But such put-you-there depictions—the kind of from-her-senses-to-ours reporting that was, ostensibly, the purpose of Hoshaw’s journey—are rare in the piece. Much more common is reporting of the more could-be-done-from-anywhere variety: reporting, in other words, that could have been done over the phone or via email, and that therefore didn’t require participation in a month-long voyage to and through the garbage patch. The piece is heavy on expert testimony of varying strains—contributions from oceanographers and research foundations, etc.—that put the garbage patch in context. Which is, on the one hand, illuminating and helpful (the piece’s stated goal, after all, being to “educate the public about marine debris”), but on the other…disappointing.
“Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash” is less a compelling new take on a widely reported story…and more a dryly summative one. A “newspaper article” in the most caricatured sense. As Times science editor Laura Chang told me in an e-mail, emphasizing that the publication of the story was contingent on whether “the material met our standards”: “Both the article and photos went through our normal editing process. Aside from financing her travel, Spot.Us had nothing to do with the actual editorial content.”
The article, to be fair, does accomplish the basic goals Hoshaw articulated in her pitch to potential Spot.us funders back in July:
How Will This Reporting Help?
This report will educate the public about marine debris. It will bring new light to ocean pollution and provide one of the first reports about how toxic chemical are entering our food chain. Many scientists believe that ocean pollution will be one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, this slideshow will be one of the first to show direct footage from the Garbage Patch.
Deliverables
Deliverable: Online photo slideshow and an article that is under consideration by the NY Times. I will also provide separate photos, blog posts and a debriefing for the Spot.Us community that will be made available via Creative Commons. Time frame: The reporting will take three weeks (on site); background reporting is ongoing from June-August. Hours: This story will take 150+ hours.
But, then, “deliverables” and “compelling journalism” aren’t instantly compatible; educating people and telling a good story aren’t necessarily the same thing. Though ideally, of course, the two goals are realized in combination—seamlessly—in a particular journalistic narrative, when one has only 900 words to tell a story, choices must be made.
As the Knight Science Journalism Tracker’s Charlie Petit put it: “This piece is illustration of the ferment in news delivery – a story in a traditional, big paper by a freelancer reliant in part on grants to do the reporting. The article is not particularly long or sweeping. One suspects Hoshaw will be writing more on the expedition.”
The ‘more’ in question comes into play in the Times article’s supplementary components: the slideshow featuring pictures of the trash in the patch—including disintegrated, toxic plastic shards, which “look like confetti in the water”—and, more significantly, the personal blog Hoshaw kept during her month at sea. I followed the blog as Hoshaw updated it in, pretty much, real time—she connected to the Web via satellite phone—and found it at once educational and enthralling. And now that Hoshaw has returned from her trip, the blog offers a new focus on contextualizing her on-the-sea reporting (November 3: “The Garbage Patch Starts Here”). It’s good stuff. It’s what the Spot.us funders paid for. It would have been nice if the Times article—the principal “deliverable” in the Spot.us pitch—had resembled it more.
It might have been nice if the article author could acquaint the audience with the new design techniques that are trying to solve the problem:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3058533428492266222
and some of the photography that is trying to contextualize the problem:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11
It's not enough to say there's are state size oceans of trash somewhere in the sea, one has to define what that means.
And what that mean is waste we make becomes the waste we eat. It behooves us to try and make that waste edible.
In fact, it's in our self interest, which is what environmentalism is all about in the end.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 10 Nov 2009 at 11:29 PM
David Cohn here from Spot.Us.
I appreciate the critique - but I also think it's a bit misplaces.
1. Sorry we didn't win a Pulitzer. How many do you have?
2. You obviously didn't follow or read any of her blog posts along the way. Lindsey sent back numerous photos, blog posts and more while on the ship and since she has gotten back. A lot of the depth and human connection you are looking for are probably there. The NY Times limited the amount of space allocated for her reporting. She probably could have (and wanted to) write a 2,000 long form article. But that was for the Times to determine. But Lindsey did MORE reporting than what was shown on the Times piece. Did you check out the links we published on Spot.Us? Or did you even bother to email me to find out if there was more content?
3. The editorial was handeled by the Times not Spot.Us. We actually aren't responsible for that. So if you are trying to pick a specific Times article and say that it sucked - that's fine. But that itself is also not newsworthy. I'm sure there are 100 or so blog posts like this every day.
Best
#2 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 04:16 PM
Page Two of your article.
Sorry - I finally got to page two of your article where you do note that Lindsey did some reporting on her blog.
As you note: "It’s good stuff. It’s what the Spot.us funders paid for. It would have been nice if the Times article—the principal “deliverable” in the Spot.us pitch—had resembled it more."
I'm glad that you think Lindsey did deliver. That the Times wanted a more traditional sounding piece was there call. Spot.Us obviously can't force anything on them.
#3 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 04:20 PM
Final comment: Apologies for all the typos - yeesh. Multi-tasking is a pain in the behind sometimes.
#4 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 04:23 PM
So your real lead here Id:: NYT butchers solid reporting from Spot.us. Would've been nice to see that in the lead, and not literally buried at the very end of a long piece that implied the Reporter, and Spot.us, didn't do their job. And behind the jump, at that.
And why, exactly, did this story jump at all, when the jump pg contained only a few paragraphs that completely turned the story around? Is CJR that desperate to boost its pageview stats? Or was CJR just being sloppy?
Amy Gahran
#5 Posted by Amy Gahran, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 05:13 PM
Hi, David,
Thanks for writing. The concerns you mention here are, as you note, addressed within the article.
But I wanted to respond to your comments regardless, both because 1). I appreciate that you took the time to respond, and 2). I want to make clear: I didn't say -- nor do I believe -- that the Times article "sucked." I said that "it doesn't quite deliver," that it was "disappointing," and that "it could have been much, much better." And the way I know that the piece could have been better -- and the reason I found it disappointing -- is that, as I said, I followed Lindsey's blog -- eagerly -- during her trip. I know how compelling her reporting and commentary were in that other, more personalized, context. And I know, therefore, what Times readers missed out on yesterday.
One more clarification: I wrote this critique not to pick on Hoshaw -- who deserves admiration for taking on such a project in the first place -- or on the Times or on Spot.Us...but because I think, in our desperation to find business models to support public-interest reporting -- the kind of reporting that Hoshaw pitched, and that the Spot.Us community funded in this instance -- we occasionally prioritize the business model above the journalism. We start to frame the issue as "did the business model work?" rather than "was the journalism the business model supported of high quality?" The framing of the story yesterday was generally "Spot.Us Story Gets to the Times," full-stop. Which is a story, yes, but not a complete one. As important as it is to find the business models that will sustain the kind of reporting Lindsey undertook...we can't forget the journalism. And that journalism has to speak for itself.
#6 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 05:26 PM
I agree strongly with Amy's criticism that the tenor of this piece turned dramatically after the unnecessary jump. Whatever the weaknesses of the NYT piece, they pale in comparison to the weaknesses of this CJR piece. This could just as easily be a piece on how lame newspaper journalism is compared to digital journalism. With the exception of scoops, of which the Times has achieved a few, aren't a lot of takeouts in the Times and other newspapers summaries of more extensive work that reporter and others in local media and/or specialty media and blogs have already done?
#7 Posted by Steve Buttry, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 05:41 PM
Applying the same standard to your criticism, Megan, I'd say that this piece is disappointing because it buries the lede (mainstream packaging fails to capture the value of the material provided by community-funded journalist) in favor of a frame that I would summarize as "New idea is really another form of hype."
