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Monday, December 5, 2005
Food For Thought
Posted by Joe Bardi on Mon, Dec 5, 2005 at 2:38 PM
We need to have a serious discussion of how the editing of blog posts is going to occur. I understand the reasons for CL wanting to have all posts edited before they go live, but I also think that that process is completely counterintuitive to the speed with which the blog should operate. In other words, if it takes 24 hours from the conception of a blog post until it is published, I think that's pretty useless.
I could see how editing during the flow of a normal workday could be made to work (although, I don't want to be the guy who has to stop and edit 75-word posts 19 times a day), but what about posts at night and over the weekend? I assume we're going to be a 24-hour operation here at "Planet Talk," right? How will that work?
Thoughts? Use the comment section.
Comments (17)
Showing 1-17 of 17
I agree; the editing and responsibility for a blog or blogs is the trickiest part of the non-blogging media's attempt to enter the blogosphere. Almost by definition, blogs defy the normal application of professional journalism's discipline of verification, objectivity and scientific method. They are (or I should say the best ones are) immediate, unedited, evolving, and highly subjective. These differences have led to even a separate code of ethics for bloggers that builds onto SPJ's code but changes it in some key areas. We must reconcile these differences or redefine our "blog" in such a way so that we understand it doesn't meet some of the standard tests for other non-professional jounalists.
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Joe -- I agree that is cumbersome, and it does slow down the "flow of the blog" to some extent. I argued these points and more, Doug will tell you, but the answer from our lawyers is final: Our content must be edited before it is posted live. I thought that this would pose more of a problem than it really does. Currently, CL has 4-5 blogs. The truth is that our bloggers usually don't attempt to write off-hours, or on the weekend. Notably, none of you responded to my "Rules" post until this morning -- on this, the week that ya'll are excited about your new blog. As a corollary, web traffic in general halves during the weekend; when folks aren't sitting around bored at work. I've found this generality to be true with the CL sites, our CL blogs, and my own blog. So here's my suggestion: Appoint someone internally to be the blog editor, 9-5 M-F. All writers will compose their posts and save as "Draft" ... NOT as published. For special occasions -- an all night blog fest for the Oscars, elections, whatever -- we can work something out where an editor (most likely me) is available to approve the posts in real time. And as for those 3 a.m. strokes of genius ... well, send me an email. I just might be awake and able to approve your post. It's important to note that *posts* must be edited, but not *comments.*
The editor is editing for grammar, punctuation, and the possibility of liability, right? are there other functions i don't know about? because if those are all, it seems to me that we could set up a system where everyone (or more imortantly, anyone) could edit. ie, before a post goes live, another staffer has to read it. i think we're all pretty competent around here, if you have questions about a potentially libelous post, those can quickly be addressed by dave, eric, laura or wayne. and if two sets of eyes read for typos and whatnot, i'm sure our accuracy will be pretty high. just an idea. otherwise, it seems to me we do a two-headed monster kind of thing. one person is a grammer/punctuation editor, and dave is who you talk to for content issues, 99% of which should be about the possibility of our getting sued. and how do comments work? laura, i remember that you had to pull some on sugg's blog — i take it that's the editor's job too?
I like the idea of a round-robin buddy system of editing and back-stopping on our posts before they go live as Max has suggested.
Max: Spelling, Grammar, Libel & General Untruth Although we can be silly, we cannot lie. As for the Round Robin editing ... The only problem with that is accountability. Let's say you post something stupid. Someone calls up with a complaint. But we can't remember who edited the post - there is no one to take the blame except the web editor. Let's think of an accountability system.
I understand the accountability issue, maybe the editor can initial as the first comment as a way to keep track. as for general untruth — unless we're gonna put posts through the rigorous fact-checking process every piece in print goes through, that doesn't seem to me like it will be a constant issue. don't post shit you don't know is true. if it's from a story, site the story. we're gonna get things wrong of course, but my guess is we'll get a lot less stuff wrong on the blog that we do in the paper - most of the mistakes there are becuase things haven't been updated, not because we got facts wrong. again, i think there's a lot of common sense around here and mistakes will be kept to a minumum. unless one person is willing to take responsibility, i'm not sure how welse to do it.
Laura - I'm curious about the liability issue re comments. I understand why we wouldn't be liable for comments from outside parties reading the blog, but wouldn't comments by staffers still have to be vetted?
So we discussed the blog today at the meeting and for those of you that weren't there, I believe we've come to a decision for the time being...Blog posts should be emailed to me before they're posted. I will just quickly copy edit them, then send you a response to proceed with any changes I may or may not have. If it's a potentially libelous post, I'll seek approval from David or Wayne before it can be posted. Hope that clears up the liability issue for now, and all will run smoothly.
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