You can’t mandate your own authority online. You can’t demand that people trust you without giving them good reason to grant you that trust. The Post-Dispatch, like other news outlets, assumed that the mere invitation to discourse was enough—and it assumed that the Post-Dispatch imprimatur would be enough to entice readers to participate in a lackluster feature. But fiat authority will only take you so far. It’ll take you to where most papers are today, with sites that people visit out of habit more than any real volition. That’s not authority. That’s indifference.
Real authority, I think, comes from acknowledging that your community members come bearing gifts, and engaging with those gifts in good faith. When members do become invested in a community, it is usually because the community takes its members seriously enough to make it worth the investment.
The extent to which media outlets are attuned to the communities they serve is of paramount importance in determining their authority and credibility in those communities. As Internet journalism evolves, these outlets must rethink the role they have traditionally played in dominating and defining their communities. The legacy media need to stop treating their online audience like an audience, and to start treating them instead like members of a community: less like listeners to a talk show, and more like friends talking. To do otherwise is to court mistrust, scorn, and eventual irrelevance. As one Post-Dispatch commenter wrote regarding the Greenbaum affair: “Kurt - it’s 2009. It’s no longer about you, your paper, and so-called journalism principles. We readers, viewers and listeners - it’s about us. WE’RE your judge and jury. Period.”
For a list of suggestions for further reading, click here. For Megan Garber’s companion piece on narrative authority in a fragmented world, click here. For an overview of the Press Forward series and links to older content, click here.
Man, this is pretty deep stuff for such a stupid mistake this Greenbaum guy did. Either way, he got what was coming. I notice just recently he crawled out from underneath his rock and quietly started working again after a two or so month on-line vacation. One other thing, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has always weighed more on the left than in the middle.
#1 Posted by Steve, CJR on Fri 5 Mar 2010 at 06:25 PM
"The news outlet’s role is to 'sort all these competing perspectives and, for better or for worse, assert the dominant one.”'"
Really? That is why "journalism" is dying. It's stopped being journalism and has become advocacy.
Most of us who consume the news feel the news outlet's role is to "report the news." Stop trying to asset perspectives; if necessary, include and explain them (and give comparable weight to counter-perspectives), but report the facts.
Stop asserting. Start reporting. Or die.
#2 Posted by jeff d, CJR on Mon 8 Mar 2010 at 01:15 PM
Is authority over community standards the issue? Or is it the right to enforce editorial standards?
Five years ago, my office was the work site for a consuling group that was advising the sponsors of a new think tank on issues of the northern plains about locations. My town was on the list because it is central, has higher education institutions, but is remote enough and small enough to offer a compatible environment for study and thought. When the decision was mae, the consultants had quite a list of the town's advantages. At the end of their presentation, they stunned us with the conclusion that the town would be an unsuitable place.
Their main reason was explained with comments from the local newspapers discussion board, comments which were abusive, insulting, and often just plain stupid. The consultants said that the kind of people who work in think tanks would not find an acceptable social environment in our town.
Immediately, the town promoters protested, saying the comments represented only a few individuals, not the attitudes of the community. The consultants said, wrong! The fact that a few people responded to the comments with other abusive and insuling comments rather than simply pointing out the scurrility indicated a community attitude that accepted that kind of discourse, and it indicates the level of thought, attitude, and discourse that is considered acceptable. They pointed out that discussion boards are dominated by people of this nature but that the community gives them assent.
I wonder what they would make of the Post Dispatch comments.
#3 Posted by Ann V, CJR on Mon 8 Mar 2010 at 02:36 PM
Both guys in this story are jerks. I don't think any lessons can be drawn from it.
Newspaper web sites shouldn't let people hide behind anonymity for the same reasons newspapers don't let people hide behind anonymity. It just brings out the worst in people and hurts, not helps, society.
#4 Posted by Keith Roberts, CJR on Mon 8 Mar 2010 at 04:42 PM
There is no Dominant Mind, as Jung proposed. There is a herd mentality which dominates every culture, It is an instinctive swarm response functioning at a survival level. We have developed multiple cultural expressions based on religious, racial, nationality, and economic differences since the internet has made it easy to give opinions a sense of reality by seeing them in print and having them debated regardless of whether or not they have any substantive value, discourse has degenerated to a personal attack on any opposing opinions. This as a herd response to fear, an emotion that spreads throughout the swarm causing mass flight and blind defense reactions.
Our government understands this and has used it to influence policies of benefit to special interests. The crowd seeks leadership and trusts government to preserve its safety. We are beginning to learn about the damage done to the people immobilized by a fear to think as individuals.
#5 Posted by Morton Kurzweil, CJR on Mon 8 Mar 2010 at 05:49 PM
You suck ghd. If I had a voodoo doll with your name on it, I'd dip it's hair in furniture polish.
Then I'd give the dog a new chew toy.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 16 Apr 2010 at 10:07 PM