The sixth session asked two online journalists to explore what values would and should prevail on the web.

Rob Levine, the 27-year-old editor of Rolling Stone Online, believes that as the web begins to be used differently, to serve a different purpose, its values will likely become more journalistic. The reason is because people need information they can rely on as trustworthy. Even though he comes from the online world, if the web becomes more like old journalism, he believes that will be a good thing.

"Having worked on both sides of the digital fence, first at the Los Angeles Times, then at Hot Wired, and now at Rolling Stone, I think the journalism of the future needs a little more journalism and a little less future."

"Right now not all of the journalists of the future are actually journalists, at least as most of us would define the term. Though both of the sites I mentioned [The Drudge Report and Total News] provide valuable services, neither is a substitute for more traditional journalism. Even in a relatively uncharged medium where few of the rules print and broadcast journalists are used to apply, we need more traditional journalists and more of the values of traditional journalism, more importantly, if new media is to become a valid news medium. Do both provide some functions of journalism? Certainly. Are both journalism? No. Ultimately, I think, that's to their detriment."

"Just because the Internet allows everyone to publish their journalism on an equal footing, does not necessarily mean all of that should be taken with equal weight. The expertise of major news organizations gives them an edge when it comes to accuracy, simply because stories go through more, more experienced hands before reaching readers and viewers. Does that mean self- published reporting is valueless? No, but it does mean it's not exactly journalism and that not every self-published writer is a journalist."

"To use myself as an example: I have access to an incredible amount of information from the Reuters and AP wires, but -- and I hasten to add -- other than the subjects I cover as a journalist, I generally skim the wires and get the bulk of my news from the New York Times. Why? For one, the Times sorts out the stories assigning them a place in its pages based on the subject, international news, national news, metro news, arts, sports or business, and relative importance. The wires don't do that as well. Also, I value the ability of the Times to put the world into context. I'm not qualified to figure out what every regional weather variation might reveal about the eventual scope of El Nino."

"Many complain that media is too dominated by the major news organizations, and I think that's certainly a valid point. But to the average reader they offer one important thing the Internet only occasionally matches -- authority. . . They're trustworthy. Flawed? Sure. But readers of the Chicago Tribune or viewers of NBC News know what they're getting. They know they can count on a certain level of quality control."

"Newspapers like the San Jose Mercury News and the Wall Street Journal have taken impressive steps with their Web-only editions, offering their readers on the Web a voice they're familiar with, and more importantly, news they need. They're reliable, contextual, and perhaps more importantly, they offer readers a voice of authority -- earned authority."

"Does that mean new media-only news organizations won't start to emerge to offer the quality journalism one has come to expect from organizations like that? I think they will. Already we've seen it start to happen. C-Net offers good news coverage of the computer industry with the same kind of accuracy and authority one would expect from a major daily. They've already started to win the respect of their readers. They've done so, I might add, by combining the power of new media, the flexibility the Internet offers, with the values of traditional journalism."

Dan Okrent, editor of New Media at Time, Inc., represented a huge media conglomerate's approach to new technology. He sees a vision of how the net changes but not replaces the old media that includes a path to economic salvation: paperless delivery.

"Digital delivery of content is a series of good news/bad news equations. The good news is that anyone can be a publisher or editor or writer on the Internet. It is the most democratic medium that we've ever seen. The barrier to entry is incredibly low. Out of your garage you can be competing on what appears to be physically an equal footing with the major news organizations. The bad news is that anyone can be a publisher, editor, writer on the Internet."

"The second good news/bad news balancing act is the incredibly rich, endless supply of material on the Web. Millions upon millions of pages. Millions of sites. The bad news is the same thing."

"If you compare it to the media that most of us grew up in, or that most of you are working in, what we do as journalists is take the world and put it into a funnel. Not making it onto the page or onto the evening newscast is everything that's dumb, boring, wrong, inaccurate, foolish, or pointless. Well maybe not everything is pointless. As journalists, we get rid of the bad stuff and presumably give the reader or the viewer the good stuff."

"The Internet is upside down. The funnel goes the other direction. You go out into the Internet and you are overwhelmed by all of that stuff. You type into on a search engine Abe Peck, and you get 30,000 references, and you can't find out anything that you want to know about Abe Peck."

"The third one of these good news/bad news things is around the notion that Rob addressed about personalized content. Being able to get only what you want, being able to put yourself in a position where you as the individual can edit the world, as it were. The bad news is that getting personalized content, you as an individual are a much less interesting individual."

"One other point about the internet. Eventually (the technology) will evolve toward a place, once the delivery systems have been refined, where it will replace most of print media....I don't know when...It will depend on the receiving device. No one wants to get all their news sitting in front of a TV set on their desk....It will have to be something you can take on the subway or to the beach or read in bed. But we will get there...(and) when we (do) the reason why it will replace print can be summed up (in the fact that) the company I work for last year spent $1.3 billion on paper and postage. The economic imperative of a delivery system that is not dependent on physical costs or the trucking ... will be so strong that the consumer will not be able to resist it. The $50 magazine subscription will become a $10 magazine subscription...and both parties will be financially better off."

