Brave New(s) World

Blogger should be viewed in the same light as the chatter in the coffeeshop

Evans – at least in the coffeeshop, the chatter is contained. If it’s so accessible as at canoe, it’s impossible to escape.

Newland – perception of validity. It will become clear that you can’t take chatroom gossip as Gospel.
Wikipedia is always brought up as a dubious source. Read the rest of this entry »

Ingram – transparency replaces objectivity

McDonald – why can’t we have commenting on crime stories? Old media instincts click in, a couple times a day, you have to shut down the commenting section as it’s overwhelmed. McDonald admits that online moderators censor when things veer off discussion and turn personal

Graves – CBC’s position on moderation is far too conservative and he would like to open it up more. We need to be conservative because we’re branding it and monetizing it. Graves thinks it would be a better service to the public to be a wider service area and not be affiliated with CBC News

Branding – when affiliated with CBC, Globe, Star, etc there’s an inherently conservative base in order to protect the brand.

Ingram – Moderation is impossible. There’s a loss of control because you feel you need to read every comment and respond. Benefit to doing away with comment moderation: build a relationship with readers and they become the moderators voluntarily.
How do you get money out of that? Not there yet…

Ingram – If we can’t figure out how to make money out of building strong relationships, we deserve to go out of business.

Newland – People will invest in communities they feel safe in.

McDonald – at some point it’s accepted that we’re going to have to start charging something for our content.
Ingram – disagree. We never charge for content. We sold access to our readers to advertisers.

Evans – perhaps a web package like a cable tv package? bundle your interests

Bringing up Stafford case.
Newland reminds us that Tara McDonald was providing own updates via facebook. It’s about how their emerging in the public sphere.

Evans – does anyone who posts anything in Facebook step outside the private sphere?

Ingram -(the Globe) pulled photos from the accused’s facebook site.

Fairhurst brings us back to the photo of Jordan Manners’ mother collapsing in front of the school. As soon as she walks outside, she’s fodder for the camera.

Accused in Stafford case has public profile (if in London network)

Eg. Photo of Rhianna beat up by Chris Brown generated a lot of negative feedback – editor posted on twitter “does this cross the boundary?”

Evans – it’s okay for us to say we have a standard for our own behaviour

Ingram – the community needs to be the one to say what’s ethical and what isn’t. Going back and forth on what to do with comments: am I a gatekeeper or am I generating an important discussion?

Newland brings up Rabble.ca – an open discussion for Canadian politics? No. Progressive discussion. Not what he looks for in a comment section.

Terry Fox is not a fox, Jack the Ripper a fabrication from the then-emerging tabloid press. What is it about ethics that produced such a character of Jack the Ripper? Villains sell papers.
Nick Pron, formerly of the Toronto Star, mentions that in investigating West End murders, editors wanted to know if it was a serial killer because that’s  a sexier angle (than a bunch of random killers). It tends to focus the story.  Pron can see bloggers taking it one step further by finding more similarities. Not accurate, but not inaccurate. So much sexier to have one killer.

Heather Evans – Assignment editor at CBC Radio + World at Six producer

Goal of World at Six – trying to get a little more than a quick hit. e.g. Margaret in Libya looking at the role of the

CBC looking to update manual a few times to ensure that everything is application not only to radio and television but also to online content. eg. CBC used to never embed journalists and now they do in Kandahar, now have some user-generated content Read the rest of this entry »