Just as appetizing was this month’s Carnival of Journalism question:  What is the role of online video in the newsroom of the future?

More than twenty posts were filed by deadline, and the more I read, the more I was convinced: There is no single, clear-cut answer on the future of video.  But there are some compelling ideas.

I’ve grouped the responding blog posts into a number of categories for easy reading.  After touching on the economics of digital video, we’ll explore the medium and content, look at views from some skeptics and the more bullish, and wrap-up with some “big think” pieces.

THE BUSINESS SIDE

So we’ll begin with the strikingly titled post The Future of News Video Looks Like Crap.  Abraham Hyatt, managing editor of ReadWriteWeb, thinks the future looks like it was shot on camera phones:

… [T]he drift towards low-quality video is an inarguable and inescapable trend, one that stems from the basic principle of supply and demand.

He also takes a look at advertorials as a possible, if not depressing, solution for some sites until the real money flows in.

Enough with the 30-second pre-roll ads, writes Kathy Gill in her 5 Tips:

Insist that the commercials you run be developed specifically for online video. This means that they need to be short! A 30-second commercial is a lifetime online. Moreover, if I want to rewind – watch the clip again – don’t make me sit through the commercial a second time.

Joe Gullo, a broadcast journalism student at SUNY Plattsburgh, views subscriptions as a possible revenue source:

Access to video content on news sites will also change. Consumers will either be charged per video news story or pay a flat fee.

THE MEDIUM

Dave Cohn (he of @digidave fame, not to mention Spot.us, U.C. Berkeley and some #JCarn thing) focused on the medium, as opposed to the content:

Hangouts/Skype and group video will mean the death of the talk show. When the Internet and television collide, which will inevitably happen, the talking head show as we know it will be displaced. A site like BloggingHeads.tv will be viewed as way ahead of its time.

Franzi Bährle is a working videojournalist in Germany and believes in the craft:

Not only because of cutting costs but also because of their flexibility and a motto, which is often linked to videojournalism: “Go out and find a story.”

Video as verification is the message behind this post from Jonathan Groves, assistant professor at Drury University in Springfield, Mo.:

It’s complementary content that provides another layer of verifiable evidence for users. It builds trust and credibility. And it includes users in the journalistic process.

Hans Meyer over at Ohio University is on the same page.  He’s conducting an experiment on the credibility an on-camera reporter brings to a news story.  Many sites abandon that TV model in favor of letting subjects tell their own tale.

My first question was if this is a product of the medium. Is connecting the audience to the video’s source more important on the Internet than in other media?

Looking forward to his results and, as he notes, what connection it may have to the YouTube-ing of our culture.

CONTENT

There is a disappointing lack of innovation in newsrooms, reports Sue Robinson, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She offered a hearty post that includes her suggestions:

I’d like to see more video used to corroborate stories, showing snippets of telling pieces of the interview, for example. I’d like to see more reader-produced video commentary attached to stories as part of the forums and comments or somehow integrated more significantly.

Her list goes on (“obnoxious” as she calls it; “forward-looking” as I call it) to include user experience changes that shouldn’t be too far off.  She also brought up again the New York Times tooth-brushing companion news delivery system.

Dani Fankhauser, of FLUD, calls out your humble moderator right away and astutely reframes the issue:

First, I’m rather offended that the title of this carnival limits to online video because I think mobile news video is a much bigger trend. I’m going to refer to both, and call it digital video here.

(For the record, I totally agree.)  She goes on to tackle what a new model might look like with “journalist as producer.“

SHOOTING AND STORYTELLING

The great @Fuzheado, Andrew Lih, answers the original question with a question:

Why is learning (and teaching) video so hard for journalists?

The USC Annenberg professor is developing a step-by-step tutorial using an iPad to both teach and shoot:

In this way, the camera is no longer just a capture device, but an instructional device, providing direction and feedback to the operator to learn visual literacy by “doing.”

Meanwhile, Alfred Hermida weighs in from the University of British Columbia to remind journalists that decisions should be made on what is the best way to tell a story:

Best practices of online video are evolving. It is not just about giving all your reporters a Flip cam and asking them to shot some video.

