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Dec
21
No, no one is talking or writing about Wide Open. But Steve Outing interviewed Bob Cox of Media Bloggers Association in regard to the new Newsweek/political blogger effort, The Ruckus. Read the interview here.
In start contrast to the Plain Dealer approach (and this is the lead-off question of the online interview text):
Me [Steve Outing]: Is there any editing involved (before or after blog publication)? Does Newsweek exert any editorial control or influence over the blogs posts that appear as part of The Ruckus?
Cox: Absolutely not! This was perhaps the single most important part of the agreement between the MBA and Newsweek. It would be irresponsible for a world-class news organization like Newsweek to be anything other than very protective of their reputation and therefore very concerned about what is going out under their name. At the same time, to their credit, they realized that what attracted them to the idea of integrating blogger content into Newsweek.com was the unedited voice of genuine bloggers. I’ve been over this ground many times with different news organizations interested in working with bloggers and quite often what the news organization ends up with is a citizen media initiative that is so watered down that they’ve drained the very essence of what attracted them to blogging in the first place. From the perspective of those who care about citizen journalism, Newsweek has taken the high road and let the bloggers be bloggers.
Additionally:
-the bloggers are getting paid,
-they are members of the MBA and
-”MBA members are required to be abide by MBA policies and under the terms of the agreement with Newsweek they are required to abide by Newsweeks editorial standards and policies.”
-”Contractually, Newsweek is specifically prohibited from editing blogger content under the terms of our deal.”
How The Ruckus works:
A key part of the technical set up is that we use tags to pull the posts from the blogs of the contributing bloggers so that other than adding one additional tag to posts they wish to submit to the feed they do not have to do any extra work such as cross-post their content into another site or email posts to an editor or things like that. This keeps it very simple for the blogger so they can afford to take the time to participate (done right, almost zero time once we’ve set up the feed) and are not going to get tired of doing extra work, lose interest and stop contributing. Further, the partners display headlines and excerpts from each post with a link back to the originating blog.
The blogger selection process:
Me: How were the Ruckus bloggers chosen? Did Newsweek just pick them, or was there an application process for the bloggers?
Cox: I gave Newsweek a short list and they made it shorter.
All MBA members were eligible and I personally considered every political blogger among our members. There were a variety of factors that came into play but striving to achieve political balance was foremost on our mind. To a certain extent the bloggers selected for the launch are intended to be ambassadors from their corner of the political blogosphere. The hope being that we include them and they will include other deserving blogs through cross-linking into the feed going up to Newsweek so that Newsweek readers are being exposed to a wide range of voices.
I personally developed a list of about 100 bloggers then whittled that down to about 40 before beginning to make recommendations to Newsweek editors. We went back and forth for about two months in getting down to nine blogs. At the end of the day, they had the final say on which blogs were in the launch group. My hope is that Newsweek will be happy with this project and as the campaign continues to heat up there will be opportunities to add more bloggers and I am sure as we do we will continue to look for opportunities to bring fresh points of view to the discussion taking place on The Ruckus.
WLST made it onto the short list of recommendations, thanks to Bob Cox.
A lot of folks have written about how bloggers either have no ethics, adhere to no code or don’t need a code or ethics. I don’t agree with any of that to the extreme. We all have a code and most of us have ethics, recognizable to others. Bob Cox and MBA work hard to show how that works, and that it does work. Thanks for your efforts, Bob.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:37 am December 21st, 2007 in Blogging, Media, Politics, Wide Open, Writing
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6 Responses to “Outing unpacks The Ruckus: “even a very traditional news company can open itself up to outside content, unedited, in meaningful ways””
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Ah, I see where I would go south on this: I’d never join the MBA. That’s just one way of winnowing out the fold. And you know doggone well the folks who blog for Newsweek have their parameters laid out. For instance – no blogging on 9-11 truthers like I did in my blog today. And so on.
Well – I agree that MBA winnows, but I have to tell you – I’ve been trying to apply to if for a long time now and looked into it probably two years ago, when Wendy Hoke first told me about it, or I may have found it on my own at about the same time Wendy mentioned it. I’m not completely opposed to winnowing but the key thing is that it says what I’m willing to agree to – and then people will judge as they desire. I can’t let that cause me to NOT choose something that I agree with, you know what I mean?
As for Newsweek bloggers – you mean ones on the site or the ones fed through the Ruckus?
Jill:
Both. Newsweek is so mainstream it squeaks. I fear the whole mechanism is: show us you won’t upset the status quo and we’ll let you in. OK, I’m cynical, but in my defense, I’ve seen a lot on the inside.
Are you still trying to get into the MBA? Did you withdraw once you realized what you had to agree to?
Well – I don’t believe the ones being fed through the Ruckus are compromising anything. My understanding has been that they can write absolutely anything. Bob Cox is a pretty straightforward guy – he would have no credibility with the bloggers if he asked them to sell-out or give up independence that they weren’t prepared to give up.
As for applying, it got stalled and currently there’s a hiatus on applications. So I’m not a member and I didn’t even get as far as submitting info.
What part of what I’d have to agree to don’t you like?
Jill:
You wrote: “I’m not completely opposed to winnowing but the key thing is that it says what I’m willing to agree to – and then people will judge as they desire. I can’t let that cause me to NOT choose something that I agree with, you know what I mean?”
That’s what I was wondering – what was it specifically that caused you concern here? My concern with any such membership is simply that an organization would be judging (I suppose) my ethics and credibility. I’d rather let my readers judge that. It seems a little, SPJ-ish in a way but that’s a little different in that SPJ membership tends to reinforce the ethics you have to practice as a paid journalist through your employer. Blogging? Well, I suppose if you get paid to do it there’s always the chance that whoever pays you might decide not to someday depending on what you’ve written. While we’d all love to get paid for this artful scribbling, I always worry about losing my independence to write whatever I wish. Its hard for me to believe that one can be paid and be completely free to write whatever they want to. “Within reason” can me vastly different things to different people.
I hope the Ruckus experiment is as freewheeling as you say – I will be following it hopefully.
And I’m sure that someday we’ll see you in HuffPo.
Well – I’ve never really been about not having ethics or codes etc. as part of a framework. I know many of the bloggers I respect the most do not like the idea of nor see the need for such a thing. And I respect that. But, maybe because I’ve been part of professions that already have codes (social work and law), the idea just doesn’t strike me as 100% abhorrent. There’s a promise it implies to the onlooker.
Sure – journalism professional flout it pretty obviously and regularly (as do lawyers and social workers) so it’s easy to say, what good is it really.
But – I do see that it can help set apart the true dreck.
If there were some way to say that not belonging doesn’t automatically mean that there’s no value (because of course we know that that’s not true), then maybe it would be easier to allow for some folks to be okay with being part of a group with a code and others not.
I don’t know – I guess I see it as something natural. The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but it’s not a bad thing, is it?