Yes, you parsed it, but I believe you framed this story as a "Yes, but" debunking reaction to the full-stop milestone news for Spot.Us, and that's a standard journalistic frame. It has its place. But it probably isn't the proper frame given the way you ended the story.
And yes, some of us are probably particularly alert to this trend. Perhaps for good reason.
#8 Posted by Dan Conover, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 06:03 PM
Hi, Amy, Steve, and Dan,
You're right -- the general idea in the back of my mind as I wrote the critique was how much more effective the blog, as a platform, was for conveying this kind of in-depth, over-time, observation-focused reporting than was the newspaper article. I should have made that point more clearly, and higher up in the piece.
But, then, there's the other layer of context here, which is that the Times story was treated -- by Hoshaw, by Spot.us, by many who wrote about it yesterday -- as the culmination of Hoshaw's reporting, and the principal "deliverable" in her pitch. That's what I was responding to in my piece, and why I framed my own story the way I did. You can say, 'Well, the article was nothing compared to her blog' -- and I agree -- but, then, that's a change in story from the "The Article Is Finally Here!" treatment we saw yesterday. It can't go both ways.
And though I know Hoshaw's reporting underwent Times editing -- which is why I included the commentary to that effect from the Times's science editor -- still, the article presented, at the end of the day, has to speak for itself. And that story, if you'll pardon the pun, only skimmed the surface.
ps -- Amy: no cravenness at play in the story's page-breaking, just the vagaries of an automated-and-occasionally-fickle breaking system.
#9 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 06:14 PM
I'm not sure you were able to effectively make your point(s). After hundreds of words critiquing details of the published NY Times article, we get a nice conclusion that says "the total story is richer than what was published in the Times", which is followed by your comment about journalism business models and the definition of 'success' when applied to community-funded models.
You might have been more successful (and attracted less negative attention from those of us who helped to fund the story and are curious about the path our 'baby' is taking) if you had led with your main point instead of your disappointment.
#10 Posted by Anca, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 06:26 PM
Megan -- If indeed you didn't mean to impugn the Spot.us reporting, but rather the NYT's handling of the work which ending up diluting its value, then here's an idea: Correct your article. Right now. Visibly. In the story. Right here on this very web page.
Just go into the HTML editor and use the
tags to mark as strikethrough text your original lead which misrepresents the story, write a new lead, and add a note (maybe in italics) explaining the change.Oh, and change the subhead too. Based on what you commented above, "The NYT’s 'Pacific garbage patch' story: a Spot.us 'deliverable' that doesn’t quite deliver" clearly implies that Spot.us is at fault for your "disappointment."
This practice is called transparency. It's supposed to be important, even in traditional journalism. The good news for you is: It's especially easy in online media.
Since you've acknowledged that the way you framed your story misrepresents a key point in a basic and important way, doesn't that obligate you to correct it immediately in a way that's as easily findable and obvious as the original piece? Especially since here you're publishing in a medium that makes exactly that kind of transparent correction easy?
Not doing so sends a message: "Yeah, I admit this piece is significantly messed up, but I'm (a) not willing or skilled enough to fix it, (b) My real point here was to sling mud, so I'd rather let my aspersions remain intact where they'll be most visible, and I'll only fess up to it way down in a comment thread where most people will never read it.
Earlier today, Ethan Zuckerman pointed out (http://bit.ly/3a3XMi) how another bit of sloppy CRJ publishing (it's been a banner day for CJR, hasn't it?) warranted only a e-mail correction, not actually correcting the published web piece in a transparent way.
He's right. It's a problem of mindset, not of technology. And it can be fixed right this minute. Even if you're working with a typical MSM byzantine outdated rigid CMS that doesn't let you *not* jump a story (which is ridiculous, but plausible), I'd find it hard to believe there's no way for you to get into the HTML, use strikethrough text, and make a transparent correction.
Give it a try. Please.
- Amy Gahran
#11 Posted by Amy Gahran, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 06:35 PM
Hmmm, your commenting system deleted my example of how the HTML strikethrough tags look. So if you're not sure how to use HTML tags, here's a short tutorial explaining how to create strikethrough text in HTML:
http://bit.ly/1py74O
- Amy Gahran
#12 Posted by Amy Gahran, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 06:52 PM
Megan:
You made a poor choice of a headline and a lede in your piece. I'd say it was not that it sucked, but that it was disappointing. After all, I have followed your writing during your career, so I know this piece could have been so much better than it was.
Of course, I am not going to treat this story as the "culmination" of your writing career, or proof that old school professional journalists are eager to pick apart anything new or different because posing as a cynic implies an authority they lack,
So the fact your journalism failed to speak for itself as a fair and accurate piece of work is not something I will hold against you, because I can see, from your posts in the comments, that whether you meant to attack Spot.us directly or not, now that you're being challenged you'll hurry to qualify every nit you pick.
Oh, and by the way, everything I just said?
I take it all back.
It's just the blog software getting carried away.
#13 Posted by Susan Mernit, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 06:54 PM
Amy,
I'm not going to strike out any part of the piece, or write a new lede. I've explained the reason I framed the story as I did, and I stand behind that. Nor am I going to change the piece's subhead, because the story was a Spot.us deliverable, and it seems that the one thing we all agree on here is that, indeed, the piece "doesn't quite deliver."
But you're right: I should have mentioned Lindsey's blog higher up in the piece, and it's not enough to acknowledge that in the comments section. I've added a sentence into the fourth graf to make that acknowledgement.
A side note: I'm happy to have a discussion about all this, but to do so, I'd appreciate some fairness on your end. I did not "admit this piece is significantly messed up." I did not do a "backflip," as you claim in your Twitter post on the matter. My intent was not to "sling mud." The breaking of pages in longer articles is not a callow ploy for traffic, but rather our standard practice given the type of articles that CJR generally writes. These conversations would be much more productive if we'd at least first give each other the benefit of the doubt.
Megan
#14 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 07:11 PM
What Dan Conover said and then some. Knee jerk skeptcism is one of the reasons mainstream reporting, no matter how polished and self-congratulatory, is losing traction -- relevance, credbility, engagement -- with the public. I learned a lot from the garbage patch story, thank you very much. I learned very little new or valuable from your post. Hope your next story is better. I'm sure Spot.Us will continue to improve.
#15 Posted by Michele McLellan, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 07:15 PM
Megan,
See David's comment above. The NYT handled the editing of the content that appeared in the NYT. Did you see the actual content that Spot.us delivered to the NYT, before they edited it? You might want to check into that before you say they "didn't quite deliver." Doesn't seem like you did that here.
Also, your plea for fairness & respect would be far more effective had you not opted to publish a blatant slam job capped with a fig leaf of plausible deniability literally in the very last sentence.
There's a great passage from an Ani DiFranco song that seems appropriate to your tactics here: "We don't say everything that we could / So we can say later "Oh, you misunderstood"
At least when I cast aspersions, I have the guts to state them clearly and not try to weasel out of them.
- Amy Gahran
#16 Posted by Amy Gahran, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 07:22 PM
Megan's piece focuses on a story published in the New York Times. By my lights, that story deserves to be criticized, and I think Megan's subhed catches the tone well:
(1) It's an NYT story.
(2) Spot.us delivered it.
(3) It's disappointing.
And, yes, as the piece winds down, Megan expands its scope in order to make a point that Hoshaw has elsewhere put on offer more material that offers a fuller look at the subject. Megan links to it and encourages the reader to check it out.