His post, chock full of examples, also outlines five different types of online news video.

Videojournalist Lam Thuy Vo built upon the idea of news video categorization and offers a system based on deadlines, because:

It’s difficult to determine which kind of video to do when. Ideally, we’d all be spending weeks with a character at a time to produce a nice 15-minute first-person narrative, but that’s not always possible. And not every editor wants to pay for that.

SKEPTICISM

There are some who expressed their concerns about video.  Tiffany Johnson used the comfort of our Google group to make a confession: She’s got a short attention span, so online video just doesn’t do it for her:

I think predictions that video will soon infiltrate every aspect of our lives Farenheit 451-style are unlikely. Video has a time and place on a news website, but the medium is still hamstrung by the fact that videos are impractical.

Benet Wilson, of Aviation Week, writes on the NABJdigital Blog that she was drowning in Betamax tapes in the 80′s when she decided to paddle toward print journalism.  She has since embraced much of the digital journalism world, but it still comes down to two questions for her:

[O]ne, is there enough demand — by viewers and sponsors/advertisers — to justify the expense of creating and posting videos; and two, is there enough time in the day for our editors to learn how to shoot video and use Final Cut Pro to produce packages that are good enough to go up on the web?

BULLISH

Others remain optimistic.  Jack Lail of the Knoxville News Sentinel pulls together studies on the habits of the next generation media consumers:

These media savvy youth also want more than video. They want to the multiplatform experience newspapers have been developing skills and expertise around. Newspaper sites have lots of words, lots of great photography and a growing amount of video. These seem to be critical advantages in attracting this young audience of news consumers.

And to accomplish that, video has to be in a newsroom’s DNA, he says.  (Bonus points for being the only person to include part of his response IN THE FORM OF A VIDEO!)

Donica Mensing, of the University of Nevada Reno, agrees with others that moving images are overtaking the printed word, and thus:

…[W]e are in the throes of a much larger shift in communication than newsrooms can contain or manage. The transition is happening. Newsrooms will adapt or they will shrink, morph or disappear.

Video, she points out, “is inherently more social than printed words.”

Michael Rosenblum was the only person who did what I feared: He assumed that my posing this discussion question was a cry for professional help.  (I assure you it’s not, but thank you.) He also discussed his vision of “screenworld” and:

The very fact that we continue to differentiate between text and video in a newsroom makes me think that newspapers are even more dead than I thought they were.   We are living in a digital world.

BIG PICTURE

Finally, some offer “big think” pieces.  Michael Morisy introduces us to the idea of the Subservient Congress and lessons we could have learned from Burger King a decade ago:

The future of online news video is a more integrated, playful medium that stops thinking in terms of play, pause and pageviews and instead engages in ways that are more educational, more engaging and more immersive than today’s simple Flip Cam renditions.

He pivots on this theme:

But among the rank and file, true transformation hasn’t occurred: What would simply be impossible or, better yet, incomprehensible to online news videos’ ancestors?

You’ll have to read the post to get his answer.

Bryan Murley, associate professor for new and emerging media at Eastern Illinois University, included this line in his post:

I am not a video triumphalist. But I am a video realist.

His perspective is based on the fact that video is inherently linear, and therefore, not easily scannable.  It’s a great point about how video differs so greatly from print.  He adds:

[W]hen I stumble upon a video on the web, the first thing I will usually check is the description, the title of the video. This is text. I will use that text to determine whether I want to spend precious time viewing the video in question. Occasionally, I’ll click “Play” and let the video roll for a few seconds. All of this is a means for me to judge the value of the video content vis a vis my time.

I notice similar information consumption habits among students. They will spend loads of time scanning their Facebook “News Feed” to gather information. They are scanning text. Only when they find something recommended by a friend will they click onto a video and watch. If they like it, they will continue watching. If they don’t, they’ll click onto something else.

Read the whole thing to see how he notes that video will, of course, still be important.