"This is as seismic a social change as Gutenberg...(But) words will still be there. Writing will still be necessary. Reporting will be necessary, and all the things that make journalism journalism."

Mary Mitchell: "So (Rob) did you come to the conclusion that the journalists in the future will be journalists?"

Rob Levine: "It's very hard to know what's going to happen, but I think that the journalist of the future needs to be a journalist, and if the journalist of the future isn't a journalist, we're all in a little trouble."

"As someone who is younger, I don't necessarily think the Internet is going to replace print, I think it's going to change print."

"If you look at the history of media, there are very few examples of one medium replacing another. People thought that radio or television might replace print; people thought that television might replace radio. Instead, they moved them into other roles in people's lives. Radio was once the source of mainstream entertainment. When television became mainstream entertainment radio was forced to concentrate on what it's best on -- music, stuff to listen to in the car, etc. But mediums don't tend to disappear..."

"It's really important that there be journalists on the Web."

Bill Kovach: "To pick up on the journalism on the Web, could I ask you a question to sort of define for us what would make Matt Drudge a journalist? Would having an editor?"

Rob Levine: "As I said, it's hard for me to define exactly what a journalist is, but I think running it over in my mind, the single most important thing that makes him not a journalist, is that he just doesn't seem to care that much about whether what he writes is true or not. He doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good story. As he said, "I can write what I want."

"I think one of the most important things that makes a journalist a journalist is just being accurate, and more importantly, being really careful to be accurate. The stakes are really high."

Wrap Up

Bill Kovach: "We started today with a dichotomy that really doesn't exist. I mean, two questions that are really one: What's a journalist? And what is journalism? You could answer either one with the other. But the question is, and I think the question was put best as usual by a student, who asked, 'How can the definition of a journalist be so personal?' Which is what it turns out to be after a day of conversation."

"Let me list some of the ways journalism and journalists are described by practitioners. There was a summary done earlier today that referred back to Ted Koppel and others' definitions of journalism. Journalism is broad and inclusive. It's what we call ourselves. Journalists produce a map, a map for the citizens to negotiate through the day. It's the first rough draft of history. It's excitement, said Rupert Murdoch. It's a record for us of things for us to think about. It's traditional journalism, represented by Jack Fuller and the Chicago Tribune. It's television journalist like Carol Marin. It's Jean LemMon's description of service journalism. Jean spoke of believability standards, of the reader's trust, the commitment to ethical standards that, for what she called 'action journalism.' That is something like what Mary Mitchell might have talked of when she talked about 'point of view journalism.'"

"Patty Calhoun of Westword, seems to be following in the path of the youthful steps of Abe Peck, as an alternative journalist. There are 111 of those institutions who can't quite come up with a definition of who they are. Then, Rob Levine rounded it up for us with a question of whether or not the journalist of the future is a journalist."

"So we have all sorts of personal, very disparate definitions and descriptions of who is a journalist and what journalism is. But there are a number of things that I think we can say in conclusion about what was consistent in the description and whether there's agreement among the people who spoke and tried to define journalism. I think that description--that consistency comes in the note of, 'It's not what you do, it's how you do it.'"

"There's nothing wrong--I think it was Fuller who said, 'with producing stories that the public finds fascinating.' It's the values and the standards with which you produce those stories. The balance, the proportion and the judgment you apply. It's a commitment others have said to a respect for the audience of your material. It's a set of standards, a set of values, ethical challenges that we're tested by everyday that define the journalist."

"Jack Fuller summed it up when he said, "The journalist is someone who must tell the truth, while providing information necessary for a self-governing people." I think every journalist in the room would have agreed with that statement. It's Carol Marin's statement that it's someone who believes in the public trust and is not ashamed to say so. People are not journalists because they say they are journalists. It's the nature of their work that defines it, which refers back constantly to the standards and practices and the values."

"Concluding with online journalism, I think, brings us to the point where we wanted this forum to start this conversation that will move around the country among journalists. And, that is the question Rob raised about whether a journalist of the future is really a journalist. The question is where does journalism reside inside the first amendment? We all believe--we all adhere to our belief in the first amendment, freedom of speech and freedom of the press."

"But journalism is a distinct section of that world inside the first amendment. Mr. Drudge has every right under the first amendment to perform the way he does. What makes him not a journalist? What makes other's journalists inside that first amendment? Where does a journalist reside inside? And, without denigrating the promise of the first amendment that allowed the people who wrote it to accept inaccurate reports, to accept falsity, to accept opinion that was unfounded, as a right to free speech? How did we define ourselves as journalists outside of that world and into a special place inside the First Amendment? I think that is the journey we're on. I think we started it well here today."

[top]