But good journalism *elsewhere* doesn't explain lackluster journalism *here*. And here--the NYT's story--is the subject of the piece, which I quite agree with.
Megan seems now, at about 7:30pm ET, to have made an amendment to her story, noting higher up that Hoshaw's blog has been "compelling and personal and picture-filled and information-packed." It's my opinion that the amendment improves her piece, which was very good to start.
#17 Posted by Josh Young, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 07:41 PM
I agree this piece raises some interesting questions. Why isn't the NYT story better? Is it a question of trying to shoehorn a lot of material into limited space, along with the genre constraints of the traditional newspaper feature? While the absence of the other material - slideshow, blog, et al - is a flaw, that doesn't alter the fact that the story, which serves as the "studio cut" if you will and should really grab you, doesn't quite manage to.
Perhaps the NYT editors didn't see the same richness in the story concept as the writer. This is the lament of every journalist who ever lived at one point or another. If you're a NYT editor you've got a lot of fantastic material to choose from, and it looks like they saw this as just another feature story. I don't know if that's so bad, though - there's a lot of competition for NYT attention, which Spot.us clearly now has.
#18 Posted by John McQuaid, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 08:07 PM
I am the chief scientist for the SEAPLEX expedition, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography cruise that visited the gyre this summer. (We were not mentioned in the piece, but that big green net credited to Mario Aguilera is our photo.) I have to say that I agree with the bulk of Megan Garber's criticism of Hoshaw's NYT piece - there was little new material that had not previously been covered in other pieces on Charles Moore and the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.
Additionally, this article misrepresented the science, presenting broad estimates & conjecture as facts. A few examples: there is not enough data to say exactly how large ("twice the size of Texas") or what the growth rate of the patch ("doubling every 10 years") might be. There is not enough evidence to say that all five major gyres are accumulating plastic - just measurements from two of them (North Atlantic and North Pacific). We do not know if a) significant numbers or important species of fish are ingesting plastic b) if toxins are then passed from plastic to fish and c) if these toxins from plastic then go up the food chain to humans. (I am happy to provide relevant citations upon request.)
I think this issue is in desperate need of a critical investigative reporter's eye. Is plastic really having an impact on oceanic ecosystems or is it just ugly? What about all the current research on ways to clean it up? Are they plausible? I was hoping that Hoshaw would be that voice. Unfortunately, from a science perspective, this NYT piece is deeply disappointing.
#19 Posted by Miriam Goldstein, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 08:18 PM
This CJR article is such a downer.
I read the story this morning not realizing that Spot.us had funded it and thought it was really interesting. I forwarded it too. I had never heard of garbage patches before. The comments following the piece on the NY Times are engaged and concerned, so at least we can hope it leads to some degree of awareness even if it's not the most brilliant investigative scientific article ever written on the subject. I also like the blog. Maybe we need to offer funding for more hours, for more research and writing next time ;-)
#20 Posted by Solana Larsen, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 09:33 PM
Lindsey's story is an awesome example of an evolving trend in journalism: Process is becoming more and more important. She totally succeeded in sharing the process with us donors. Also, the final piece was enjoyable to read.
I'm not an expert on the topic, but maybe not most of the NYT readers are, either? I'm satisfied with the story and the story met my expectations.
#21 Posted by Tanja Aitamurto, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 10:29 PM
The comments here make me think that the sponsors of public-funded journalism will end up feeling protective about the results of their patronage. I'm not ready to say that's a good thing or a bad thing relative to other money models. But I'm ready to say that it is a thing.
#22 Posted by Tom Parks, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 10:43 PM
It's interesting to compare the comments here to the comments on the piece at NYT.com, where the conversation is extremely positive and mentions Spot.Us only to thank it. Based on reader reaction, the NYT piece was great for that medium. The blog was great for that medium. And perhaps, as usual, we journalists are making a great big deal out of nothing.
"What civilians in the conventional world need to realize is that journalists are not like you. They have higher ethics and less common sense." - Chuck Klosterman.
#23 Posted by Ian Hill, CJR on Wed 11 Nov 2009 at 11:17 PM
Hello all - David Cohn again from Spot.Us.
I have to apologize for commenting in a hurried format earlier and then having to drop off. I helped to organize a conference at CUNY today and that took a lot of my attention. Related: Sorry again for the earlier typos and if the response was a bit snarky. I'll try and refrain from that below - but your piece does lend itself ;)
No matter what - I think this is a good conversation to have.
Could the NYT piece be better? Sure.
Could every piece of journalism be better? Of course.
Could we have gotten more space from the Times to go further into the issues surrounding the garbage patch?
That was out of Spot.Us' hands. We didn't handle the editorial of this piece. We actually never promised the NYT piece as a "deliverable." Yes - it was in the "deliverable" section - but we clearly state that the NYT is "considering" an article.
The blog that Lindsey kept was a part of her Spot.Us pitch. We said from the beginning that we were going to offer it - and we did. The NYT story let us put a feather in our hat - but it's a mistake to judge it by itself - and that is what the CJR article did. If the NYT had simply linked to her blog - the CJR piece would have discredited itself.
One link and the whole thing changes.... hmmmmm
You basically wrote
Spot.Us didn't deliver.
Step 1: They didn't deliver a fantastic NYT piece.
step 2: They did deliver a great ongoing blog.
And then you look at step one - the part of the process that is the most OBVIOUSLY out of our control and say that was our responsibility?
Lindsey was given a word count and she came through. When we pitched it: We said that the NYT would consider running work from her and they did. Did we promise they'd give us a front page article of the NY Times? No. And it's a good thing - because the reality is: This was the NYT dipping its feet into something radically different.
We knew from the beginning that the NYT piece wasn't going to be incredibly comprehensive. That's why we had the ongoing blog and Lindsey did a great job and went to great lengths to make sure she could update us while in the middle of the ocean. For that my hat is off to her. And everybody who donated to the story got those updates via email and got to follow her along the way.
That's the PROCESS of journalism unfolding. In my radical crazy web-centric view that will ALWAYS be more valuable than a single NYT article. I think you picked up on that - and then blamed Spot.Us????
The NYT piece was put out as the culmination - because it was a moment for us to stick a feather in our hat. But we didn't push it out as "the greatest and most informative piece on the garbage patch you'll ever read."
If anything: I think this is commentary on ways to tell a story. Perhaps Lindsey's blog posts in aggregate are more comprehensive than the single NYT article. But she wasn't limited by space on her blog. She could tell her personal narrative, etc. That is a knock on newspapers and their limitations - not Spot.Us.
Also. Please repeat this because no matter how many times I do - it doesn't seem to sink in to most journalists: Spot.Us is NOT a news organization, we are a platform.
Say it again: WE ARE NOT A NEWS ORGANIZATION!!!!
(snark here: I don't necessarily expect you to understand the difference.)
We are a platform. Your piece here is akin to a blogger writing a piece for the Times that you don't like and then writing the headline:
"User of the Popular Blogging Platform Wordpress Does a Story for the NYT and it falls short" and then concluding somehow that Wordpress let us down.
In that respect: I do think the sub-head is off base and does reveal that you were looking for an angle that might cause some controversy. I think most of the comments show that some readers picked up on that.
#24 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 12:11 AM
David,
You've said quite a lot, so I'm going to take it line-by-line to make sure I address it all. My replies in italics.
"Hello all - David Cohn again from Spot.Us.