And in Seattle, Lauren Rabaino (she of 10,000 Words and Seattle Times fame) puts video into the larger context of journalism innovation over the past decade or so, before diving into this nugget:

Often times, newspapers fall into the middle ground [between cat videos and well-produced content]. They’re not usually shooting the real-life raw footage of natural disasters, but they’re not producing amazing, high-quality works of art. They’re that middle noise; the five-minute mediocre footage. And often times, they precede their mediocre video with a 30-second ad. This isn’t where I see the future.

She proceeds by laying out how she does see the future, and again, you should just read the post.

Heck, you should read all the posts.  I must say, they’re all top-notch.  And they all still convince me that we’re not entirely sure what the future looks like – which is thrilling! – and that we think video exists in a large way, which I find reassuring.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, Carnival-goers, I’ve got to get back to this 1992 video about how “social networks” might be a thing in the future.  I think they’re on to something…

The question we’re tackling:  “What is the role of online video in the newsroom of the future?”

I wouldn’t pose the question if I didn’t think this part of the industry had a future. However, I’ve found there’s a collective murkiness around what the future actually looks like. Newsrooms have had a complicated relationship with online video.  (More on the topic in the original post.)

So, tell me about your perspective: How do you use video in your day-to-day work, as a producer or as a consumer, and how do you think it ought to be used? Or tell me about your vision for the future: What works, in your eyes, and what does not? How do we harness this terrific medium and make it shine?

Even if you’re not closely connected to the topic, I hope you’ll take a stab at the issue. In fact, your perspective may provide a valuable view from the outside.

All the details on how to participate are in this Carnival of Journalism post.  The deadline to weigh in is Sept. 30 at 5 PM.  Hope you’ll join in!

This is a role I never imagined. Sure, I raced my mother to the curb every morning to grab the paper, and yes, I took the school group tour of the fifth-floor newsroom.  But in my years as a budding journalist, working at a traditional “newspaper” was not an aspiration — I was a television guy.

Now, of course, the journalism world has changed.  “Newspapers” produce some of the most engaging interactive content online.  These are news organizations that took to the web early and have built an audience on the knowledge and skills of some very talented journalists. This is the time for smart newsrooms to get a handle on web video — and no, that does not mean putting television on “newspaper” websites.

The Post has exceptionally talented visual journalists and emerging digital leaders who have been doing this for years.  My charge is to help them hone, develop, and execute a video strategy that positions the organization well for the future.  I am excited to join a team that is trying new things and thinking hard about how the organization relates to the industry as a whole.

More details on my role to follow, but needless to say I am fired up to hit the ground running.

The flipside of this excitement is that I will be leaving my role as editorial director of J-Lab.  In my time here, I have grown remarkably and been afforded opportunities I also never imagined.  I was able to truly study innovation, particularly in local news, from the bird’s eye view to the hands-on.

The people we work with on a regular basis have made this experience all the more rewarding. I’ve crisscrossed the country, learning from entrepreneurs as they take risks and follow their passions.  I’ve enjoyed being part of the academic community at American University’s School of Communication.  And I’m honored to have worked with a team committed to the success of journalists on the ground.

And with that, it’s time to turn the page. This is at once a fascinating and daunting challenge.  You’re invited along for the ride.  If you have thoughts on the future of online video, let me know!

You can watch it here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15422195

Why I’ve Left TV News …For Now
Delivered June 16, 2011
92nd Street Y, New York City

It’s an effing cat in an effing tree!  I was a local TV reporter and that’s how I described on the phone to my wife the story I was assigned to cover.

And it wasn’t just an effing cat in a effing tree: it was a cat that had been in the tree and splashed on the front page of a major newspaper for three days.  Even after the cat came down and scampered away – because after all, that’s what cats do, it was still a story on the 5 o’clock news that night.

So yes, I guess I was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it.  That was my Howard Beale moment.

I’ve come to believe that local TV news cannot simply be a utility, providing weather and traffic on a spinning wheel.  It has to be AMAZING again.

This was not the industry that I had fallen in love with.  I popped out of the womb with a microphone in my hand and weaseled my way into this business at way-too-early an age and gave it all my time, my holidays, my weekends, my early mornings.

