Just like you can’t cure the cold with antibiotics, we can’t cure the problem of unaccountable commenters at newspapers if the population at large thinks it’s ‘the blogs.’ While people are calling for a fix in ‘the blogs,’ newspapers have no real incentive to fix it, because they aren’t ‘the blogs.’
Many local editors and the people above their heads probably aren’t sophisticated enough to realize they’re the ones propagating this problem to begin with. The few savvy enough to comprehend this certainly aren’t going to be the ones quick to fix it; it’s a misunderstanding they’re only happy to reinforce. Quite inappropriately, most of the media views blogging as competition. Many journalists view bloggers as ‘bad.’ All that, while the vast majority of the population doesn’t even know what blogging is. The combination results in the majority of the public missing out on a real societal asset.
So, what the heck are we going to do about it? First, let’s analyze the problems and possible solutions.
What are the problems?
* Anonymity.
* Unaccountability.
* A general ignorance about the web 2.0.
What are the solutions?
* Solving anonymity: the universal acceptance of ‘signing in.’
* Solving the accountability gap: the universal promotion of online meritocracy; making newspapers buy into the importance of building user-name reputation.
* Solving Web ignorance: education. Everyone should know what a blog is versus a comment versus a forum.
Bloggers, commenters and internet-savvy people need to become involved; we need to recognize there’s a real problem here – and take ownership of it. We can’t be so naive as to think that anything on the Internet is a good thing, because the bad elements threaten to ruin the potential of what we can truly accomplish.
If the vast majority of the population doesn’t value the medium of blogging, it’s only going to be that much harder to gain traction and sustain progress. Everyone needs to know the difference between a blog, an Internet forum and comments – whether people use them or not. That’s the only way to make sure the media holds local papers accountable when their comment sections run amok. Newspapers make accountability in letters and opinions paramount; online comments shouldn’t be any different. In both cases people are using the brand of a newspaper to give their opinions greater weight, so newspapers should have an interest in stake here. Most importantly, when it comes to being online, while being anonymous can be a good thing, being unaccountable is never acceptable. The progressive blogosphere is built around that premise, but we can’t rest until it’s a universal standard all across the Internet.
Note: parts of this blog were originally posted on my blog, Ryan’s Take.
what we really need to do is write a few letters to various town WickedLocal sites. That way, if they know there’s people who want them to make that change, they’ll be more likely to do it.
is the mainstream media. One of my favorite radio shows is the Media Project on WAMC. Alan Chartock’s fellow panelists often refer to the blogosphere in a derogatory manner. I emailed them once saying that blogosphere unfortunately conflates sources of various quality and perpsective.
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p>They just don’t understand what we do. They also don’t see a difference between Michelle Malkin and Huffington Post in terms of quality.
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p>Maybe a letter writing campaign is in order.
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p>Mark