I’m on my way to D.C. to participate on a panel with Jeff Jarvis on blogging and journalism. The audience is public radio news directors, and I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.

The organizer has selected a theme of what bloggers wish journalists knew about them and what journalists wish bloggers knew. Of course, the theme suggests a wall between the two, and this is the most important matter to address. With bloggers increasingly setting the news agenda (it’s already that way in sports), the professional crowd is concerned about losing their authority. Add to that the financial pressures on traditional media, and there’s a strong undercurrent that democracy is about to crash and burn. It’s not (and few will actually say that), but there’s still a culture clash between the two groups.

It’s amazing to me that we’re still having this debate, but feelings run deep. The two groups have much to offer each other, and I hope that is the takeaway for the audience. Jeff and I are on the same page about all of this, so it’s going to be a fun give and take.

In a wide-ranging interview for a forthcoming AR&D book, long-time CBS producer (and creator) of 60 Minutes Don Hewitt told us that television news is still stuck in “the 1948 Douglas Edwards model” and that it’s not good enough for today. Brushing aside the matter of objectivity as “reciting what happened today” — “something the cable news networks do all day long” — Hewitt said the audience for evening news is hungry for opinion, and we ought to give it to them.

The stories have been told before they get to them. You can’t tell them much at 7PM that they don’t already know. And I’ll tell you the other thing that I never understood: What really sells newspapers are columns and strong opinions. The only strong opinion that any of the three networks ever put on the air is “Meet The Press,” “This Week with Stephanopoulos,” and Bob Schieffer’s “Face the Nation.” Where is all of the opinion the rest of the week? Most people who buy the NY Times turn from page 1 right to the op-ed page. They want to find out what the columnists are saying. There are no columnists on the news. It’s bland. I love strong opinions. I love to hear two guys having it out, whether its Bill Safire or Tom Friedman — you know, with different points of view. Can you name one place where you can find it? Other than Sunday morning?

…Of course (opinion is appropriate in an evening newscast). What’s it doing in a newspaper? Newspapers actually endorse candidates! Newspapers run all kinds of opinions, everyday, and you never find any opinion on television. Unless you get it on CNN, you get it on FOX, you get it on MSNBC. You may not want to get as much of Keith Olbermann as you get; maybe you don’t want as much opinion of Lou Dobbs as you get; but they do it, and they do it very well. There ought to be a roster of great broadcasters with something to say, who appear on the evening newscasts with some provocative thought that gets people in the audience, when the show is finally over, to sit down and say “What did you think of that guy?” “I thought he was full of shit, well I thought he was great!” And that’s what sells newspapers. Newspapers are now being sold by the columnists.

While acknowledging that broadcast news does some wonderful things, he believes the industry is stuck in the past and unwilling or unable to move into the future. “They (broadcasters) have not recognized yet there is this thing out there called the Internet,” he said, “and the Internet is running circles around them. The game has changed and we have not changed with the game.”

Don Hewitt is an original and the interview was filled with gem quotes. Here are just a few:

The thing that is keeping television alive these days is sports.

The public eye among a new generation is not television. The Internet is the public eye.

Watch for this material in a major, new book that will be released by AR&D later this year. That’s all I can say about it for now.

(Originally posted in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)

Jay Rosen has penned an important piece that articulates the conundrum for the professional press in a way that should help a lot of people understand what’s really taking place. He uses the metaphor of a migrating tribe to illustrate the problem:

Migration, which is easily sentimentalized by Americans, is a community trauma. Pulling up stakes and leaving a familiar place is hard. Within the news tribe some people don’t want to go. These are the newsroom curmudgeons. Others are in denial still, or they are quietly drifting away from journalism, or they are being shed as the tribe contracts and its economy convulses.

And like reluctant migrants everywhere, the people in the news tribe have to decide what to take with them, when to leave, where to land. They have to figure out what is essential to their way of life, and which parts were well adapted to the old world but may be unnecessary or a handicap in the new. They have to ask if what they know is portable. What life will be like across the digital sea is of course an unknown to the migrant. This creates an immediate crisis for the elders of the tribe, who have always known how to live.

When I think of the press in these kinds of terms, I’m reminded of a wonderful speech that C.S. Lewis delivered at the University of London in 1944 called “The Inner Ring.” Lewis felt that the internal drive to be within certain closed societies was one of the great evils of humankind, and it describes Rosen’s “tribe” of the press perfectly.

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

Jay Rosen thinks it’s time we expanded the press and our ideas about it. How about breaking the inner ring to not only let the press out but everybody else in?