But the game had changed all around:  Newspapers were the first to think differently, forced to by shrinking subscribers and a guy named Craig and his list; the publishing industry, magazines, wire services and radio had all seen massive rethinkings. TV hasn’t really had to.  It’s been formulaic, and that’s worked for many years.

Television news, this beautiful marriage of moving pictures and audio, emerged from the newsreel into a national evening event with Murrow and Cronkite and then Jennings and Couric, and local anchors you grew up watching and, if you were like me, admiring.  But now it’s noise in a field of more noise. Fragmentation has not raised consciousness, only blood pressure.  If you yell loud enough or are better-coifed, you may rise above it. But it has become a caricature of itself.

It has great potential, though, to break the mold and it has the people to make it happen.  Lots of my friends are in the business and they’re great people.  It’s about shifting how the entire industry thinks and where it looks for inspiration.

After the cat came down, I moved on to help rethink the digital side of our newsroom. Then, early last year I joined J-Lab, a journalism catalyst, of sorts, that ignites innovation in journalism.

In the greater field, we see very good things happening, particularly on the local level.  We see journalists embrace collaboration as the new competition.  We see them connect in meaningful ways with audiences.  And we see their work have real impact in communities.

All of this has gotten me thinking about innovation – and how the rest of the news industry can inform how TV news evolves, and how those of you in other industries can evolve:

For one thing, innovation means looking outside oneself. Local TV news tends to look inward, gazing longingly at its bellybutton.  Instead, look outside your industry and design your change from that perspective.  Understand the way other things function and apply that to what you do.

That’s point two: Innovation must seep up in order to trickle down.  When a newsroom leader gets it, the newsroom has no choice but to get it.  If you’re a journalist and your boss doesn’t seem to get it – it’s on you to make the case. Show them why, and when they say no, see if you can do it in your spare time.

In 2005, I convinced some of my colleagues to join me as I started a daily webcast for our division. We worked it into our schedules, even when it meant coming in early.  We really enjoyed experimenting – we had fun doing it – and it was a hit.  It built a small but engaged following and even brought in some extra money for the station. But it showed that we could break the traditional formula and didn’t have to come up from on high.

What it lacked, however, was a broad stage, which is my third thought:  Innovation must not exist only in the digital space.  You can’t say you’re on Twitter and call it a day.  Reading a tweet on-air doesn’t cut it.  That innovation needs to impact your non-digital world.  CBS has launched a new web series with the great Shira Lazar called “What’s trending.”  But I’d argue that should really be on TV, not just on the web. People on the web generally already know what’s trending. Have a conversation with your audience.

That gets me to point four:  Innovation must also improve context.

Edward Tufte, the godfather of information design, notes that the “simplicity of reading derives from context of detailed and complex information properly arranged.”  That is, don’t dumb it down.  We’re actually making viewers or users more passive by simplifying. Instead, with the proper order and context, even the most complex information can provide a clearer picture.

Case in point: The Sunlight Foundation took home J-Lab’s Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism last year for a new tool that covered live political hearings in a smart way. On the same screen, you’d see a live stream, with live data displayed at appropriate times, with a live chat with journalists, and with filtered information of importance. It’s about providing more in-depth knowledge, rather than shorter, less substantial bursts of news. It’s about relevance.

And there is an audience for this.  Nielsen released research yesterday showing we watch, on average, 158 hours of TV a month.  That’s 40 hours a week. We’re also watching more video online than ever before.  And this is what should alarm broadcasters: In the third quarter of last year, more people watched video not on TV news websites but on newspaper websites.  That’s huge. TV is getting beat at its own game. In fact, TV is now just video.

All of that said, do I have the ultimate answer in my pocket?  No.  – and that’s the point.  If I did, I’d be a gabillionaire.   It takes a whole lotta people doing a whole lotta exploring, thinking creatively and playing around a little bit in the sandbox to figure it out.   It even takes — gasp — failures.  Mistakes.  Risks.

Am I naive enough to think the entire industry will find its awesomesauce?  Not really.  I’m optimistic.  But I’m not defining success by the goalposts of a bygone era.  The days of the Big Three are long gone.  But everyone in this industry should be striving to add bits and pieces of awesomeness.  To think differently.