I have to apologize for commenting in a hurried format earlier and then having to drop off. I helped to organize a conference at CUNY today and that took a lot of my attention. Related: Sorry again for the earlier typos and if the response was a bit snarky. I'll try and refrain from that below - but your piece does lend itself ;) [I'm not sure that it does. There's a big difference between criticism and snark; I don't see what could fairly be called 'snarky' in my piece.]
No matter what - I think this is a good conversation to have. [Agreed.]
Could the NYT piece be better? Sure. [You brush this aside as if it's a subsidiary point. But it's not. It's the main point. My post -- as I've said repeatedly, and as I'll stress again in the hopes that it's heard -- was neither intended nor presented as a critique of Spot.us, its methods, its funders, it founder, etc. The piece was a critique of the Times piece. This being Columbia Journalism Review...my article was a review of a piece of journalism. I think you and many of the commenters above are assuming -- though based on what, I'm not sure -- that it was trying to be much more sweeping a statement than it actually is.]
Could every piece of journalism be better? Of course. [See above: this is not a throwaway point. The fact that every piece of journalism could be better doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold every piece of journalism to a high standard. Particularly, as John McQuaid noted, when that journalism is appearing in The New York Times.]
Could we have gotten more space from the Times to go further into the issues surrounding the garbage patch? [This wasn't about space; it was about what that space contained. Which was, for the most part, scientific information that had already been reported -- widely -- in other outlets.]
That was out of Spot.Us' hands. We didn't handle the editorial of this piece. [I know that, which is why I included commentary to that effect from Laura Chang, the Times's science editor.] We actually never promised the NYT piece as a "deliverable." Yes - it was in the "deliverable" section - but we clearly state that the NYT is "considering" an article. [The first line of Lindsey's Spot.us pitch: "A toxic garbage soup over twice the size of Texas sits in the Pacific Ocean, and I've been given an opportunity to write about it for the New York Times."]
The blog that Lindsey kept was a part of her Spot.Us pitch. [Yes. I quoted that fact in the piece.] We said from the beginning that we were going to offer it - and we did. [Again: Yes. I quoted that fact in the piece.] The NYT story let us put a feather in our hat - but it's a mistake to judge it by itself - and that is what the CJR article did. [Of course CJR judged the article by itself; that was the whole point. Because, again: this was not a critique of Spot.us -- if it had been, then you're right, it would have been completely off-base and unfair to look only at the Times article, and, of course, I would have written the story completely differently. But -- again -- not a critique of Spot.us. A critique of an article that Spot.us funded. Unless Spot.us-funded reporters are not, in fact, independent operators, then these are two different things.
Now, yes: my critique, of course, relates to Spot.us in the contextual sense that my expectations for the piece, as I noted, were heightened both by my knowledge of how good Lindsey's blog was and of how much the reporting cost. But it was -- again! -- not a critique of Spot.us.
#25 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 01:22 AM
In spite of the torrent of criticism, I think Megan makes valid points and does well in standing her ground on defending them.
When I first heard about this idea, I basically said, first, "Why," since the story has already been done from the "expert testimony" angle. I then said something along the lines of, "How will this be different," and hoped to see that.
One other observation. Yes, the final story may have gone through the NYT editorial process. But, what did Hoshaw originally submit? If it needed more of the "human content" angle and she had only so many words, then she needed to start whacking somewhere else.
Bottom line? As I have said elsewhere before, the "new media" vs. "old media" difference is ultimately more, even far more, about "platforms" and not content. Let's not pretend otherwise, more rabid new media touters.
#26 Posted by SocraticGadfly, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 02:34 AM
Megan
Again: I think the conversation is a good one to have - so I appreciate you sticking with me on this.
If you are critiquing a NY Times article then it still seems as though the sub-head is a bit misleading - "a Spot.us “deliverable” that doesn’t quite deliver."
This goes back to my first rushed comment. If Spot.Us hadn't been a part of this would you still write the story? I agree we should always critique journalism - especially from the paper of record. But your critique here hinges on Spot.Us' involvement as though we should have kicked down the door at the Times and told them to republish the whole blog. That's not our place. I know in the comments you continue to say that you recognize it wasn't Spot.Us' editorial and that the science editor confirms this in the piece itself. So why the headline?
Perhaps it is the framing?
In an earlier comment you write: "The framing of the story yesterday was generally "Spot.Us Story Gets to the Times," full-stop."
Who framed it like that? Not us. Did you see how we packaged the piece?
http://spot.us/stories/252-dissecting-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch
In fact - most people haven't gone to see Spot.Us' aggregation of all her work. Funny too because at the end of linking to the Times piece I wrote: "This is the culmination of the last four months of work from Lindsey. But it is not exhaustive. For the very interested reader...." and then Spot.us provides some links to some of her best blog posts, flickr set, etc.
Note: The "it is not exhaustive" was written the day the NY Times piece was published specifically so that readers who came to Spot.Us would see that the Times piece was part of a process that was enabled through the funding.
I realize that more people went to the NYT article than the Spot.Us packaging. What can I say - they have more traffic ;)
But we never framed the NYT piece as the "full stop."
As for the thin skin (and actually - I do have thick skin. I really do love CJR and I've seen meaner things written about Spot.Us and myself than this - but it comes with the territory) it comes down to the platform vs. organization thing.
I won't go into too much more detail here (it might be belabored) but the kick-back I am giving is because your sub-head implies that we are an editorial organization and I am trying as hard as possible to get rid of that misconception. We need to focus on what we do best: building fundraising tools for freelancers, creating a marketplace to introduce them to publishers, etc. We cannot do that AND the editorial at the same time.
If we were an editorial organization you should have critiqued our packaging. And in that respect the critique would be: "all it does is link out." And again - we are NOT an editorial organization - that's precisely why all we did was link and I tried to be comprehensive in that linking.
And yes: the larger industry shouldn't just focus on the business and ignore the journalism. That would be self-defeating.
#27 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 02:37 AM
David
I cannot help but read read the article and then the blog and not see a National Geographic or Discovery doc or series. And that pays a lot better than The NY Times does. I hope you will consider expanding your mandate to more profitable venues. The content is great.
#28 Posted by Michael Rosenblum, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 10:16 AM
David, I think that you are taking the criticism far too personally. I've read Megan's (corrected) article and the entire comment thread and I really think that you're upset about criticism that's just not there.
Megan's article reads like this:
1) Spot.us funded an article.
2) It got into the NYT and there's a lot of celebration of it as a good journalism coming out of a new funding model.
3) While that's great, it's worth asking if the article is any good.
4) Frankly, it's not all that good.
5) There is evidence that it could have been much better, given the quality of the other deliverables from this reporter on this story.
6) Conclusion: there is a disconnect between what spot.us enabled and what we ended up with.
Also, as a more minor quibble, you seem awfully ready to throw the NYT article to the wolves. I suggest considering how future potential media partners will feel about publishing articles funded by your model if there's a risk that the founder of the organization will start coming around spouting ill-informed (your first post literally had not read the entire article) complaints in the face of criticism.
Lastly, I think that it's disingenuous to dispute Megan's contention that the piece was pitched on spot.us as a NYT article. Yes, it says "considering", but it also leads with the NYT thing and then says there will "also" be a blog. if the NYT thing was the least important, just a feather, I'd expect the deliverables to read more like: "Deliverable: Photos, blog posts and a debriefing for the spot.us community. Also, an online photo slideshow and an article is under consideration by the NY Times."