The statements by James Poniewozik of TIME in the entry below have been tugging at me ever since I read them, for Poniewozik has raised difficult questions for journalism.

I’ve written about this subject many times before, so regular readers here will know that I believe journalism is in good hands, can take care of itself, and that those who use the phrase “real journalism” to argue against any apparently “unreal” journalists are probably the least real of all. The institution of professional journalism, which is what’s being disrupted, is the fruit of Walter Lippmann’s elitist, social engineering dreams, so I’m not convinced it’s in need of saving. That belief, however, doesn’t merrily dismiss all that is professional. Like most things, this is not “all or nothing,” which is why I find Poniewozik’s statements so remarkable.

When people ask me to define a journalist, I always start with the first paragraph from the book of Luke:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write {it} out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

In this sense, Luke is acting as a journalist. He didn’t have a degree from Medill, nor did he have a code of ethics by which to abide, only his investigation of eyewitness accounts and the events themselves. Now, you don’t have to believe the account to appreciate Luke’s role as a journalist, and this, I think, is the nut of the whole mess involving trust with contemporary journalism.

By and large, journalists of every stripe will tell you that they are in the pursuit of truth, and they resent ANY suggestion to the contrary. This supposes, however, that there is such a thing as objective truth in any matter, and therein lies the rub. In the above, Luke’s message to Theophilus is one of “exact truth,” and we all know where such absolutism has gotten us. So the best we can say is that Luke’s account was his best effort at that “truth,” and so it is with every journalist.

The problem, of course, in a postmodern world is that there are many variations of truth, and this is the very heart of the matter between professional journalism’s version of truth and that of the multi-perspective blogosphere. The more the Big-Js cling to their view of objective truth, the harder it’s going to be to sustain it, and the wider will grow the gap between a questioning public and the press.

And it is the public, after all, that controls journalism’s future.

Do yourself a favor and read this great piece by James Poniewozik of TIME on the shifting roles of the press and blogs. There are some extraordinary quotes in here that you’d never even have imagined a couple of years ago.

It’s too simple to say that the new media are killing off the old media. Interest in political news is sky-high, and new and old media each need the other to supply material and drive attention. What’s happening instead is a kind of melding of roles. Old and new media are still symbiotic, but it’s getting hard to tell who’s the rhino and who’s the tickbird.

…if 3 million people read Drudge and 65,000 read the New Republic, which is mainstream?

…maybe we’ll also stop arbitrarily dividing “real” from “amateur” journalists and simply distinguish good reporting from bad, informed opinion from hot air, information from stenography.

Well said, Mr. Poniewozik. Let’s hope your message makes its way up the ivory towers.

Mike Orren is asking important questions about journalistic responsibility in an era when online search goes a long way toward determining a person’s identity and character. This is a new animal in the history of the press, and I think it bears discussion. Here’s the nut of it:

A media company with lots of Google Juice does a “man charged with” story. A search for that man’s name puts that story high in the search results. Later, the charges are dropped but the search results don’t change.

Orren, who cites personal examples in his post about the subject, thinks journalists might have some responsibility to update the original story in such a way that it assists the reader in determining the truth. That could be by adding a link to or otherwise re-editing the original text, things that could only be done with direct access to the database storage of the archived content produced by the media company.

This is new territory for journalism, because we’ve always been able to fall back on the notion that today’s content supersedes yesterday’s. You can get away with that as the “voice of record,” but nowadays, that position is increasingly being given to search engines and search technology.

It’s also interesting to me that these questions are coming from Mike, a guy who spends his life dealing with media at the hyperlocal level. It’s here — where your subjects are your neighbors — that the meaty issues of journalistic responsibility are most acute. For example, it’s one thing for the New York Times to “expose” a guy here in Grapevine, Texas, but it’s entirely another matter for the local paper to do the same thing.

This one is pretty hard to believe. The Online Journalism Review is shuttering after a decade, according to the “voice” of the OJR, Robert Niles. He’ll continue writing at his blog (SensibleTalk.com) and the mission of the OJR will continue through the Knight Digital Media Center.

Robert is an excellent writer with real insight into new media. I’m swapping RSS feeds from the OJR to his personal site.

The Associated Press entered highly dangerous territory last week when it sent take down notices to a publication (a.k.a. blog) known as The Drudge Retort over what it considered copyright violations. In what is widely regarded as typical fair use for blogs, the Drudge Retort copied a couple of sentences from AP reports and provided a link back to the original. The AP argued that it was not fair use, which prompted many people, including Jeff Jarvis, to cry “foul.”

