Yesterday I did an interview with NPR’s On The Media about the idea of Process Journalism.
Process Journalism is the posting of a story before it’s fully baked, something the New York Times officially despises, but they do it too.
From my original post:
We don’t believe that readers need to be presented with a sausage all the time. Sometimes it’s both entertaining and informative to see that sausage being made, too. The key is to be transparent at all times. If we post something we think is rough, we say so. If we think it’s absolutely true, we signal that, too, while protecting our sources.
…
But anyway, media outlets like the NYTimes think that having to update a story is a sign of weakness. I believe the opposite, that it’s a sign of transparency and a promise to our readers to continue to give them the best information we have. Corrections and updates are made constantly to big news posts.
Some people ask why we don’t just wait until we have the whole story before posting. That’s where the cheap/expensive quote above comes in. The fact is that we sometimes can’t get to the end story without going through this process. CEOs don’t always take our calls when we’re asking about speculative rumors. But when a story is up and posted, it’s amazing how many people come out of the woodwork to give us additional information.
It’s that iterative process, which Jarvis nails completely, that I was trying to guide Damon to. He can like it or hate it, but it works. And readers love it. The only people who don’t like it are competitors who like to point out that a story was partially wrong, and that they got it right later. But the fact is that they didn’t even know there was a story to begin with. Our original post kicked off the process, and they, like us, started digging for the absolute truth.
This is not really a disagreement but it should probably be noted that “process journalism” does not account for the responsibility of the media.
Let’s say America’s beloved ex-first lady Laura Bush is murdered in Dallas. Initial signs implicate George Dubya, according to one insider’s report. An angry mob, acting on this initial report as posted by a popular Dallas blog, head over to the Bush apartment and kill and torture George W. Bush. Later it is revealed that he was in Brazil at the time of Laura’s death.
Don’t you think that in this circumstance it is far more important to tip the balance in favour of what IS known versus what CAN BE known?
What can be known often leads peoples’ thoughts and actions in the wrong direction. Big slow plodding newspapers (until lately) have traditionally prided themselves on being the “sober news”. It is the fact that they’ve lost THAT particular plot that is most disturbing.
Last point: I agree that there is room for blogs to practise “process journalism”, however the structure and technologies driving blogs today treat articles as static, never-changing pieces. Users generally read it once and don’t check in again.. and so the story is factually true to them at the particular interval when they happen to read it. Let’s evolve WP to content with changelogs and other transparency features (like a wiki), as well as better notification technologies, so that you truly can practise “process journalism”.
Publishing poorly researched info can result
in the publishing of damaging info that
Can’t be rectified except maybe in court.
that certainly has to be factored in when posting content. Is an individual’s reputation involved? Is a public company stock involved? etc. lots of factors go into the thinking around this.
Got to love the demagogy.
Looking over certain things while making some things more important than other.
This with your “holocaust deniers” quest is a prime example of that.
Let’s focus on this and on “holocaust deniers i.e something that happened 60 years ago” and let’s overlook the North Korean’s dying due starvation because of foreign aid being cut and the various genocides going around all over the world.
So learn how to balance your posts like pro journalist do.
I happen to like “process journalism”, but I wish there were better documentation of the process: Updates to posts need better markup to include precise time stamps for each and every update.
A standard way of handling article ‘version control’ – perhaps even letting people check out earlier versions – would be pretty slick.
The difference between the NYT and Tech Crunch is the difference between Batch and RT processing – Arrington I suggest you check this out:
http://codybrow...new-york-times/
I’m really glad you have taken such a stand on this.
“The fact is that we sometimes can’t get to the end story without going through this process. CEOs don’t always take our calls when we’re asking about speculative rumors.”
I certainly found it to be true when writing about issues in the music industry at ProHipHop that a lot of people would ignore my contacts until after I posted. Then they would respond though I was rarely dealing with speculative rumors. Usually I was dealing with obvious lies and con games that nobody else cared about pursuing because it was hip hop!
Going public forced their hand and was the only real leverage I had when I used to do a lot of that kind of thing.
You say in the interview that you always specify whether or not it’s a rumour, surely this means you should have stated everything regarding with last.fm was a rumour? What defines a rumour? Personally I think unless you can provide categorical evidence to the readers that it is legitimate, it’s a rumour.