#29 Posted by Tim Maly, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 11:14 AM
Just wanted to thank both Lindsey and Megan for writing thoughtful pieces about issues that deserve further consideration, and David for being willing to engage in dialogue. The Spot.Us piece may not have been perfect, but has any new venture gotten everything 100% right, especially in its first iteration? I'd consider getting the story in the Times a major achievement and an excellent initial step down one of many possible paths toward non-advertising-funded journalism. However, all parties involved should keep in mind that none these paths will not be followed, nor become successful, without thoughtful criticism and reevaluation. I hope that the discussion remains open, active, and intelligent, and produces good ideas for making Spot.Us and other journalistic ventures stronger over time.
#30 Posted by Kerry, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 11:47 AM
Tim
All fair points. And while it may seem I'm taking it personal - I really am not. Sometimes comment threads aren't the best way to get your tone across.
I also don't want to throw the NYT story to the wolves. I think it's a good story. A lot of the comments on that piece share the sentiment. As Megan noted in a comment earlier the piece wasn't bad - it's just that it wasn't good or as good as the blog. If you'd never heard of the garbage patch then the NYT probabl would have been a better point of entry.
But in your comment above you point to Megan's logic which still doesn't compute for me. Point six: "Conclusion: there is a disconnect between what spot.us enabled and what we ended up with."
But we also ended up with the blog that Megan herself said was good to follow. Which again is why I think a lot of people, including myself, reacted negatively to the article at first: Because she buried that part all the way at the end after a page jump, almost as an afterthought. In that respect she kinda buried the lede which Matt Ingram (and later Megan) surfaced - that the blog was better for some people (and for others maybe it wasn't - cause they don't have the time to follow the whole process).
Regardless - it's time to move on. As said before: I love CJR. I think this article surfaced something - but doesn't hit the nail directly on the head.
Best to all.
And here's hoping a Spot.Us story gets that Pulitzer that I know Columbia is just dying to give to a reporter funded through Spot.Us ;)
#31 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 11:48 AM
I'd agree with the Review's criticism that Hoshaw's piece -- while informative -- lacked depth, but I'm more tempted to blame the NYT's space limits. The article doesn't even crack 900 words and reads as though it were heavily edited, either by the writer herself or by the Times' editors. I wonder if the writer submitted a longer story or if she pared down her own piece. If the latter, it might suggest: (1) the piece deserved more space or placement in the NYT mag, or (2) that funders of community-sponsored journalism may underestimate the skills that some on-staff reporters bring to crafting a taut, under-1000-word story.
#32 Posted by Barbara Drake, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 11:58 AM
Interestingly, I think a little throwaway comment by Dave at the end of his last comment (accidentally) makes the point better than anyone has in this discussion so far:
"And here's hoping a Spot.Us story gets that Pulitzer that I know Columbia is just dying to give to a reporter funded through Spot.Us ;)"
If such thing happened, would Spot.Us take a large- or at least a part -- of the credit? Of course it would. Would it tout the Pulitzer on its promotional materials? Of course. As a start-up enterprise largely reliant of non-traditional forms of funding, the Spot.us obviously needs to use these kind of institutional markers as leverage to advance its mission (which is still very precarious).
What if the piece suddenly turned out to be Janet Malcolm redux? The Pulitzer was rescinded. Could Spot.us, as a platform and funding mechanism, deny responsibility? Claim that it was "all in the editing" and it was the fault of the institutional host? Probably. But something just wouldn't seem quite right about it, especially if they had been previously touting the receipt of the Pulitzer in the first place.
This is obviously an analogy for what I think happened here, to a much lesser extent.
There are no easy answers. In the old days, when a single institution funded, reported, and housed a news article, it was easy to assign credit or blame. Nowadays, its much harder, and its only going to get worse.
I agree that Spot.us has a point when they claim that the disappointing nature of the final product was not their fault. But something just doesn't sit quite right with the simultaneous taking credit and denial of responsibility. I don't know the answer, but it sits uneasily with me, at least.
And as an afterthought -- it becomes much harder to make these kinds of arguments-- "hey, it had nothing to do with us" -- when taking into consideration the level of downright defensiveness shown by Spot.us defenders is these comments.
Chris
#33 Posted by Chris Anderson, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 12:24 PM
David, before you go...
I especially agree with Michael Rosenblum, Barbara Drake, and to, an extent, Kerry. It's in light of their points that I write this.
To be able to write "New York Times" in the pitch makes for a great (heavily implied) deliverable, but maybe not necessarily the best venue, in light of what the piece could have been. Spot.Us is a worthy organization and NYT is a legendary media outlet, but the depth of material begged for a venue that could have given it more breathing room--if it had to go to a traditional outlet, I mean. That could mean a series of newspaper dispatches (not unlike the blog) or a long, colorful magazine piece, or whatever. Leaving aside Megan Garber's points, many of which I think are quite important, and Miriam Goldstein's, I was disappointed that the NYT's multimedia crew wasn't more involved here, when the potential of the subject matter is so great (and I realize that's the NYT's decision, not Spot.Us's). And disappointed that the Times article did not link out to the blog (no surprise there). These thing matter to me in light of the chance that many more people will see the NYT story than Lindsay Hoshaw's blog.
I know that the blog was the major, guaranteed outcome and all, and I commend Lindsay for that. But I wonder: If a venue like NYT were not in the pitch and the final product was only the blog, would Spot.Us have managed to raise thousands of dollars? (On the other hand, if some random journalist had access to the expedition, but was not affiliated with Spot.Us, would the New York Times have bought the story? Would the NYT have been the outlet they pitched in the first place? These are questions I think about as a freelancer who tends to do science and environmental stuff, and also has to wrestle with funding and expenses.)
I happen to believe projects like this deserve funding simply because I think other venues, including someone's blog, can be legitimate outlets. But I hesitate when Kerry writes that getting this in the Times is a "major achievement." An achievement how? In terms of trimming weeks of reporting and interesting science and ocean adventure into some 900 words? (This CJR piece is called "Trash Compactor," after all.) Or in terms of raising visibility for Spot.Us? I remember hearing similar frustrations from students who participated in News21 in the past (I was not a participant), who felt pressure to get their work placed in traditional outlets more than focusing on pushing the boundaries of true multimedia journalism or creating new online communities. But when you've got to answer to funders, placement in a recognized newspaper or radio network is a big check-mark in the look-what-we-did box. As a freelance journalist, if I had access to a big expedition but felt an outlet wouldn't do justice to my story, I might consider shopping it around elsewhere.
Anyway, may a thousand flowers bloom and all that. Spot.Us is important and Science Times is great. But, in the end, all I really want to know is, Can I get a map to go with this story?
#34 Posted by Timothy Lesle, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 12:30 PM
Y'know, with all the discussion of the Times, Megan Garber, and Spot.us, the one person being let off the hook here is Lindsey Hoshaw. She is the writer of the piece. She is responsible for the inaccuracies and inanities contained within the original article (cf. Miriam Goldstein's earlier comment.) And the piece offered nothing new that I haven't seen or read many times. To be honest, even Hoshaw's blog offered nothing that Algalita, SEAPLEX|, and even thewriters at Vice Magazine haven't already told us. I think the Times realized it had been left behind on this story and decided to get something in the paper on it. Heck, the LA Times wrote about this issue more effectively in its Altered Oceans series that did win the Pulitzer Prize. If this is what donors are buying, I think I'll stay out of the donor pool.