My suspicion is that it’s the lawyers who got the AP into this mess. My best advice for the AP’s executives is that they should try to practice the bloggers’ ethic of the link and quote themselves (updating their news values with one more value). My next-best advice is that they should walk down the hall and tell the lawyers to put a damned sock in it or send them off for a very long off-site on a golf course where they can do no harm. This is not going to be resolved enforcing the fine print of outmoded laws built for an extinct age. This is a constantly changing landscape that must be maneuvered with flexibility and openness. But if those lawyers continue to threaten bloggers who know more about this new age and are only practicing their appropriate ethics, I will continue to use this space to suggest where socks should go.

Jeff’s commentary and that of many others prompted the AP to back off a bit. In a New York Times piece on the matter, Saul Hansell writes that the AP released a statement defending its actions on Friday, but later held an emergency meeting and softened its position.

“We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this,” Mr. Kennedy (Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P.) said.

Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon.

Still, Mr. Kennedy said that the organization has not withdrawn its request that Drudge Retort remove the seven items. And he said that he still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short ones.

“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.”

And now a boycott of AP content is underway, and it includes TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington:

The A.P. doesn’t get to make it’s own rules around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows. So even thought they say they are making these new guidelines in the spirit of cooperation, it’s clear that, like the RIAA and MPAA, they are trying to claw their way to a set of property rights that don’t exist today and that they are not legally entitled to. And like the RIAA and MPAA, this is done to protect a dying business model - paid content.

The real problem for the A.P. is that it can’t win this argument, and by pressing the issue, they’re very likely to end up with a business model that dies overnight. And I don’t think I’m overstating that. Links are the currency of the Web, and the A.P. hard line spits in the face of that, which is leading to boycotts like Arrington’s. The monopoly co-operative is living in the past, but it needs that past to validate a business model that is as out-of-date as traditional media itself. Now, by pressing the matter, they run the significant risk of being in a contrary legal position, and what will be left for them after that?

They’ve announced that they’re willing to create a new policy, but that, too, is fraught with problems, for it can only shed further light on the weakness of their business model in a changing environment. Bloggers know that links go to the originator of the content, which would mean linking to the A.P.’s members, not the A.P. version thereof. When that happens, media companies will rightly ask why they need an expensive middle man in the equation. Always remember that the Web disrupts the middle of any transaction, including media. As such, the most enviable position in the new world is that of aggregator, but as Google News proves, there’s not exactly a whole lot of money to be made in so doing.

These are all questions that observers have been asking for years, of course, but the A.P.’s own foolish action with what is essentially a small social website have shined a significant spotlight on them all.

I was struck by the reality of the celebrity journalist last night while scanning the news channels during prime time. Every one of them was in a form of wall-to-wall tribute to Tim Russert. The accolades for his brilliant career as NBC’s chief political correspondent and host of Meet The Press were non-stop and came from every quarter. The world of journalism will miss him, for sure.

Russert wasn’t just a TV personality; his fame was within journalism’s most sacred walls, and that’s what makes this coverage different than, say, the passing of a network anchor. Even big time print names are coming forward to offer their take on his role in journalism’s firmament.

Clearly, Russert was bigger than life and, in many ways, as “big” or bigger than the highest levels of culture achieved by the political office holders he interviewed. This is what the fresh faces in broadcast journalism schools wish to achieve, and we all know it. Perhaps Howard Kurtz said it best:

…Within minutes, all the cable networks were airing nonstop remembrances of Russert, as if a head of state had died, and the tributes came pouring in.

…His influence was such that an appearance on the top-rated “Meet the Press” could boost or sink a candidate, and when he declared after midnight on May 6 that Barack Obama had wrapped up the Democratic nomination, that was treated as a news event in itself.

Who wouldn’t aspire to that kind of power, influence and, yes, fame?

Russert’s work will live on in the textbooks and videos of an era that he helped shape, and one day someone else will take his place in the elbow-rubbing suites of contemporary political journalism. But while we’re all mourning our loss, let’s also take a moment to honestly ask ourselves if such celebrity should be the focus of journalism. Does it take an equal (or greater) level of fame to confront the powerful in the name of the public? And for the public itself, does every encounter that our surrogates have with the news making political world demand a confrontation? Does it require power to face the powerful, and if so, what is the basis for that power?

These are critical questions for all of journalism during a time when its very foundation is struggling for survival. Tim Russert was “best of class,” but the matter before us today is perhaps the class itself.