There will always be effing cats stuck in effing trees, and there will always, always be cat videos online, but this is the time for television news to innovate. Or die. I believe in you, television news. Breathe. Come alive. You can do it. I still love you.  We’ll work together down the road again, I promise.  You can be amazing.

I’ll add an 11th: Me.  I’m on a panel at 12 p.m. on Sunday about journalism in the social age. (Full schedule here.)  And it’s a helluva group assembled.

Here’s the event’s description:

This weekend conference, April 1-3, 2011, aims to bring together students, educators, and professionals to learn from each other and with each other about what’s next in education. Topics will cover a wide range of issues at the intersection of education, innovation, and social media, including what’s happening in classrooms now, what’s coming next, and what’s happening in fields such as advocacy, international affairs, politics, and more.

Now I just have to figure out what journalism in the social age looks like…

You've come a long way, kids. (flickr: seanaes)

The production and delivery of news is increasingly mobile.  Marketing is focused on mobile.  Gaming is set on mobile.  Music is tuned in to mobile.  Even in the crowd there were far fewer laptops and far more iPads than I’ve ever seen.

Mobile devices are now essential hardware in our daily lives – and news organizations of all sizes need to consider mobile the battleground of the next decade, as Peter Gelb, head of mobile practice at Razorfish, put it.  He notes the average person looks at their handheld 150 times a day.

A number of relevant takeaways for digital journalist-thinkers, all relating to mobile:

• The future of mobile apps is not in apps at all, but the mobile web.

Looks like an app, works like an app, but it's all web underneath.

With HTML5 and the right skills, you can now build a web experience that feels more like an app than before.  Take, for example, Travelmate by Jag.gr (Click here on your mobile device, or here on an old fashioned computer.)

This language translation and cash conversion tool looks and functions just like a native app you may find for your iPhone or Android-based device.  You can easily create an icon for your phone’s home screen to easily access it.  But it is, in reality, simply surfing the web.

Most important, says James Pearce of Sencha, you can make changes to your product without having to ask Steve Jobs to add an update to his store.  Were I in the middle of designing a mobile app, it would not be an app at all.

• Mobile is a two-way tool.

John Keefe, the visionary who has helped WNYC and the public radio show The Takeaway employ mobile in gathering news, demoed a few lines of code he wrote on the plane en route to SXSW.

After soliciting SMS text messages from community members, WNYC was able to follow-up with more specific questions for those users.  The newsroom could then automatically call those people if they agreed to be in a news story about the topic.  And finally, the station could make available at a certain phone number the full report on the topic – and text that number to their story participants.  Thinking about how you can complete the circle with story sources is even more important when you’ve connected with a device that they carry in their pocket.

• Mobile must be engaging.

Peter Vesterbacka, of Angry Birds fame, at the Game Developers Conference (flickr: officialgdc)

In a red Angry Birds sweatshirt, with a few stuffed birds tucked under his arms, Peter Vesterbacka talked about the key to making such a success of the game that recently passed the 100 million download mark.

He’s spent nothing on advertising, but responded to every single tweet, every email, every comment from people of all walks of life.  His team took a design from a five-year-old fan and turned it into a level.  Imagine, he implored, if every big entertainment brand connected with fans like this when they release new movies, new albums, or new products.

And since we’re all trying something, it is important to note that Angry Birds was gamemaker Rovio’s 52^nd game since 2003.  Sometimes it takes just the right strike to clear the level.

In general, I’m working on making this my design thinking motto my own for the next 51 weeks: Try. Test. Repeat.

(flickr: JanetandPhil)

Join me at this event, if you can. We’re talking about who will pay for journalism in the future. This includes all-stars from ProPublica, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Texas Tribune. The event at the University Club at Pitt is free, but you must RSVP by email.

The public is invited to join daily news meetings at the Register Citizen. (From RegisterCitizen.com)

That’s the concept behind one of my favorite experiments going on in journalism these days.  Just a few weeks ago, the Torrington (Conn.) Register Citizen opened a newsroom café – coffee and muffins and all – where the public is invited to be a part of the process.  Residents can explore the paper’s 134 years of archive material, mingle with reporters and weigh in at afternoon editorial meetings.