#35 Posted by Eric Wolff, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 12:52 PM
Wow, I have to say I'm a little surprised by the venom and personal nature of the comments here. I'm a huge supporter of SpotUs, and of experimentation, but the comments seem a little disproportionate to the tone of the post in a way that makes me sense that we are beginning to create our own new media sacred cows that we can't bear to be criticized - and when that happens we look a lot like the "old media" folks we make fun of because they fear change.
I'm with Matthew Ingram on this: http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2009/11/11/when-a-blog-beats-a-nyt-story/ Is it really so terrible to question whether this story was better presented as a blog than as a standard news story? Isn't that what Megan says well before the jump - the story was disappointing, BUT especially in comparison to the blog? Again, I liked the story, I think David Cohn is a brilliant guy, and I think we need experiments like this. But I kind of agree that this maybe was a story better told via blog than a standard news story and that's the kind of thing we should be critically examining.
#36 Posted by Carrie Brown, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 01:34 PM
Ok. Read the NYT piece, looked at the slideshow, read the blog, even skimmed the Wikipedia entry on the garbage patch. Here's what I think:
-- The blog was indeed a terrific read, but AS A TRAVEL BLOG. As a journalistic work about the human connection to the garbage patch? Not so much. The entire project -- blog, slideshow, and NYT story combined -- is good travel writing with a dash of garbage-related journalism thrown in, which is not bad in itself, but is bad if the donors on Spot.us thought their $10k were going toward something that's more garbage patch-human connection reporting and less travel diary, and the pitch definitely made it seem that way.
-- The NYT piece was pedestrian. It tried to cover everything in a limited space, ending up as another generic overview story. Regardless of how NYT should've handled the format for the reporting, as a journalist, if you know that the parameters of an assignment you have to submit are X, Y, and Z, you adapt to those to get the most out of it. In this case, maybe Hoshaw could've picked one particular topic and spent those 900 words drilling deep into it.
-- As for the discussion between David and Megan, I think Chris Anderson's comment above nailed it: As much as I see David's point about Spot.us being a platform and not being responsible for the editorial content on this piece, the fact is that if the piece was award-winning good, we won't be hearing the "not Spot.us editorial" meme. I hope Spot.us will have a lot of great journalistic pieces to take credit for in the future, but you can't only claim credit when the product is good and disavow association when it's not.
I have a more detailed critique of the project at
http://www.john-zhu.com/blog/2009/11/12/thoughts-on-trash-talk/
#37 Posted by John Zhu, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 01:48 PM
Despite Mr. Cohn's contention that spot.us is not an editorial organization, they do, in fact, exert editorial control over the stories they fund. This from Section 1 of their Independent Contractor's Agreement:
The Organization [spot.us] may require revision of the Article by Contractor after submission and Contractor agrees that such revisions shall be made in a timely manner as requested by the Organization. The Organization reserves the right to directly edit or revise the Article after submission by Contractor and Contractor agrees that he or she will cooperate with the Organization's revision and editing process. Upon the Organization's request, Contractor will be available for and will cooperate with the Organization's peer-reviewing procedures and will supply the Organization with Contractor's investigation and research material relating to the Article.
That raises several questions: Who's work is this (or any funded by spot.us)? Why is the Times permitting a third party to give input into a story--especially one that has some financial stake in the piece? How is spot.us' "peer review" process conducted and who are the reviewers?
The other question that I think is most germane to this particular story: Why did the Science Times bother to give such a superficial treatment to a story that has obviously been done in the past, but which is so ripe for a new angle? The presence and impact of micro plastics have yet to be fully addressed (they appear only briefly here) and the existence of other gyres (and other garbage patches) has not been covered in any depth.
We could ask Clark Hoyt to take up the issue as the Public Editor, but he contributed $50 to the story and so might not be an impartial judge of the question.
#38 Posted by Ken, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 03:14 PM
I think Ken raises an interesting question about why the NYT would bother to give such a superficial treatment to the subject. Here's my completely uneducated guess: The NYT acquired this story via a well-publicized agreement with a new-media venture that has many very excited, and it's definitely a milestone moment in the development of new media models. Maybe with those circumstances, the NYT felt like it could not turn back. If the Times had read the story and rejected it saying it's not up to their standards, I'd imagine it'd draw a lot of fire from media critics, maybe memes like "Arrogant old media sticks its nose up at citizen-funded journalism again" or "NYT says this community-funded story isn't good enough, but look at that crap story last month written by their own staff". So even if the Times didn't think this story is up to their usual standards, maybe they felt like they had to go through with it just to avoid the PR lumps.
As I said, that's just a completely uneducated guess. If someone with inside knowledge feels otherwise (hey, maybe NYT disagrees with me and thought this was a good story), please elucidate.
#39 Posted by John Zhu, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 04:00 PM
Just a basic practice anyone writing on the web should know (and sadly for
my eyes too many don't).
Italics are really, really, really hard to read on a computer screen.
It may be ok for a word or two (though bold is better).
And when they're jumbled in with normal text with no line breaks,
it makes it even harder to read and follow the text.
#40 Posted by Steve Rhodes, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 04:07 PM
All good comments and questions - but now a few things are being taken out of context - particularly the last comment.
@Chris Anderson: You know I love you. But please don't take a joke I said and then use that to put words in my mouth.
If a Spot.Us reporter wins a Pulitzer here I am on record saying: Spot.Us won't be given the award. Would we hold up the reporter as somebody who is bombtastic. Of course. Anyone who wins a Pultize is bombtastic. If it was taken away, would that suck - of course it would (especially for that reporter). It would mean we couldn't hold the reporter up as somebody bombtastic who used our platform. But in either case: We wouldn't deserve ANY editorial credit. Period. We could only say "this person used our site."
"I agree that Spot.us has a point when they claim that the disappointing nature of the final product was not their fault. But something just doesn't sit quite right with the simultaneous taking credit and denial of responsibility."
Who said it was disappointing? Megan liked the blog. That was part of the final product. It wasn't part o the Times piece though. The reason this thread started was because this article was judging one part of the entire package in a vacuum.
@Carrie Brown
"Is it really so terrible to question whether this story was better presented as a blog than as a standard news story?"
Absolutely not. Nor is Spot.Us a sacred cow. As I said - I've taken much worse from posts that WERE mean spirited and I don't think this article was mean spirited. I think the initial venom (any from me was just cause I was being hasty) was because that lead you mention above was buried and the headline for me is still somewhat off base. I've said my peace there.
To the final comment @Ken.
You just emailed me to ask for our reporters contract and I sent it to you. Then you posted it here WAY out of context. That is not THE contract for Lindsey's piece. She signed a contract with the Times for that piece. In fact, I wish you had told me why you were asking for our contract in the first place. Because then I could have explained that - instead of you trying to do a gotcha moment which is a false accusation.
@John - I'll go check out your post. But keep in mind: This is stuff journalists love to do: Pick apart pieces of journalism. It is not what the public does when they engage with a piece.
You can't please everyone and journalism reviewers (CJRers) are a particularly tough bunch. That is fine and fair - but I also think it makes us lose touch with the PURPOSE of journalism (hint: The purpose of journalism is not to spur conversation about journalism).
Media reporting is good. Media gawking isn't. Spot.Us gets a lot of media gawking and sometimes it wears me thin. What can I say - I'm human. I err. I made my first comment while distracted.
And one more time - I am rushing to run somewhere else.........
So the conversation might continue. I don't know. Personally: I'm ready to move beyond a meta-journalism conversation and go back to doing what we do best.
