In this post, Danny Sullivan explains how he broke a story on his blog. He says it was a 'tasty story' about a woman suing Google for providing her with poor directions.
He then traces how his story was picked up and usually not attributed by various media outlets. Unsurprisingly a number of media organisations simply 'stole' the story.
Sullivan was demonstrating that while bloggers use material from traditional media sources, the opposite is also true. He wants better attribution from bloggers and traditional media alike; "a lot less finger-pointing and much more acknowledgment that the origin of news is a messy business".
I can't think of anyone who could possibly be against "less finger-pointing", but there is considerable intrigue around the origin of news stories both for cultural and economic reasons.
Much research has attempted to look at the extent to which blogs break original news.
Only the other week the Project for Excellence in Journalism released a study suggesting that original reporting on blogs is more or less non-existent. In this case, Amy Gahran pointed out that the methodology of the study was flawed as it looked at a specific section of the blogosphere that talked about mainstream media news organisations.
Sullivan's story highlights another methodological problem. Much research in this field so far focuses on content analysis. For those of you not up with academic terminology (and believe me you won't be alone) studies based on content analysis will look for and count references, mentions, quotations or citations of blogs in traditional media output.
Sullivan's story shows us that blogs get written out of traditional media stories. This is no different, in fact, to the way in which media organisations follow up stories written by their traditional competitors and often do not credit them either. So it is nothing particularly new.
But unfortunately it renders a content analysis rather problematic. If blogs and indeed other sources of other news are written out of media reports how can we accurately measure their influence? It seems to me that relying solely on content analyses to assess the impact of blogs on the traditional news media is highly unreliable.
Of course, it is interesting to hear stories like Sullivan's and I have a few of my own from my research. The use of White Phosphorus by the US Army in Iraq in 2004, for example, was broken a year later by a blog. But that piece of information did not make it into the BBC's initial reporting.
These stories do provide a healthy caveat to studies based on content analysis, but they do not give us all the answers either. In particular, it is difficult to know how common or otherwise they are.
Sullivan says "the origin of news is a messy business". Untangling the mess won't be easy.
Showing posts with label agenda-setting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agenda-setting. Show all posts
Wednesday 2 June 2010
Tuesday 26 May 2009
BBC's World Have Your Say tweet editorial meeting
The World Have Your Say team at the BBC provided twitter updates from their daily editorial meeting earlier today.
Audience input is already entirely central to what WHYS do, but this idea has the potential to further erode the gatekeeping model. (Even if editor, Mark Sandell, still retains control evident in a nice touch at number 8.)
These tweets are in reverse order (obviously). So you need to start at the bottom. (Blogger has not unhelpfully insisted on numbering them for some unknown reason).
Audience input is already entirely central to what WHYS do, but this idea has the potential to further erode the gatekeeping model. (Even if editor, Mark Sandell, still retains control evident in a nice touch at number 8.)
These tweets are in reverse order (obviously). So you need to start at the bottom. (Blogger has not unhelpfully insisted on numbering them for some unknown reason).
- Ok Shaimaa's delegating. the meetings wrapping up but we'll meet again at 1500 for a catch up. get in touch if you want to share your views
- do we need our BBC religious correspondent to guide the conversation? we think we need an independent voice
- Tom cruise would be a good get.! he's post on the you tube. How do you find scientologists?
- we've got to be careful not to get too bogged down in the fine details of scientology&make sure they are not ridiculed.wise works from Mark
- ok Scientology wins - now we are tryng to get a senior voice on scientology on
- ok's it s vote time - do you have the the right to refuse medical treatment for your child? or Is scientology a religion?
- Amy's about the sneeze - but it's not coming out! hold up
- marks explaining the fundamentals of WHYS to work experience student Saad...who's trying to get Kind Abdullah on the programme
- wasn't there a big scientology case in Germany last year?
- we're trying to figure out whether we've done a show on medical treatment and religious rights....have we done this recently?
- ok down to scientology vs medical treatment....we're thinking of bidding a high profile scientologist for another show
- another suggest.....what about Sri Lanka - what hapens when the wars over? not sure if this beats our top 3
- amy's suggesting whether tourism is doing more harm than good in maintaining a country's culture but Ros is doing a documentary on this too
- 3) is a degree worth it? it's been brewing since last week. costs a lot, recessions deep...but is it a story beyond the UK?
- 2) is scientology a religion?
- 2) on scientology - it's on trial in France......
- 3 main questions 1) do you have the right to refuse medical treatment for your child? ....
- the team members are going to start posting their on the blog too so you can see our thought processes - we're hoping to test this tomorrow
- we're discussing out how to format our blog - what needs improving? we're thinking of making talking points tighter. top 3 stories only
- Nina is with us from the Citizen Journalism Project at the BBC. it's sadly closing down due to funding but we still want your stories
- Europe Today discussing Ethnic Profiling- see the blog if you're interested
- Shaima again, my husband and I got talking about the degree being irrelevant issue. He wants to do an MA and the question shook him up a bit
- meeting starts in 20 minutes!
- Krupa here: We're trying something new today... I'll be tweeting during the meeting. you can help us decide what to discuss tonight.
