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Dan Gillmor, Michael Arrington, Will Bradley Roland, Dave Winer, Jay Rosen
There is a great profile of Dan Gillmor in CommonWealth Magazine's Fall issue. Dan has always been someone I've thought of the highest integrity, someone who isn't looking at our new web empowered present and future with rose colored glasses, and someone who wants to help build real bridges of understanding. A rare combination, that I wish there was more of in the world.
So lets take a minute to discuss the Internet's latest king maker Michael Arrington. He's dealing with a lot of heat for how he decides who and what he covers at TechCrunch, a web publication that recently scored a profile in The Wall Street Journal. He's read by quite a few friends of mine. Here's what he had to say about some of the controversy:
TechCrunch is a new kind of publication. We don’t fit into a neat little box like traditional media, who refrain from financial conflicts of interest with their readers and feel that they are therefore above reproach. They aren’t, but they really, really feel that they are, and look down on blogs and other media as the unwashed masses. Yes, I’m grouping them unfairly, but the really good reporters will all soon be on their own anyway, so this will be completely true eventually.TechCrunch is different. TechCrunch is all about insider information and conflicts of interest. The only way I get access to the information I do is because these entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are my friends. I genuinely like these people and want them to succeed, and they know it and therefore trust me more than they trust traditional press.
I am an active investor, board member and advisory board member with a number of startups. That isn’t going to change. I also write about startups. That isn’t going to change, either. Obviously people like what we write on TechCrunch or they wouldn’t come back. But no one should think TechCrunch is objective or conflict-free. We aren’t. We never have been. We never will be.
That's brutal honesty, the kind of honesty I'd wish more pundits and writers would practice. And there is nothing wrong with publishing a web site for that purpose. But that doesn't change the fact that a great many folks go to TechCrunch, believing it akin to a CNet or Wired, publications that attempt to key you into what you should know, regardless of who is associated with them.
CrunchNotes is Arrington's personal blog. There is a difference in tone, voice and intent between TechCrunch and CrunchNotes. So your expectations are different. TechCrunch has seemed like something more then 'a blog' for a long time now. Even though that's exactly what it is. Hence the passion over what gets covered there. I think most folks go to TechCrunch believing they are getting acts of journalism, produced *in spite* of relationships, not because of them.
Fact - acts of journalism can be produced by anyone.
Also a fact, and not often told, journalism is the kind of profession that can get you sued, jailed, or even killed. It requires a desire to share some form of 'truth' with someone else. And often, it requires courage.
The kind of courage that led to Will Bradley Roland, one of IndyMedia's contributor's, a journalist in every sense of the word, being shot dead in Oaxaca, Mexico last week.
An increasingly common event in our world.
A world that enables us to shape our media-scape to fit our own view of the truth.
"What is truth?" our new blogosphere empowered media masters seem to ask. Objectivity is a tired concept, some say (which I agree with). But few talk of the principals Dan emphasized when he wrote "The End of Objectivity" (and I'm not talking about "ethics"). And this seems the case with ALL news media doesn't it? Especially coverage of our elected leadership.
And some wonder why a majority of Americans still believe WMDs were found in Iraq.
Well it's tough for two different people to come to the same conclusion when they don't share the same set of facts. It's terrific to disagree about what facts mean. But it's downright horrifying to see we're coming to a place where that discussion is impossible because we disagree about existance of facts outright.
Dave Winer wrote of programmers back in 1997:
Programmers have a very precise understanding of truth. You can't lie to a compiler. Try it sometime. Garbage in, garbage out. Booleans, the ones and zeros, trues and falses, make up the world programmers live in. That's all there is! I think programming is deep, it teaches us about the non-cyber universe we live in. There's something spiritual about computers, and I want to understand it.Programming is good training in the scientific method. For example, last week I spent five hours learning that "50" + 1 = 501 in my scripting system. That truth was available to me the instant I discovered the malfunctioning software, but it took five hours of investigating, digging in, and challenging assumptions before the truth was clear, and I could move on to the next problem.
I'm a code guy. A programmer. Maybe that's why I have some affinity for investigative journalism. The processes are different, but there is some kind of shared goal here that is hard to put into words.
That's why I'm helping do my part by hosting the norgs conversation, and why I am looking forward to seeing efforts like Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.net evolve, which just launched its test site btw (I'm an advisor).
Interesting things are already brewing there. Including sponsoring an interesting collective approach to covering November 7th. And this will require some courage - take your camera with you when you vote. Photograph your polling place and share it. Maybe it will help all of us understand how voting happens in this country, just a little bit better. Note that laws on taking photographs vary from state to state.
Another way you can support journalism is by taking a moment and making a donation to IndyMedia in Will Roland's name.
- Karl on Saturday, November 4, 2006
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