In addition to all his success in the world of broadcasting, Tim Russert was also a devoted husband and father, and it is for those he left behind that we offer our prayers.

The Radio and Television News Directors Association quietly demonstrated much-needed leadership this week by bringing together broadcast news executives and journalists for a “background only” session to discuss the serious challenges facing the news business. It wasn’t a meeting of CEOs or business types; it was news people talking about what they can do to help themselves and each other in the wake of relentless expense reductions and layoffs.

With the war museum of the McCormick Foundation in Wheaton Illinois as a backdrop and the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Edward R. Murrow’s famous “wires and lights in a box” RTNDA speech as inspiration, attendees spoke of challenges and brainstormed ideas to overcome them.

The off-the-record nature of the event prohibits me from identifying conference participants or attributing quotes to anyone at this time. The RTNDA hasn’t fully decided how the information will be disseminated, but watch for something from them perhaps this fall. The idea is to create a plan exploring general principles that need to be preserved. That plan will go to the RTNDA board and then to general membership.

Everyone, I’m sure, came away with their own thoughts, for we tend to “hear” only what we’re capable of hearing, based on our own background and experience. For me, the gathering was a fascinating demonstration of the deep longing to hang onto the past, while reluctantly acknowledging that such clinging may not be possible. The clash of the old and the new was visibly present in the room, although the new was represented more by pain of the old than a physical presence. This clearing of the air I view as significant and healthy.

This “summit” was in many ways a visible demonstration of a modern, colonialist (I’m smart…you need me) institution trying to stay relevant in an increasingly participatory, postmodern culture. That was evident in attempts to maintain the status quo, while admitting that the quo may have lost its status.

After several scripted sessions, we broke into groups to tackle specific issues and make recommendations.

We admitted we have an audience problem and that we may have actually fed that problem. There is nothing new about our news programs, and many employees don’t even watch. Yet, we continue to do the same thing, and this we agreed makes no sense. We agreed that we need to go where people are today and not try and make them come to us. There was a sense that we’ve gotten away from “real” journalism and are morphing into a utility that may not be relevant to the people in our communities. At the same time, there was an acknowledgement that there is a great deal of really good work being done in the industry, especially during times of crisis or breaking news. We need to research the people formerly known as the audience (TPFKATA), because we’re just not smart about how people are consuming media these days.

While conceding that our product has strengths, we agreed that it needs experimentation on-the-air and that the repurposing of that for other media forms is self-destructive. We talked about presenting news in a raw form during working hours (Continuous News) and how well that serves the audience at work. As such, we felt that formats other than the “finished product” concept of a newscast might better serve the information needs of the community. We asked if personalities will drive the news presentation of tomorrow and discussed the role of “citizen contributors” to the professional news organization.

We agreed that news departments must get involved in the business side of television stations, and I found this to be the most refreshing discussion of the entire summit. We’re smart people and while it’s necessary that sales not dictate what happens on-air, there was a strong sense that we may be able to make valuable contributions on the sales side as well as the content side of our business. At several points, there was discussion about lowering the wall of separation between news and sales while maintaining the integrity of newscasts, although no one knew exactly how this could be done. We’re comfortable with news-as-a-profit-center, but we feel helpless that station sales people seem to be having difficulty selling it.

One of the recommendations that bears repeating is that we need to prepare for the day when we don’t have a network affiliation any more.

In discussing our future approach to journalism, there was much talk about definitions and that perhaps we need a new definition of “news” itself. The terms “objective,” “fairness” and “balance” all need clear definitions. The team assigned to this area felt that anything not “objective” should be clearly labeled as such, but that “analysis” and “opinion” have their place. We need to get out of the pack mentality that seems to be driven by a “punditocracy” and begin to think for ourselves.

There was a great deal of discussion about the need for training and an acknowledgement that our industry has historically been very bad at this. I heard the term “culture change” many times and that everyone — from employees to executives — needs an immediate education in how other forms of media work. This is something the RTNDA will take an active role in implementing, I’m sure.

Like everybody else in media, the associations that represent them are struggling. The RTNDA is dealing with a shrinking membership and declines in convention attendance and magazine advertising, so they are as eager to figure this stuff out as the next guy. Look for a name change for them in the near future, as they come to grips with the reality that an organization named “Radio and Television News Directors Association” might be too narrow to represent the paradigm changes before us.

My hat’s off to the RTNDA and the McCormick Foundation for arranging this event. That we are in the midst of a new “Gutenberg moment” is becoming more evident every day, and it was truly encouraging to hear those directly involved in the broadcast news business honestly talk about it and what to do about it.