I think it brings in the love of gossip people have.. I think people like the element of uncertainty.. like your twitter apple story.. in a way it teases something exciting and that is part of the fun.. and I would say process journalism represents how stories come to be.. it allows the reader to see how rumors can sometimes just be rumors and how they can also evolve into truth. Process Journalism provides far more drama and entertainment..
awesome interview. good background and great explanation of vested interest vs just giving startups great PR. good interview. The one w/ Leo Laporte was a great listen to as well…
Have to be honest: TechCrunch does a far better job at this than Mashable (which is why I read this blog over the other), but I’m not sold on process journalism. It’s playing with fire almost every time, and maybe you (a general you, not a TechCrunch you) can get away with it for a while, but sooner or later it’ll blow up and make everyone (the blog, the advertisers of the blog, and the people being covered) look bad.
If that happens enough times, readers will jump to alternative outlets and advertisers will go elsewhere.
very interesting..LOL
Great interview, Michael. This was a story I took great interest in and have to agree with you 100% on the matter. Bravo!
Those of us not in the MSM take our shots at them sometimes. I think it’s worth a tip of the hat to Bob Garfield (interviewer) of On the Media. Unlike some of the hatchet jobs on Mike, it was an entirely fair interview even though it was apparent Garfield was going in with a negative slant on “process journalism”.
The BBC do this all the time, something happens somewhere – it’s a breaking news ticker until they have enough facts or time to write a story, then they update that story as more facts emerge.
Or am I missing something?
Agreed. Some of my favorite publications and blogs do this same things. I think its the responsible thing to do, especially when the topic is controversial. A good example is Glenn Greenwald at Salon — you can count on him to update the story as he finds out more from his readers and other writers (which inevitably happens with the type of stories he reports).
Bad news travels fast .. good news never catches up.
…but you’re not a media outlet. You’re a slanted, informal blog. So why are you talking about this?
Process journalism too easily degenerates into allegations without corroboration. Speed kills thoroughness. There’s an editorial Hippocratic Oath that should guide all of us: “To injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” –-Mary Baker Eddy’s mandate to the Christian Science Monitor.
Where clicks are currency, process journalism can quickly become as “profit oriented” as dividend-seeking talking heads. We mustn’t forgive half-assed reportage just because there’s a “developing story” disclaimer or an automatic update feature. We all know, as Goering knew, that words and images are powerful. That’s why we must publish only complete, thorough, and supported stories.
Web-based news media sits astride a continuum between two extremes, between the pajama media and the MSM. At least the big boys have trained observers at the scene of the story, feeling the heat and the hate, smelling the fire and the fear.
I don’t see evidence that process journalism is any better than either extreme.
First, I heard the interview and thought that you did a fairly good job defending your point of view. One thing that was emphasized on the program and that I would like to reiterate is the potential for abuse by public companies and those who represent them.
Michael, you said that you feel responsible for a $6 billion (brief) swing in valuation when techcrunch broke the google acquisition of youtube several days before the deal was announced. That is pretty substantial. Doctors and lawyers provide opinion for a living. If they provide opinions which are wrongful and negligent, they are held to task. Should techcrunch not be held to the same standard?
oops…didn’t realize interview was available on this page
Good interview. Mike, you get props for setting the NYTimes straight.
Sadly, Michael still hasn’t gone on record as to why TechCrunch didn’t report Biz Stone’s public denial of the Apple/Twitter rumors two days (”Biz Stone denies Twitter Apple buyout rumor,” Tech Radar, May 7, 2009; incidentally, Stone made this comment on the television program “The View”) after TechCrunch posted its speculation of a potential buyout (”Twitter Mania: Google Got Shut Down. Apple Rumors Heat Up.,” “Follow the Money: Bookies Favor Apple for a Twitter Buyout,” both May 5, 2009). You would think that was integral to the overall story, thus part of the process. What Michael advocates here is not process journalism, but selective journalism. The former is just something to duck behind to shirk responsibility for poor follow-through.
Thanks to John Zhu’s blog for putting this matter in perspective.
Process journalism is further enabled by Twitter. Before, you were adding updates to a post. Now, you’re tweeting the details as it happens (ex: “A plane just landed in the Hudson”).
It’s not really that big a deal if you break a story and change the details as you get them, provided you believe them to be true at the time. We would rather know the rumor now than the whole story later. That’s far more exciting.