Will 'Net reporters be able to rival print reporters?

Oh my gosh. Reader comments. Anonymous reader comments. Vulgar reader comments that go unedited. A real example of gross misconduct by newspapers. Comments under stories are vulgar, libelous, sickening. And yet newspapers allow people to use talk-show type names (Lexington Wildcat; Louisville Slugger; Pitinolover) on their comments. Newspapers should force all commentors to put their real names just as they do on print letters to the editor.

 

Bob Rivard picks his words carefully. He's someone in the business who has a lot of ideas. Some work. Some don't. This isn't the first time that he's spoken about this. It might be the first time he has formally written something about it.

 

No one, and that's a major problem intensifying every day.

Newspapers have been reluctant, for the most part, to follow the lead of television to trumpet its writers as "Your News Leader!" or "The Valley's Most Reliable News Source." Television blows itself to the point of nausea and newspapers never or rarely let readers know anything about the writers, other than the byline.

So when Fanboi writes something and "the press" is criticized, there is no separation among us and them because we have neglected to make ourselves known. We have assumed, probably arrogantly and stupidly, that readers expect The Press or The News-Leader or The Times writers to be "the" source. If we say "Hey, wait a minute. That guy is not legitimate" then in the public's view we are, again, the arrogant bastards.

Newspaper management has contributed to this with its iReporters and citizen journalism bullshit, asking anyone and everyone to write, "report" and send it in. Fanboi Blogs contribute to the decline. Walter Cronkite was trusted. Ed Pope and Jim Murray were trusted.

Now, the line has been so blurred it may be impossible to change it.

 

All this is true and hopefully newspapers will stop being so shy about trumpeting their accomplishments. We've done some of this in our recent efforts to take down a mayor. It's also true that many of the reporters being hired for online stuff are inexperienced and not capable of doing the investigative stuff. Most newspapers are keeping the model of the best reporters staying on the print side and then posting their stuff quickly when they turn something and polishing it for use in the next day's paper. That seems to work pretty well. And we've done one thing that at least helps with those reader comments. When we run the roundup of them in the paper, we put a line underneath that says "Reader comments run as they are written with no editing." That at least lets people know it's not us making all these spelling errors and grammatical mistakes and stupidity.

 

So I'm confused here...why would a website not be able to break either of those stories?

 

Theoretically, they would. If they could get find a way to bring in enough revenue to support the reporting. To this point, they haven't. Not in local communities, at least. You do have your occasional Yahoo.com breaking Reggie Bush stories and such.