Should journalists get it right, or get it first?

UPDATE (at bottom of post): Letter writer to Romenesko accuses Jarvis and Arrington of falsely accusing Damin Darlin (author of the NYT article that started this kerfuffle) of attacking bloggers.

Nothing like a battle between mainstream media and bloggers over journalism ethics to add some juicy drama to the weekend. Here’s the quick and dirty:

The New York Times runs a story taking tech bloggers (including TechCrunch) to task for running stories without verification.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington fires back, accusing the Times of having already made up its mind about what kind of story it was going to run before it interviewed him.

And Jeff Jarvis weighs in, declaring that “process journalism” — reporting what is known or believed to be true as it is learned — is replacing the myth of perfection, wherein reporters get the story verified beyond any doubt before packaging and presenting it to readers.

Ah, but there’s the rub: What is the potential harm in reporting what falls into a category that’s perhaps a notch or two below what is “believed to be true”? Arrington makes the argument that TechCrunch’s post on rumors of Apple being in talks to acquire Twitter was based on a previously reliable source. Furthermore, he argues, the very act of reporting a rumor is a way of verifying by beating the bushes, so to speak:

Why the Boston Globe needs to go bankrupt

At BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis says the New York Times should force the Boston Globe into bankruptcy:

[The Globe is] losing $85 million a year. They saved only $20 with recent concessions. It could bring The New York Times down. Time for radical surgery.

Speaking of bankruptcy (and layoffs, and pay cuts and out-of-print): The Wall Street Journal maps the decline of the nation’s top newspapers since 2006.

Portland to the New York Times: Thanks but no thanks

Because love is a two-way street, Oregonian columnist Anna Griffin gently but firmly tells The New York Times that its courtship of Portland will only end in heartbreak:

Here’s the problem: You’re making us something we’re not. Most of us don’t have time for a weekend at the Ace Hotel, or the wardrobe for First Thursday. Sure, we talk about racial tensions, but we haven’t conquered them. We still aren’t sure what to do with either our mayor or our major-league ambitions. …

…Besides, frankly, we’re just not that into you. Sure, we love curling up with you on Sunday mornings, sipping our Stumptown and taking a glimpse into a world where people talk about “frenemies,” “man dates,” and where their parents’ parents went to college. But, at heart, we’re simpler folks. You’ll eventually grow bored of our easy commutes and healthy living. One of these days, we’re going to wake up to discover you’ve dumped us for Detroit or Houston.

Fuel economy ledes about Obama announcement

Here’s a survey of today’s ledes from some of the nation’s top newspapers about President Obama’s intentions to toughen fuel economy standards for automakers. The Wall Street Journal offers the most specific opening graf, while the Washington Post and New York Times do a good job of contextualizing the announcement. The Los Angeles Times lede, on the other hand, is syntactically jarring, sacrificing clarity and accessibility for conjecture and information that could have been included further down in the article:

Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration plans to order auto makers to increase the fuel economy of automobiles sold in the U.S. to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, four years faster than current federal law requires, people familiar with the matter said.

Washington Post:

The Obama administration today plans to propose tough standards for tailpipe emissions from new automobiles, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases.

New York Times:

President Obama will announce tough new nationwide rules for automobile emissions and mileage standards on Tuesday, embracing standards that California has sought to enact for years over the objections of the auto industry and the Bush administration.

USA Today:

The Obama administration is set to announce Tuesday what will amount to a sweeping revision to auto-emission and fuel-economy standards, putting them in the same package for the first time.

Los Angeles Times:

The agreement that the Obama administration will announce today forcing dramatic reductions in vehicle greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in auto mileage marks a potentially pivotal shift in the battle over global warming — and a vindication of California’s long battle to toughen standards.

Lens, New York Times's photojournalism blog

The New York Times unveiled its great-looking new blog, Lens. The light-gray text of the captions is rather small and doesn’t contrast well against the background. But the photos are the focus here, and they are excellent, particularly this lovely set of black-and-whites by Fred R. Conrad.

A reporter's worst nightmare

If not the worst, then close to it: According to one irate journalist, when the New York Times incorporated the former site of the International Herald Tribune with its own, it erased the IHT archives. And along with it, at least one journalist’s entire output:

Thomas Crampton writes:

1- Every one of the links ever made to IHT stories now points back to the generic NY Times global front page.

2- Even when I go to the NY Times global page, I cannot find my articles. In other words, my entire journalistic career at the IHT – from war zones to SARS wards – has been erased.

Thomas Friedman's lucrative "misunderstanding"

About that $75,000 speaking fee Thomas Friedman received for a speech before the [San Francisco]  Bay Area Air Quality Management District: He gave it back.

You can thank L.A. Times reporter James Rainey for pursuing Friedman to ask if he felt any guilt about accepting a significant amount of money from a public agency:

Friedman didn’t return my calls, and New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis seemed pretty cool to my questions. I got the feeling, from her long silences, that she thought my questions were a little silly.

Then late Tuesday afternoon, Mathis called to say Friedman would return the $75,000. She said there had been “a misunderstanding.”

Times ethics guidelines allow staffers to take speaking fees only from “educational and other nonprofit groups for which lobbying and political activity are not a major focus.” The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which coughed up Friedman’s standard fee, hardly fits that bill.

Thomas Friedman, because he's worth it

How much would you pay to hear Thomas Friedman speak? Whatever it is, it’s probably a lowball figure. Because San Francisco’s Bay Area Air Quality Management district shelled out a cool $75K to hear the New York Times columnist, World is Flat author and Charlie Rose regular speechify.  But it’s not about the money, as SFGate reports:

As for reports that Friedman’s talk was almost identical to a speech he gave in November in Florida at a National League of Cities confab – which is available online for free? “That very likely may be,” [District spokeswoman Lisa] Fasano said. “But this certainly is much more moving and inspirational to see and hear in person.”

Wiki-fy the news

The New York Times‘ article about Journalism Online L.L.C. says the prospects of  the venture’s success is “doubted by many media analysts.”

It never mentions a single one of those analysts. Doesn’t provide so much as a hyperlink.

Nor does it explain what is meant by the provocative “The company also plans to negotiate licensing and royalty fees with search engines and news aggregators for the use of the publications’ work.”

And you know what: That’s OK. Sort of.  But you have to let readers know that you’ll be following up on the story, that the report isn’t just a one-and-done deal.

Regardless of whether you as a reporter will provide more context, here’s my big idea:

Connecting news with communities

A quick rundown of what The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times and a group of hyperlocal sites are doing to build audiences.

The New York Times takes a look at hyperlocal sites EveryBlock, Outside.in, Placeblogger and Patch,

Alan Murray, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, offers his philosophy of what reporters need to do to grab eyeballs:

The art of a good blog is figuring out the right mix between the piece that you know is going to get maximum search-engine hits to the piece that really defines what you’re doing that’s uniquely valuable. That second piece might not bring in as much traffic, but it’s the piece that’s gonna keep the traffic once you get it in the door. So all of that, which is part of the job of building a community, building an audience — those are totally new skills.

Meanwhile, The Washington Times is embracing citizen journalism — in print: