from nytimes.com
Barney Calame's public editor column this week frets about what will happen to the New York Times' rigorous commitment to quality journalism now that the 24-news cycle demands that breaking news stories go online when they happen, not in time for the next day's headlines. Oh no! Whatever will happen to the Times' respected brand?
The answer, of course, is pretty simple: Nothing, if you don't publish crap. It's the question that is revealing, because it betrays a lack of understanding of how the Internet works and what it means to publish material online. Calame doesn't get that journalistic standards apply there, too — perhaps even more stringently, because assertions are expected to be backed up with relevant links, corrections may be instantly appended, and credibility is rigorously tested by the blogosphere, whose tire-kicking helps keep badly-written and sourced material from being passed off as legitimate reporting (cough Judy Miller cough) and, hopefully, has provided an extra impetus for writers and editors to double-check themselves (not a bad thing, even if it isn't an easy thing).
In the case of breaking news, Calame had his answer from deputy managing editor and Times online captain Jonathan Landman who said: "Late-breaking news happens all the time and always has... We do our best to make the stories as good as possible within constraints of time; better, one hopes, than anybody else's." As anyone who consumes journalism across multiple platforms knows, that has nothing to do with where you publish, but what. All the web does is provide another, more available and more nimble platform on which to publish the tire-tested material you have so far. And may we add here, duh.
Calame's question matters in the general sense — that is to say, examining the balance between speed and quality and cautioning the NYT for slavishly pursuing one at the expense of the other. But framing it as an online vs. print debate is inaccurate and facile and betrays a lack of understanding of just how much top-notch journalism — and media criticism — has migrated to the web. Hmm. Perhaps this might have been a better column if he'd had a little more time to work on it.
Breaking News: Can The Times Quality Be Preserved Online? [NYT]
