on Wed 25 Aug 2010 at 12:08 PM
I agree with the gist of your article. It's too dangerous to lump real journalism content with potentially slanted "advertorial" content from readers. Some readers may not be able to tell the difference well enough. However, I really take issue with this condescending and rude comment in your article:
"Does a small-town news website have to be written top to bottom by some brat with a journalism school degree?"
Why "brat?" Are you saying Patch editors aren't as good as other journalists? You ought to reconsider. People who want to be journalists today have to work really hard to find a job. Regardless of how their company chooses to design their websites, they're still doing a good job by informing their communities with relevant information. What exactly do you have against that? Your comment is inappropriate.
#2 Posted by Angela Grant, CJR on Wed 25 Aug 2010 at 01:20 PM
What's funny is that if the author graduated from Columbia J'School -- my alma mater as well -- in, say, the late 90s (she's a 2010 grad -- how "bratty" of you, young 'un!) she'd be writing that it was high time for newspapers to stop treating readers like the unwashed masses who must be kept from the editorial Ivory Tower lest their petty concerns sully our Big Thoughts on Journalism. Patch as a company is all of what, a year and half old? I don't get the snark. They are out there hiring, covering, expanding and doing the sort of journalism that matters to people like me. My regional daily long stopped covering school boards with any regularity, now I log onto my local Patch and I get a full report. (And "my" editor has amazing credentials by the way!)
Ah, to be in my late 20s again. Journalism was so easy to understand then -- no reporting needed to form all those world-weary opinions.
#3 Posted by SarahM, CJR on Wed 25 Aug 2010 at 01:26 PM
Point well taken. In any media site there needs to be transparency and clear distinctions between articles written by paid staff/freelancers, UGC, and sponsored content. Separate categories is one way to do this. Badges showing roles or titles is another. On some sites the sponsored content has a different background color to distinguish it from editorial. I like this as it's easy to visually recognize paid content. More and more readers will be required to discern for themselves the underlying bias of content, and whether or not they trust the source. I'm hopeful that blatantly biased info will be revealed by the readers in comments and voting tools. Don't forget that reporters and editors can be biased as well and there blurs the distinction even further.
#4 Posted by Geoff Sakala, CJR on Wed 25 Aug 2010 at 01:45 PM
To Angela and SarahM, I feel the need to clarify: the "brat with the journalism degree" I was referring to in this post was myself. No part of this post was meant to be critical of Patch's incredibly hardworking editors. I was anticipating the kind of criticism I expected to get for this post, knowing that some people would accuse me of elitism for insisting on a division between edited and unedited content. I think Patch is doing a wonderful job of getting community members involved in reporting and writing local news. I just think user-generated content should be moderated before it gets posted, and that there should be a clear division for readers.
#5 Posted by Lauren Kirchner, CJR on Wed 25 Aug 2010 at 02:45 PM
I'm going to let go of the "some brat with a journalism degree" spat. As a 23-year-old mature young adult with a college degree, I'm above petty, prejudicial commentary like that. And since I have class, I also won't bother to tell the author of this article that comments like that demonstrate the very unwanted and unwarranted bias that she's complaining Patch's site users who post their own announcements inherently have. As to the overall issue, I agree that they should just keep the old format where they separate the News posted by paid staffers and Announcements posted by site users in two different visible sections. However, separating the two isn't going to fix the overall problem of people using the Announcements section for spam articles. Really what Patch's people need is a good moderating team, which I'm sure they're already well aware of and probably looking for right now as they grow and expand.
#6 Posted by Kristina M., CJR on Wed 25 Aug 2010 at 02:53 PM
Finnicky grammatical correction: the word "myself" in my comment above should be "me." Which proves my point...we all need editors!
#7 Posted by Lauren Kirchner, CJR on Wed 25 Aug 2010 at 03:21 PM
it must be nice to know everything about everything. So having a journalism degree now makes you a brat? What about a journalism degree from Columbia? Uber-bratty.
#8 Posted by Max, CJR on Wed 25 Aug 2010 at 05:44 PM
Okay, Lauren. I didn't get that you were referring to yourself with the "brat" comment. I thought you were actually talking about the patch editors. We'll let bygones be bygones here...
#9 Posted by Angela Grant, CJR on Mon 30 Aug 2010 at 11:46 AM