#41 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 05:16 PM
I emailed David asking for a printed copy of the Terms of Service Agreement because it says to do so in the online version of the Terms of Service Agreement:
http://spot.us/pages/terms (see Section 2, paragraph 3)
Just wanted to make sure I had the most up-to-date information. That led me to the Independent Contractor's Agreement (which I found all by my lonesome) and the relevant paragraph above and I put it out there for discussion
http://spot.us/pages/reporter_contract (see Section 1)
It still strikes me as odd that spot.us would reserve the right to exert editorial control over a story and I still think that the questions that it raises are quite relevant. Ideally, spot.us--or any other grant-making body--would fully vet a grantee and their proposed work and then get out of the way.
No gotcha involved. Just simple questions, honest discussion.
#42 Posted by Ken, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 05:42 PM
@Ken
I sent you the link to both of those contracts in our email, you didn't stumble on it your own - but that's just quibbling ;)
We reserve the right for edits so if somebody were to submit a racists/libel story and there was no editorial partner who took liability - we obviously want to be in a position to handle that kind of situation. In truth - this contract was mostly written by lawyers who interpreted the flexibility that Spot.Us needed into legalese. Part of that flexibility includes the ability to, as you say, get out of the way.
When we work with reporters and a news org comes in to support the pitch (Oakland Tribune, NYT, SF Mag, etc - who we've worked with) we would actually get in the way and slow things down if we tried to play an editorial role.
Finally: The only thing that is still bugging me here is that some folks think Spot.Us (or I) don't have thick skin. I do. Rather than say that this criticism is off point and walk away - I thought I'd offer examples of the types of things I think Spot.Us should have our feet held to the fire on. And trust me - I am our biggest critic here.
1. Our design is fugly. We are working on this.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29792566@N08/sets/72157622440383439/
2. Related: It needs to be easier to understand what is happening on the site and navigate.
3. Social media integration: It's a crime we don't lend our work to being twittered/facebook, etc.
4. Search/Navigation
You get the gist.
I'm actually here at Columbia J-school listening to Sree introduce the digital world conversation this year.
Hope the blogosphere is doing great.
#43 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 07:14 PM
After reading all of the comments here , at the NY Times story , and on the original Spot.us pitch , it seems to me that the key issue at hand is one of expectations (especially from those who help fund stories and then are unhappy with the final results.)
In an attempt to offer constructive ideas, I would suggest three things for future articles (especially those with national significance and donation efforts):
• Can Spot.us delineate the EXACT deliverables that funding will cover (blog, photos, etc.) and clearly pull out separately any ancillary outcomes that are bonus add-ons (NY Times article, etc.)?
• Can Spot.us clarify what are the licensing terms for each deliverable and ancillary outcome before community financial support is requested? (In this case, I am still unsure if there is any of the work produced either through the blog or through the NY Times that is available for community media sites to republish under a Creative Commons license.)
• Can Spot.us explain what the editorial process will be for each deliverable and ancillary outcome? (If not Spot.us, then who is making the editorial choices at each level? Is it the original author for blog posting? Is it a newspaper for printed articles? Is it a peer review team for freelance writing?)
I'm certainly not attempting to dictate what any of these arrangements should be, but wonder if the whole process would be helped long-term if community funders knew exactly what to expect, who had editorial control, and how the final products could be redistributed?
Sincerely,
BC Capps
http://EmpireReport.org/
#44 Posted by BC Capps, CJR on Thu 12 Nov 2009 at 07:49 PM
While I find the debate between Megan and David interesting and worthwhile, how come Miriam Goldstein's comments were totally ignored when it was the only substantive and critical claim so far?
HOW CAN YOU IGNORE THIS?
Enough infighting about the problems on both sides, when what really matters is what was reported. And if what was reported failed to adhere to the science (as in our culture's barometer of truth) being produced, then what is the point debating the efficacy of a given model?
What gives?
#45 Posted by oli h, CJR on Fri 13 Nov 2009 at 04:59 PM
Sorry the formatting is so weird. The html didn't translate quite the way I wanted to. Merely trying to repost what Miriam Goldstein mentioned above.
Sorry!
#46 Posted by oli h, CJR on Fri 13 Nov 2009 at 05:02 PM
Miriam Goldstein expands on her criticisms here:
http://seaplexscience.com/2009/11/13/millions-billions-trillions-of-scientific-errors-in-the-nyt/
#47 Posted by Jill, CJR on Fri 13 Nov 2009 at 05:36 PM
Good points, Timothy Lesle. I do think that Spot.Us would have had a harder time raising that $ w/out the NYT cachet. From the standpoint of environmental activism, NYT's support of the project was terrific -- the media equivalent of a celebrity lending his/her face to a cause. And their commitment to publish resulted in the story reaching a wider audience which, as all of us who write about the environment know, is what these kind of stories need. I can't get too upset about that.
The issue of the science being fuzzy/wrong is far more serious. Could anyone else comment on Miriam Goldstein's criticisms?
Reporting on the environment and particularly on climate change effects involves a steep learning curve for many reporters without a science background. The curve includes learning what questions need to be asked. If you don't have a good editor or news producer prodding you to follow up on dangling threads, you can end up with a piece that falls short. Crowd-powered journalism doesn't encompass paying that pain-in-the-butt editor who rips apart your story and makes you go back for second and third interviews until the nagging questions are answered.
#48 Posted by Barbara Drake, CJR on Fri 13 Nov 2009 at 06:45 PM
Running late for a plane so while it usually isn't smart - doing a hurried last comment. Part of this comes from a comment on John's blog post linked to earlier. And for me this is the take away point with Spot.Us' relationship to it all.
I wonder if any of this discussion about the quality of the reporting would have come up had this been a traditional freelance or staff Times article? Some of it probably wouldn't have.
That the piece has been held under a microscope because of how transparent the process has been from start to finish is very interesting. I think there is this assumption that somehow a journalist is to create a definitive piece on a subject. That there is going to be a "tada" moment and the world will know some objective truth.
That isn't how most of the world works. That isn't how journalism works.
Journalism is a process and all the critiques are just adding to that process. So the more we talk about this - the more valuable those original donations actually become if you ask me.
Discussion about topics is healthy. That is how communities get informed. Lindsey championed this topic and as a result, that many more people are talking, debating, questioning, etc. That actually pushes the story forward more than any single article ever could IMHO because the more people engaged - the more actual change happens.
As for the science: I'm no scientist. My guess is there is probably a back and forth that could happen there as well. Again, more conversation needed. Scientists need to have that discussion with their own community and with the public. I obviously didn't report on this - but my suspicion is that what Lindsey was reporting on was one thread of the scientific community which is trying to find out many of the conjectures that Miriam was critiquing. They way I read the article they are put out as just those: Conjectures. Perhaps down the line they'll find evidence one way or the other - but that these are the things being studied (ie: how much of it the fish eat and then how that might get into our food chain) is important and should be surfaced. If I recall the point of this trip was to collect samples to begin to study that very question. That study is just beginning so unless the piece waited a few months (years?) there couldn't be a definitive answer in this article. I didn't read the article as trying to make a definitive claim on that either way.
Time to run.
#49 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Sat 14 Nov 2009 at 09:51 AM
David,
I disagree with your suggestion that the scientific community disliked this piece only because of the Spot.us connection. Most scientists I spoke to at SIO neither knew nor cared about the way the funding was raised, but did care a lot about such significant misinformation appearing in the NYT Science section. (Scientists tend to LOVE the NYT Science section!) I really have no idea how some of these large mistakes (i.e., confusion about the location of the Sargasso Sea) got past the usually sharp science editors.