But for every Register Citizen, there are a dozen other newspapers seemingly unsure of what to do with newly discovered extra space in their newsrooms (the result of a decade of downsizing), with an archival bounty and with the desire to connect with the community.

This is where universities can step in.  These institutions of advanced learning, these manufactured communities, have built the fiscal infrastructure, developed the resources to archive materials and honed the skills to effectively teach people.

What if universities created open newsrooms that journalists from hyperlocal or community news sites could use collaboratively? Or, what if a local newspaper opened its doors so that a university-run news site could share its space?

In either case, there would be rental agreements and newsroom rules, but the physical barriers – the exterior brick walls – would be nonexistent. I bet it would enhance news coverage overall.  Call it the coworking spaces effect, as stories are swapped over the coffee machine and opportunities to share reporting projects begin to naturally appear.

Imagine, too, if these spaces became super-newsrooms, where the public played a role.  You could actually tap into the knowledge of neighbors.  In the case of the Register Citizen, editors created an exhibit featuring photos from the memorable Flood of 1955 to attract residents.  And they flocked, sharing their stories.

In addition to running community news sites and serving as fiscal agents for nonprofit news organizations, it turns out colleges and universities are also pretty good at teaching journalism.  What if they gave away a small dose of know-how in an attempt to improve journalism in the community?

The Register Citizen is offering a few specialized sessions for community members with class topics like Blogging 101, Storytelling, and The Freedom of Information Act.  This repurposes knowledge that the paper’s staff has already acquired.  It’s not to say attendees will contribute to the paper, nor should they, but it connects them with the newsroom in a way that goes beyond sharing a scone.

I point at the Register Citizen’s experiment because it epitomizes a “let’s try it” attitude that both newspapers and universities should embrace, and more importantly, it connects an institution with its users in a slightly unconventional way.  Publisher Matt DeRienzo reported more guests on day one at the Newsroom Café than over the course of a full year in the traditional newsroom.

With this attempt, the paper has become both a host of and a destination for neighborly gatherings.  It reminds residents that it is part of the community.

Universities can — and should — do that, too.

This post is a response to David Cohn’s query as he relaunches the Carnival of Journalism.  The theme this month is the role of higher education in journalism.

Two steps-in-the-right-direction came this week, but both demonstrate the industry has not embraced the issue with the same fervor as it has Wikileaks blame and ski lift ‘tragedies’.  One was a Walmart-sponsored piece on the Today Show that is not clearly labeled as such, and the second is an apparent third case of plagiarism for upstart Patch.

Screen capture from msnbc.com, with no visual or audio representation that the piece was sponsored by Walmart.

Today Spreads Walmart’s Cheer

The first was delivered just before Christmas, as Matt Lauer began a segment on military moms-to-be in much the same fashion as you might expect:  More than a hundred excitedly screaming pregnant military moms crowded in a liveshot and after the heart-tugging taped story, Lauer was interviewing three military moms-to-be and a husband just back from Afghanistan, complete with child born during deployment held in the man’s arms.

And this is where things took a turn.  I was fully expecting the “big surprise” to be a husband-and-pregnant-wife reunion on national morning television, one of those moments that touches your heart.

Instead, you could see someone I presume to be a network field producer waving her arms to incite the crowd to cheers, as Lauer delivers this line:

“What we would like to do is throw you all a surprise baby shower, so without further ado, we have some great people from Walmart and they’re going to do the honors.”

In roll the infantry division from a local Walmart store wearing their combat powder blue logo-emblazoned shirts and pushing carts and baby strollers.  As Lauer explains, the carts are packed with diapers, onesies, pacifiers, and a digital camera for each family.

How exciting!  And honestly, how worthwhile for the many families with loved ones serving in the armed forces.  But what a disservice to anyone tuning in expecting to see an unbiased story about how military moms-to-be are coping.