Murrow would’ve been proud.

(First published in AR&D’s Media 2.0 newsletter)

(UPDATE: Deborah Potter has posted her thoughts)

I’ll be in Chicago (actually, Naperville) next week for a “news leadership summit” produced by the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation and sponsored by the McCormick Foundation. The title of the event is: “Wires and Lights in a Box: Murrow’s Legacy and the Future of Electronic News.” This year is the 50th anniversary of Murrow’s famous “wires and lights in a box” speech, which explains the title of the summit.

Participants are a Who’s Who of broadcast news managers and leaders at both the network and local level. Edward R. Murrow is the patron saint of broadcast news and a powerful figure in broadcasting history, so you can usually expect good attendance when asked to meet in his name.

There’s a session on Murrow’s legacy, one on entertainment versus news, another on ideology/partisanship in the press versus an impartial press, and my panel, “What is the business model of the future?”

Here are the questions we’ll be exploring with my panel:

• What will financial success look like in the future? What is the business model of the future?
• How does the industry address the ethical and credibility concerns raised by the intersection of news content and advertising? Even Murrow had sponsors.
• Will news operations continue to put news and public service over profit? How do news operations serve the public’s right to know and still say in business? Can public service journalism survive?

We’re also going to break into small groups (what would a conference be without small groups?) with the goal, it appears, of coming up with journalistic principles and standards to preserve for the future.

In all, it’s a pretty heady event, and I’m honored to be a participant. This has been my life’s work, and I appreciate the chance to share my thoughts. Besides, I really like to hear myself talk.

I’m always a little nervous, though, when an institution that’s being disrupted gets together to talk about the future. Broadcasting isn’t casting broadly anymore (to borrow a cool phrase from Scott Collins of the LA Times), so there’s a niggling sense that we’re heading for mediasaurus land. It’s natural that we’d turn to each other to try and figure things out, but it might be better to talk with those who are actually doing the disrupting.

I like to use a whale oil industry metaphor. Let’s go back in history to the annual whale oil industry conference, with the industry in the midst of disruption from electricity. Rather than seeing that they’re in the home lighting business, the whale oilers can only see electrical power in ways that will help them either extend the whale oil business or do it more cost-effectively — for example, by creating an electrically-powered harpoon (it cuts the manpower costs significantly, you see). So rather than invest in electricity for home lighting, they press forward to protect the bottom line. Nice, huh?

I’ll blog as much as I can from Naperville, and if you’re going to be there, I look forward to saying hello.

I’m coming up for air from a few days of writer’s block, and I think it’s because there’s just so much to write about these days. The moment I start concentrating in one area, something even more compelling pops up. The bane of bloggers isn’t a lack of things to say; it’s having too much to say.

So I’m just going to go through some things quickly, beginning with the networks getting together to offer a video-on-demand service that encourages people to not use TiVo. The point? They want those same people to watch the ads! Call me a nut, but this is too little, too late.

The business of The New York Times offering an API for its content is intriguing and smart. I hope it sends a message to other companies, and while I fully endorse the concept, it’s still about keeping users inside the walls of The Times. We’ll see.

One of the brightest minds in media, Jack Myers, took a shot at media company ownership this week in his Media Business Report. I’ve been saying this kind of thing for a long time, but Myers is above my pay grade, so his commentary carries significant weight.

…most executives remain committed to outdated and dangerous mass-media-dependent economic models. Media companies today - even the largest digital media companies - are in danger of following the railroad industry model and becoming Industrial Age mass distribution vehicles rather than Relationship Age™ interactive brand and human connectors.

Nice, and absolutely spot-on.

The L.A. Times painted a chilling picture of the future of television in an article called Broadcast Networks Under Siege that examines the shocking ratings’ declines in May.

Broadcasting, simply put, isn’t casting broadly anymore. As the sweep suggests, the TV networks are losing not just their viewers but also their sense of specialness. They’re becoming just the lowest numbers on the multichannel dial, rather than the last outposts of mass culture. It’s true that this evolution has been happening for years, but this year a tipping point was reached, a Rubicon crossed. Broadcast exceptionalism — its supposed immunity from the market forces afflicting all other media — is finally dead.

Right, and the problem is that tipping point is, while acknowledged, problematic in terms of reacting, because we’re deep into a cycle of expense reduction. Broadcasting still makes a lot of money ($70 billion last year?), and more eyes are focused on salvaging that than actually responding to technology and changing consumer behavior. It’s a tough place to be.