Of course scientists have our own back and forth. But one of the things that makes the NYT Science section so good is that they regularly talk to scientists not directly involved in the research at hand, in order to get an unbiased opinion of its worth. The vast majority of ocean scientists do not believe that AMRF's current data supports their conclusions.
You really read sentences like this as conjectures? "...the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade..." "Fish that feed on plankton ingest the tiny plastic particles." I think the vast majority of readers would read those sentences as proven facts, which they are not. In addition, there were several basic factual errors (the structure of a gyre, number of gyres, location of the Sargasso Sea), having nothing to do with ongoing research.
You seem to dismiss my concerns as bickering between scientists. But if science reporting can't accurately report the state of the science, what good is it? Sure, sometimes people argue that "raising awareness" justifies exaggerations and presenting conjecture as fact, but all that means is that when the facts come out, people throw out real concerns with the exaggerated ones. I am tired of having to criticize people who should be allies, and tired of continually battling the exact same misconceptions, perpetuated by naive and uncritical reporting, over and over.
I do want to note that Hoshaw has reached out to me, very graciously, and has offered to listen to my concerns. I admire her for it. But I really, really wish she had picked up the phone beforehand.
#50 Posted by Miriam Goldstein, CJR on Sat 14 Nov 2009 at 05:55 PM
Miriam
I don't think the scientific community disliked this piece only because of the Spot.us connection - that was crossing wires with my conversation earlier with Megan. I think there are a few conversations now in this long thread.
Like I said: I'm not a science reporter. As you noted Lindsey is (or maybe she considers herself an environmental reporter... far be of from me to pin her down) and has reached out to you. That's good.
As I've said publicly many times, although I don't know if I've said it in this thread - the real hero in all of this, IMHO, is Lindsey for reasons that I won't dribble on about in here.
#51 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Sat 14 Nov 2009 at 08:56 PM
Thanks to everyone who commented in the thread above (and to those who commented elsewhere). This is a reply to David Cohn, in particular -- but I hope all those who have an interest in the conversation above will, if you see fit, comment further and continue the discussion.
So, David: thanks for your many replies -- and, in particular, for the markedly gentler tone of your later comments. I'm happy to talk about all of this either way -- I agree with you, it's an important discussion to have -- but I think we'd all agree that conversation beats a snark-off any day. With that in mind:
First, I see your point(s) about my post's reliance on the NYT's Spot.us connection. Though my critique was, as I've said, based on the content of the Times article itself -- and only, except in a broad contextual sense, on that content -- you're absolutely right that the reason I wrote about the article in the first place was that it was based on Spot.us-funded reporting. I've made that clear not only in this comments-based discussion, but in the original post itself: it's why Spot.us is mentioned in the story's subhead (and why I've kept it mentioned in the story's subhead despite the criticism that placement has received). And it's why, as I've said repeatedly, I framed the story as I did.
But, then, the post is about Spot.us, the organization, only in that tangential sense. Sure: in criticism, there's always going to be a calculus that combines content and context; in this case, the context was the Spot.us/Times partnership, and the content was the resulting piece. As a sort-of-parallel: I often criticize Maureen Dowd's columns. I do so not only because I often find their content lacking, but also because, Dowd being a Times columnist, the work she produces is influential and zeitgeist-framing. Were, say, Flo Dowd, a blogger with a readership of 50 people a week, to happen to write the exact same 800 words as the other Dowd...I most likely wouldn't critique them. Because her influence would be miniscule compared to the Times columnist's.
So, yes, in that broad sense, context matters. But -- and this, again, is a key point that much of the commentary above has either failed to see or willfully ignored -- when I critique Dowd's work, I'm not critiquing The New York Times or Adolph Ochs or Bill Keller or David Shipley. Or even, actually, Maureen Dowd. I am critiquing the words and ideas Maureen Dowd has put to page. It's not personal. It's about the journalism.
Same thing in this case: Though the Spot.us connection, yes, occasioned my post, it was not the target of it. I'm not sure whether you read my response to your comments above, David, but I want to stress, again, that I think you and some others are mistakenly reading my criticism of a Times story as a criticism of the platform that helped finance that article's reporting. Which is akin to reading a criticism of a particular tweet as a criticism of Twitter. It's unfair -- not only to the critique in question, but also, in this case, to Spot.us.
My criticism of the NYT piece, after all, was founded on an idea that gives Spot.us credit: the notion that the journalism it facilitated in this case could have and should have held its own when compared to the other journalism published in the Times. Which is founded, in turn, on the idea that no matter how much optimism we have about the exciting new experiments that are blossoming within our proverbial New Media Landscape...we still need to assess the journalism those experiments produce/facilitate/etc. analytically -- without, as it were, fear or favor. We may be redefining what "quality journalism" means right now, of course, and that's a good thing. But even during a time of upheaval -- perhaps even especially during a time of upheaval -- standards need to be maintained.
And standards are, by definition, broadly applicable.
#52 Posted by Megan Garber, CJR on Sun 15 Nov 2009 at 06:31 PM
Megan
Totally appreciate the response.
Again: I must apologize for the first comment I made (I think I have already). As I said - I was at a conference which I had helped to co-organize and didn't have the time to really absorb everything. As a result - my quickest thoughts came out. In truth - I rarely resort to snark or new media defensiveness etc. In this case I did because - I knew I would have to close my computer in a minute and just ranted as quick as I could. In later comments I announce snark just to give forewarning that it isn't to be mean, rather my attempt at humor. Maybe it doesn't translate?
Just as I've had worse criticism - I'm sure (I hope) you have too. Also: In a later comment I actually say that I read your post as something that wasn't "mean spirited." I don't think you were ever "mean" - but I still disagree with some points.
As for the links to Tweets in your comment. I would never speak on behalf of others - but I think it's fair to say that judging the meaning/content of a tweet can be tough. I personally hate Twitter as a way to have a discussion/debate etc - because it's very easy to read too much into things. Which is to say - I'm not sure if they are trying to be arrogant condescension (it looks like one tweeter was trying to tell another what she did) or broad-brush hyperbole, etc.
I understand your point about not giving a new media organization a free ride in terms of journalism it produces. I've worked on several participatory journalism projects - and I myself critique them in terms of what was produced. To that same point: I don't think there is any political correctness going on in that space. Most journalists I know, CJR or otherwise, are very verbal about what they don't like with well-intentioned new media projects. I don' think there is a silent majority in this space.
Again: You should continue to do your thing. I agree - everything should be taken to task. To that same extent - so should CJR articles.
As for the piece itself.
If I were to write a post critiquing this article I probably wouldn't title it "Conflating The Wrong Things" with the subhead "CJR's Trash Compactor Story: Columbia's Journalism School Confuses What to Critique."
I write that not with snark - but as an example. If I recall (maybe I'm wrong here) CJR is separate from the journalism school. They have different missions. Columbia's J-school does finance CJR though.
And in this case - the two are somewhat connected. You are even in the same building. So while it might be easy to connect CJR and Columbia's J-school - it would still seem odd to bring the school into the blog post, even though they fund your work.
But again, I think we could go back and forth forever and that isn't my goal. Nor is it (was it) to just play a defensive new media type. And while again I would never speak on behalf of others - I don't think they were either.
#53 Posted by David Cohn, CJR on Mon 16 Nov 2009 at 02:09 AM