Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Media ethics codes... for a good night's sleep, or a wake-up call? SPJ's Ethics Code: Seek truth and report it; minimize harm; act independently; be accountable       "Most newsroom ethics booklets aren't even up-to-date, and current ones often can't be found on newsroom desks.... and any reader who keeps a printed copy is either planning to sue the paper or needs insomnia medication." -- Dean Miller, executive editor of the Post Register, Idaho Falls, Idaho, writing in Nieman Reports. Miller's point is not that ethics codes are a waste of time, but that they are only as good as their public enforcement. That's what his paper has been trying to do, with help from its Web site. Part of the job is informing readers of the code itself, the paper's officially accepted practices, and its treatment of questionable behavior. As the editor puts it:       "With the code online, readers can click through from lofty principles like 'Seek Truth' to specific standards of practice, such as prohibitions on the use of unnamed sources. They can find post-enforcement reports about when ethics standards were not upheld...       "Newspapers print names of folks who are convicted, and even accused, of crimes, so journalists should not be exempt from public disclosure when they violate the paper's standards." The ethics case enforcement decisions get their own page at PostRegister.com, from the firing of a sports reporter for plagiarism to the resignation of a court reporter who jumbled two court cases together into what the site calls "an entirely false story." Revelations of conflict of interest -- and steps taken to minimize them -- are on another page, including the paper's decision on how to handle a run for school board by the executive editor's wife and a campaign for governor by the company's president. Among the decisions: The newspaper president no longer works in the building; the publisher took over day-to-day operation of the paper. The executive editor doesn't handle stories about the school district and has been told "to keep his mouth shut" about district story ideas. Miller's bottom line (emphasis added):       "For six months we've had this kind of ultratransparent newspaper ethics and discovered no downside. It offers readers ideas and phrases to use in their criticism of our journalism, which has a way of sorting serious critics from simple haters.      "Most importantly, it encourages meaningful dialogue that reconnects journalists to communities and to the high standards reflecting the civic obligations of the American press." His essay is part of the winter 2006 issue of Harvard's Nieman Reports, the theme of which is transformation of the news media, from staff cutbacks to multimedia reporting, under the title "Goodbye Gutenberg." (Several Web-related articles would be healthy reading for online journalism students; I may make more specific suggestions in class.) Newspaper history fans also will appreciate a photo gallery that accompanies the online articles, showing newsboys (and girls), newsrooms, pressrooms, teletypes and classic old typewriters and the mechanical dinosaur linotype machines that have always fascinated me. The photos even show quite a few people reading the news... without using computers and mice. 6:54:55 PM     WP exec: Newspaper readers are good-looking Washington Post (.com) new media whiz Rob Curley offers a transcript of an Italian journalist's interview with him, observing that he wasn't just asked the usual questions about whether "new media" can save newspaper companies. Here's one: Interviewer: How would you describe or define consumers who use newspapers as their primary or sole source of news? Curley: Informed. Smart. Charming. Good-looking. Maybe flattery is one way to keep people reading newspapers? But Curley brought more than a sense of humor to his award-winning online news projects, from Kansas to Florida to D.C. (That's his picture on that last link... There goes one stereotype of what "newspaper industry vice presidents"  look like.) Here are a few more of the Italian interviewer's questions, some of which do look familar: Today, what do newspapers in their print form represent? What do you feel the future holds for print newspapers? Is the writing on the wall? What must newspapers do in order to survive? If you were to speak with a publisher in Italy whose media group was facing the same challenges as an analogous American media company, what are some precise suggestion you would give in order meet those challenges? Curley's answer to that last question is especially good as a summary that's more than a batch of buzzwords. However, if you want to start with a few key terms, here they are: Go hyper-local Do databases Do multimedia Think evergreen Do dialogue Hint to online journalism students: Maybe discussing some of those will be on the next exam... And it wouldn't hurt to examine what Curley's projects have in common with our new site, Tennessee Journalist. 10:50:07 AM

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