journalism Archives - Page 5 of 8

Microsoft Sidewalk reinvents itself

With a turn toward commerce, Microsoft’s online city guide places marketing above journalism This column appeared in the November 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review. Remember those apocalyptic headlines two years ago, the ones predicting that plague and pestilence would be visited upon all that journalism holds sacred because of Microsoft’s emergence as a media player? As it turned out, toads did not rain from the sky. Such fears always struck me as wildly overblown. And today, MSNBC and Slate notwithstanding, it should be clear from its online actions that Microsoft is positioning itself as an Internet transaction center — but has no appetite to reinvent itself as a media company.

Ethics codes: A compact of trust

In this era of public mistrust of the media, online publications should disclose their standards and values This column appeared in the October 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review. In this age of public distrust of the media, one would think that enterprising executives would make every effort to draw distinctions between their brand of journalism and the questionable style of reporting practiced in some quarters of cyberspace. Certainly, readers rightly judge a publication’s credibility based on its track record. But buttressing that record with a declaration of principles would send a powerful message, especially at a time when a cynical public often lumps Matt Drudge, MSNBC and the Dallas Morning News into a single ominous force called “the

When journalism and e-commerce clash

The life & death of the Asian-American Web site Channel A This column appeared in the September 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review. The tension between editorial and commercial interests plays out in interesting new ways in Web publications. Usually, a balance is struck. But sometimes, journalism is the first casualty. Steve Chin, co-founder of the Asian-culture Web site Channel A, discovered that first-hand. His experience makes for a cautionary tale as the Internet move headlong toward e-commerce, or electronic transactions. Chin, a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner for eight years, left the paper in the spring of 1996 to launch a Web site for Asian-Americans. Other niche sites had just taken off: NetNoir, geared toward African-Americans, Latino

Putting an entire community online

Some small papers have had success on the Web by including their readers in the process. This column appeared in the July 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review. Many small papers continue to struggle online, but before they throw in the towel they ought to examine some of the Web’s success stories. Sunline, the Web edition of a tiny chain of dailies and weeklies in southwest Florida, has won a slew of state and national awards for small online publications. It averages about 10,000 visitors a day — not bad, considering that only 100,000 people live in the papers’ circulation area.

The Web: A new channel for investigative journalism

Salon’s groundbreaking stories on the Starr investigation challenge the Beltway media’s conventional wisdom This article appeared in the June 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review as a sidebar to Salon: The best zine on the Net? For years, the mainstream media have taken shots at the Internet for allowing anyone to spread rumors, lies and conspiracy theories to a global audience of millions. But now the flip side of that equation is beginning to emerge: The Net is becoming an alternative channel for original, honest investigative journalism shut out of the mainstream press. Salon’s coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky matter — its first sustained foray into classic investigative journalism — has served as a counterweight to the mainstream news media’s

Salon: The best pure-play Web publication?

Salon may be a harbinger of journalism’s future on the Internet This in-depth profile of Salon magazine appeared in the June 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review. When the editors of Salon heard the reports about the White House sex scandal on the morning of January 21, their daily newspaper instincts kicked into overdrive. Andrew Ross, who caught the news on the radio over breakfast, surfed the Web for the latest developments and banged out a 630-word commentary from home that went up on Salon’s site before noon. Editor David Talbot, news editor Gary Kamiya and the rest of the newsroom went into “standard journalistic feeding frenzy mode,” Kamiya recalls. By the time the exhausted staff trudged home that

Exiling online staffers to the hinterlands

News organizations would be wise to integrate their online journalists into the main newsroom This column appeared in the May 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review. Walk into the newsroom of almost any newspaper with a Web site and here’s what you won’t see: Web journalists. That’s because the online operation has been ghettoized — shunted off into a farflung no man’s land. The Los Angeles Times‘ Web team? They’re down the street. The New York Times‘? Across Times Square. The Washington Post’s? Across the Potomac. “What does that tell you psychologically about how the newspaper bigwigs view the Web operation?” says Howard Witt, The Chicago Tribune’s associate managing editor for interactive news.

The media’s Matt Drudge syndrome

How should the mainstream media respond to lone-wolf cyber-reporting on the Internet? This column was written Jan. 31 — 10 days after the Monica Lewinsky “scandal” broke. It appeared in the April 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review. I was interviewed on the topic of ethics in online journalism on Minnesota Public Radio’s “Future Tense: A Journal of the Digital Age” on July 26 and 27, 1998. NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT**World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT** That e-mail, sent to 50,000 subscribers on Jan. 18, launched us into a new era in journalism, one that is befuddling mainstream newsrooms as they struggle to

E-mail fosters a two-way dialogue

Online newspapers are missing the most elemental ingredient of the Internet: interactivity This column appeared in the March 1998 issue of The American Journalism Review. Online news publications have been so swept away by the graphic grandeur of the Web that they’ve all but ignored the truly revolutionary promise of the Internet: interactivity. Go to nearly any newspaper Web site and you’re met with an impenetrable wall of silence. Want to ask a question of a reporter whose story you’ve read? Want to send a compliment, fire off a complaint, point out an error, or offer a useful story tip to a particular writer or editor? Good luck. The reasons vary for this Old Media mindset: newsrooms that breed aloofness

Marvin Kalb on journalism in the Internet age

The former CBS and NBC News correspondent decries the news media’s feeding frenzy over Clinton-Lewinsky — and the effect that Matt Drudge has had on news coverage Marvin Kalb is director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He spoke by phone on Feb. 2, 1998, about 12 days after the White House sex scandal broke with a fury in the media. How do you see the impact of the Internet and all the new forms of media on coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky story.