Instead, Lauer goes on to interview a Walmart store manager, praise the company, and toss to commercial break.  It isn’t until the bump shot, a live picture of the surprise baby shower seconds before the commercials run, when a small black bar comes across the screen that reads something like “Promotional consideration provided by Walmart.”  (And no audio message for the visually impaired or the multitasking morning listeners of the program who have quickly moved on to other chores.)

The video as it appeared on the front of Todayshow.com, without any mention of the sponsor.

A sponsored segment does not come as a big surprise, but a small line of text after the segment concludes is not a transparent method of identifying an advertiser paying to be on a top-ranked news program.  That’s the journalistic equivalence of a critical clause in the fine print in a new car contract.  Why bother doing it at all, unless you inform viewers during the segment?

Worse, in my digital mind, is that when the story appeared on Todayshow.com and msnbc.com, the message about promotional consideration had been sliced off so the story appeared just like any other.  I would urge them to think twice — not about the sponsorship, necessarily, but about the show’s transparency.

Watch the video here.

[Disclosure: For more than six years, I worked at another division of NBC Universal as a reporter and then managing editor.]

Patch’s Third Strike at Plagiarism

This week, the editor of Palo Alto Patch (one of Aol’s 600 hyperlocal sites sprouting up across the country in 2010) offered this apology after a writer for the site “lifted information” from another news source without proper credit, noting, in part:

“The writer has been told that taking work of other writers or news organizations without attribution is absolutely not acceptable.”

This should have been covered during Day One at Patch training.  And although freelance writers are provided with a plagiarism guide (presumably a how-not-to plagiarize guide), something doesn’t add up.  This is the third apparent incident at Patch in just a few months.  Clearly the organization is not adequately communicating the importance of this policy.

Even the apology falls short in its attempts at transparency.  What was the story? Who is the writer, and is he or she still working for Patch?  Did you review all of their previous work on the site? All of these questions remain unanswered.

In academic settings, students know that plagiarism is often grounds for serious disciplinary action because the integrity of an institution is paramount to its success. Other news organizations make similar policies clear for the same reasons, too:

• “Plagiarism is an unforgivable offense. NPR journalists do not take other peoples’ work and present it as our own.” (NPR ethics code)
• “Plagiarism is unforgivable and will be cause for termination.” (The Roanoke Times news standards and policies)
• “Plagiarism is prohibited and is illegal if the material is copyright protected.” (The Fairfield University Mirror ethics code)

Were any of these news organizations accused of plagiarism three times in a matter of months, heads would roll.  I’m not suggesting the firing of this writer or reporter, but as Patch strives to become a massive journalism organization, it must behave like one.

On the other hand, kudos to Patch for an enlightening bit of transparency, encouraging “editors to reveal their beliefs to the extent they feel comfortable” on the editor’s biography page.  (More on that in a future post.)

[More disclosure: I am currently editorial director of an organization that works with news sites in the hyperlocal space.]

Just Be Clear

To me, incidents like these make apparent that the warp-speed with which we do business now could ultimately be our demise.  We need to have an unequivocally clear conversation with our readers, viewers and listeners.  We need vocal men and women in the role of ombudsmen who will highlight incidents like these, not so much for the public, but for other journalists who may need a refresher in the do’s and don’ts.

As I get off my high-horse now, I urge you to read this column by NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard.  She calls corrections “basic journalistic hygiene,” and I couldn’t agree more.  We are in the middle of forming the next great news medium.  Since it can be as transparent as possible, let us use that to our advantage.  It gives journalism a greater argument for demanding transparency of those we seek to hold accountable.

The old way.

Hipmunk takes that normally drab and painful experience and instead offers a visual representation of your options that makes it easier to find exactly the right flight. See it for yourself after the jump.

The smarter way.

Hipmunk is a fine example of thinking about something from a different angle.  Approaching it this way, the site improved the experience for the user.  It then delivers them back to a ticket-booking company.

It will even sort based on an “agony” index — a combination of price, duration and number of stops.

My kind of sort.

If only it could show you whether you’ll be stuck next to a talker, or wedged in a middle seat…

(h/t Mashable)