Finally, there’s this gem from Robert Lichter in the American Journalism Review:

“I think there’s a feeling that journalists have overstepped their boundaries,” he says. “People don’t look on [journalists] the way journalists like to view themselves – as the public’s tribune, speaking truth to power, standing up for the little guy. They don’t look like the little guy anymore. They’re part of the celebrity culture.” Increasingly, he says, “people like the news but hate the news media.”

Go read the whole article by Paul Fahri. It’s filled with lots of good stuff that I’d love to comment about. However, I’ve got this writer’s block, see?

So YouTube has announced the hiring of a news manager and the launch of a citizen journalism channel. Don’t be fooled by the raw nature of this, folks, because you may be looking at not only future hires in your community but also future styles in presenting video news. This is an unorganized group with YouTube (Google) playing its typical support and distribution role in sidestepping traditional media companies to present a form of journalism that most professionals deem far beneath them.

The news manager is no novice when it comes to citizen journalism. Olivia Ma recently graduated from Harvard and was a regular contributor to Dan Gillmor’s Center for Citizen Media blog.

Gillmor, author of what is widely considered the original manifesto of the citizen journalism movement, We, the Media, told me via email this morning that the YouTube project is another worthwhile experiment, and “I’m looking forward to seeing how it works.”

“But as they monetize this,” he added, “I hope they’re going to find a way to reward the people who are doing the work. I’m not a fan of business models that say ‘You do all the work and we’ll take all the money, thank you very much.’ I also hope they’ll give people a way to post using Creative Commons licenses, which are all about sharing information, as opposed to the currently restrictive terms of service.”

I agree with Dan on the above, and his message is relevant for all media companies trying to “monetize” user-generated content.

But beyond that, this move by YouTube demands our attention for its assumption that anybody can “do news” and distribute their work for free. The pamphleteers of journalism’s past would’ve loved it.

(Originally posted in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)

One of the great things about the Web is the immediate access to knowledge and information, something about which I’ve written here often. All of the institutions of colonial modernism are under attack, in part, because their place in the culture — their authority, if you will — is granted by access to protected knowledge. This culture clash is uncomfortable for those whose position is being picked apart, and so they’re fighting back with arguments that are often specious, at best.

One such argument has been thoroughly dissected here, that of terrified elitist Andrew Keen and his assertion that amateurs will surely destroy the world. This meme — this attack on everyday people with access to knowledge — has been picked up by others with something to lose in the culture clash and is now rather widespread among all elites.

And it’s absolutely wonderful to find the occasional person who kicks back against this crap, and I was introduced to a spectacular example today in the form of Mike Caulfield, his blog and an entry titled If a Columnist Calls a Tail a Leg…

In this outstanding piece of work, Caulfield elegantly deconstructs a Keenish form of argument by Monica Hesse in, of all places, The Washington Post. Her column is provocatively called “Truth: Can You Handle It?” She attacks what she pejoratively calls the “wiki-world” and uses what she feels is a false quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln to make her point.

Unfortunately for Ms. Hesse, HER Lincoln reference is the one that’s wrong (Oops!), and Caulfield’s legwork on the matter is worthy of any journalism award.

Go read the whole thing. You’ll thank me later on.

In a Vanity Fair article, Buzz Bissinger explains his tirade (tirade here) last week on HBO’s Costas Now against Deadspin blogger Will Leitch. Bissinger later apologized, not for his feelings but for the manner in which he expressed them. It was a classy move.

But the Costas segment was a stunning illustration of the real angst between mainstream sports writers and the sports blogosphere, which is increasingly setting the agenda for all sports reporting these days. As a guy who’s been following this for a long time, I found it painful to watch Bissinger make a fool of himself, and I felt equally uncomfortable watching Costas try and defend the status quo. Both are incredibly smart guys, but they’re blinded by their own perspective.

Costas referred to sports writers with “real credentials and real access.” The comment was obviously meant to separate “real” sports writers from (unreal) bloggers, and this doesn’t get anybody anywhere.

He also referred to the “legitimate complaint” about the sports blogosphere, namely the tone of gratuitous potshots and criticisms. Both Bissinger and Costas used quotes from commenters to make their case, which caused Leitch to note that, “surely we can differentiate between the blogger and the commenters.”

As I’ve written in the past, sports journalism has changed dramatically since Watergate brought to the surface the form of journalism known as “gotcha.” It has gone from entirely cheerleading to some excellent and insightful work by serious writers, be they mainstream or other. There’s still the sense, though, that access to athletes is a gift granted by their owners (yes, they are “owned”), and that this can be a significant conflict of interest, especially when such access crosses from professional to personal. Professional sports leagues are going out of their way to restrict access, because they want to control their message, and the extent to which the mainstream press is forced to go along with this is sad.

One of the very definitions of “news” goes like this: dog bites man, not news; man bites dog, news. So the norm is not news, and therefore when athletes perform according to their gifts and expectations, it doesn’t fit the definition of news. The exceptional athlete — Tiger Woods, for example — is certainly newsworthy, but the PGA’s slogan is “These Guys Are Good.” In that light, a “good” performance isn’t news, but a bad performance is. Yet we rarely see stories when “these guys are bad.”

Hell, show me, shot-by-shot, the 15 that John Daly scored on number 9, because that’s news.

So there is a symbiotic relationship between sports and sports writers, and that’s okay. But that isn’t the only form of sports journalism, for the output of this symbiotic relationship is fair game for observers (and fans), because both (the sport and the pro writer) are on the same pedestal. News about the news is one of the hallmarks of the blogosphere, and it may make the mainstream press uncomfortable, but it is every bit as much “journalism” as that which is published by the pros.

Moreover, I most disagree with the assertion by blogosphere critics (such as Bissinger and Costas) that bloggers are a part of any real or perceived “dumbing down” of the information stream. Any time I hear that, I’m immediately drawn to the Lippmannesque reasonings of colonial thinking, that culture must have an elite class to lead the ignorant and emotionally-driven masses. That is insulting and just plain wrong. The voices from the mass may seem crude to the pedestal dwellers of the culture, but those voices count as much as anyone’s.

The Senate, with the full blessing of our two Democratic candidates, is about to put the skids on the FCC’s decision to loosen cross-ownership rules, whereby media companies can own both a television station and a newspaper in the same market. Damn those big media people, huh? They want to control the voices in our communities, so we can’t let them narrow choices “for the American people.” Word.

Given the realities of the current media conundrum, however, this strikes me as a bit like waving off the RMS Carpathia on its journey to rescue the survivors of the Titanic. I mean, really, folks; who cares if big media is owned by one person? It’s all drifting slowly into the sands of yesterday anyway.

The issue is over independent and varied voices, which is a BIG part of the disruption in the first place.

Odd that I find myself actually siding with Kevin Martin.

Here is the next in the ongoing series of essays “Local Media in a Postmodern World,” A Reasonable View of Tomorrow.

Media companies continue to reduce expenses in the wake of falling revenues, forcing newsroom restructuring on a fairly regular basis. Where this will end is anybody’s guess, and while some of it must be blamed on the economy, we all know that disruptive technologies and changing consumer behaviors are the biggest factors. I’ve felt for years that a likely future scenario is the rise of independent journalists who sell their output to local and other media outlets, and this essay expands that thinking. It features an interview with Gabe Rivera, creator of Techmeme, a remarkable aggregator of the tech media space. Techmeme is a perfect example of how the niche content of independent journalists could be brought together in one place to form an immediate understanding of what’s important, although the scale isn’t there yet to accomplish it at the local level.

There also doesn’t exist a definitive revenue model for such a scenario. Money. however, doesn’t always flow where we want it to flow, and its flow isn’t very predictable in a time of change. Of more importance, to me, is where is journalism headed, because money has a way of following eyeballs. The tools exist for anybody to be a publisher today, and this is the underlying reality that we cannot escape.

The first volume of this essay series is now available in book form (Reinventing Local Media), and you can find it at Amazon.com.

Steve Boriss offers insight into the roots of “professional journalism” in a Pajamas Media piece called “News Should Be Neither Fair Nor Balanced.”

Thomas Jefferson sought to establish a nation that featured maximum free expression, with a public allowed to think for themselves and their collective wisdom valued as “the consent of the governed.” He wanted newspapers to support this system by dispersing information and engaging in a process of opinion-driven “attack and defense” — in his view, this was the best and only way to get to the truth, deal with unknowns and unknowables, and absorb the personal preferences of a free people. Jefferson put his money where his mouth was. When his rival, Alexander Hamilton, helped found a newspaper to promote federalist ideas, Jefferson co-founded with James Madison a tremendously unfair and imbalanced newspaper to attack it. In case you missed it, this means that Thomas Jefferson did not believe in fair and balanced news either.

Boriss also looks at one of my favorite topics, the Creel Committee and provides an outstanding comment about the fruit of committee member Walter Lippmann, the father of professional journalism.

His proposed remedy has become our journalism of today — a rough-and-tumble craft that now falsely presents itself as a scientific profession, claiming to deliver singular truths using objective methods backed by a process of verification. Fairness? Balance? What do they have to do with it? Why settle for that when journalism elites can deliver something even better — true, correct answers in all matters of public policy?

It’s great to see other observers writing about these things, because they’re important at a time when we’re all trying to figure out what to do and where to go next. Journalism is a trade best practiced by passionate writers who wish to use their gifts to make a difference and advance the culture on behalf of everybody. Facts need no protecting, so argument should be one of its roots, for what good is knowledge based on experience, education or, yes, opinion, if one is unable to express it? As Jeff Jarvis has been writing lately, the contemporary press functions largely as a single entity — what he’s calling the “press-sphere” — and I certainly don’t believe that was ever the intention or view of the people who wrote the First Amendment.

As I read Steve’s essay, I couldn’t help but think that we wouldn’t be having this conversation, if the financial stress on mainstream media wasn’t as acute as it is today. And since I honestly believe the discussion is overdue, I have to view what’s taking place as a “correction” of some sort. Life is like that. It has a way of bringing things back to the source, when excess moves them away.

Walter Lippmann genuinely felt that the “mass” of people in our culture was prone to myth and superstition, and he wanted to do something about it. An educated elite who would lead, he believed, was the way to go. Perhaps he was right, but his solution has proven to a disaster, because it turns out that even educated elites are in it for themselves.

The New York Times sued the government to get 8,000 pages of documents that prove those retired generals who function as expert analysts for network news programs and beyond are, in fact, pawns of the government! Oh no! The “hidden hand of the Pentagon,” they’re called. While most news organizations are falling all over themselves with this juicy piece of news manipulation, my initial reaction is, “Move along. There’s nothing to see here.”

Having just finished George Creel’s 1920 book, How We Advertised America: The First Telling Of The Amazing Story Of The Committee On Public Information That Carried The Gospel Of Americanism To Every Corner Of The Globe, the idea that the Pentagon would brief retired generals on what to say is hardly a bulletin. It’s been taking place for 100 years (and probably longer). And, of course, the press has no right to object, because it has been a willing participant for decades. As I have tried to communicate on many occasions, the father of professional journalism, Walter Lippmann, and the father of professional public relations, Edward Bernays, were both members of the Creel Committee.

Perhaps this “revelation” by The Times will be a good thing, but until the press accepts its duplicitous role beyond such currently unpopular themes as the Iraq war, it’s not going to mean much, for the “hidden hand” of the cultural elite includes the press.

Three years ago, I was a part of a research project in the Northwest that included discussions with young people who didn’t participate in the local news scene. Jay Rosen would call them “the people formerly known as the audience.” In one question, we asked people 18-49 to agree or disagree with this statement: “I don’t mind reporters with a bias, as long as they’re honest in telling me what it is.” Nearly six in ten agreed with the statement, and that seemed to surprise everybody.

The response isn’t surprising, however, from a postmodern worldview, because pomos tend to make decisions of trust based on their own experiences, so the concept of “objectivity” is seen as poppycock. There is no such thing as a lack of bias. From a larger perspective, the mistrust of institutional power is based in a fundamental belief that such institutions exist first to serve themselves, and claims that justify a special position within the culture are viewed as disingenuous, to be kind.

So it’s not surprising to find similar thoughts expressed in a new study by the Associated Press Managing Editors group and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. The Online Journalism Credibility Study found an unfamiliar disconnect between journalists and consumers.

Some 70 percent of editors surveyed said requiring commenters to disclose their identities would support good journalism, while only 45 percent of the public did. Similarly, 58 percent of editors said letting journalists join online conversations and give personal views would harm journalism, but only 36 percent of the public agreed.

Expressions of personal views seem to help boost readers’ interest and trust in Web sites, said John `Bart” Bartosek, editor of The Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach, Fla., and chairman of the credibility committee for the AP managing editors group.

“That’s contrary to most of the traditions we’ve all grown up with, to keep our opinions, viewpoints and personal lives out of our story,” Bartosek said. “There’s some indication that readers are looking for something more online. Whether it’s information about our expertise, our knowledge, our background, I’m not really sure.”

People want to trust journalists, but it’s hard to trust somebody whose best argument is “just trust me.” The more we try to separate ourselves from the people formerly known as the audience, the harder it’s going to be to build credibility. Journalists are people, too, although many certainly don’t act like it.

The message from the people is pretty clear: just be real.