TSA subpoenas raise tough issues for watchdogs

Chris Gray Faust, former USAToday travel editor, has highlighted an important situation on her blog, one that needs the attention of all journalists and might also give some pause to those who hope watchdog journalism can survive in the new era of atomized journalism.

Travel writer Chris Elliott and aviation writer Steven Frischling were hit with visits from federal agents and subpoenas after they posted online a Transportation Security Administration document outlining its security procedures.

Not surprisingly, the feds wanted to know their source. Frischling's computer hard drive also was taken.

Yes, I'll stipulate there are national security issues involved and the feds have the authority to do what they did.

But watchdog journalism requires sometimes defying authority. Were it not so, we would not have had the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the revelations of the Bush-era wiretapping, etc. etc. And add your own load of local investigative reporting.

In the atomized journalism economy, however, there is a real question, one not much acknowledged by those who see a new era, of how this new era will intersect with a legal system that traditionally is at least a decade behind technology. As it stands, in today's legal environment, the large news organization - for better or worse - is about the only journalism institution with the economic throw weight to counterbalance the increasing legal power of government and corporations. (And, as seems apparent, even those journalism institutions are less likely to pull out the expensive legal guns these days as their business crumbles.)

Undoubtedly, Frischling and Elliott face thousands of dollars in legal bills.

So the title of Faust's post, "I the gig economy, who protects journalist bloggers," raises issues I'd like to see discussed more among the digiterati - what changes do we need in the legal system and what new institutions need to develop to encourage watchdog journalism.

I'll start with a couple of suggestions, one of which I've made before:

• We need to develop a federal small-claims court in which cases of online defamation can be handled. It would be a court of unitary jurisdiction, so there is no onus on either party to have to defend or prosecute in a far-away location. Preferably, of course, almost everything would be handled electronically.
• Existing journalism organizations like IRE and SPJ, and new ones such as Media Bloggers and ONA, along with those of us in academe and the profession, need to figure out ways to create cooperatives that can provide the same kind of institutional services, such as legal, that a corporate structure can, but at a reasonable price to the individual practitioner. (Media Bloggers does offer an insurance policy, but I'm suggesting more than that is needed, that there needs to be an actual legal infrastructure in place that can push back, not just be reactive.)

Your thoughts?

Update
The TSA has now dropped the subpoenas and offered to buy Frischling a new computer since his was damged in the search.

We must be doing something right

Or, the cynics among us might say we just got lucky.

In either case, it was interesting to note the latest Bivings Report which, instead of ranking the top newspaper sites of the year, turned to ranking how they use Twitter.

The top "Twitter IQ" went to the Baltimore Sun and the fourth to the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. Until recently, Mary Hartney, a former student of mine and University of South Carolina grad, was the Sun's director of audience engagement. She now is a content developer at YTL Communications and was one of the school's outstanding alumni this year.

At the Times Union, former student and USC grad Jonathan Bennett is online news editor.

As the creators at Bivings acknowledge, their "Twitter IQ" has its imperfections, and there are other ways to measure social interactivity. But it's one of the first I've seen that attempts to define a "balance" in using Twitter for audience interaction.

(I doubt this had much bearing on Hartney and Bennett, but at USC we have been teaching SMS/texting for five years, pre-Twitter. I don't claim any prescience, but it started after I was looking at a member's Saxotech online filing system and noticed there was a box to file a text alert on the same screen as the box to file the main story. I figured that probably would end up becoming a copy desk function, so we started trying to teach what a good text message is.)

Why we do what we do

I thought I'd share my latest Common Sense Journalism column, the other part of the CSJ megaplex. Happy holidays !

Why we do what we do

by Doug Fisher

I opened the paper the other day and suddenly felt like singing the line from “American Pie”: “Bad news on the doorstep. I couldn’t take one more step.”

There was a pumpkin shortage for Thanksgiving. Fearful of child molesters in its volunteer ranks, the post office had stopped answering children’s letters to Santa from North Pole, Alaska.

And of course there was the constant drumbeat of stories about how the news business is struggling.

What next? No Santa Claus?

Then came the student, arm outstretched, cell phone in hand, screen pointed at me.

“Look,” he commanded.

Only there was a big grin on his face. And on the screen was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a while – a picture of a 3-inch hump of asphalt painted yellow and stretching across a street. A speed hump.

Before you question my aesthetics, or my sanity, let me explain.

Each semester, students in my public affairs reporting class must generate some of their stories from a town or neighborhood. The student was one of three assigned to Washington Park, a subdivision about a mile from the University of South Carolina stadium. It’s mostly minority owned, largely surrounded by light industry and hemmed in by busy roads on either side. Lately it is being squeezed by new apartment developments catering to students.

In short, it’s the sort of place – and people ­– easily overlooked. You know them; you almost surely have them in your town or city.

The students were a bit apprehensive, and the residents a bit suspicious, so it was slow going at first. Even so, it didn’t take long before the young journalists got the scent.

The railroad that owned the property on which the community’s eponymous park sat had sold the land to another student housing developer. Efforts to find land for a new park were not going well. Little to nothing had been written about it.

Some residents were concerned about what they suspected were numerous sex offenders living nearby. State officials were touting their online sex offender database, but most of those in the neighborhood didn’t have computers or, if they did, online access.

And then there was the traffic. Residents said the once-quiet main street through the neighborhood had become a drag strip as drivers from those new apartment complexes cut through from one main road to another. They were concerned for the safety of their children and grandchildren, knowing that before long the park would be gone.

Neighborhood leaders said they had asked the county without success for two years to install speed humps.

So one of the students began asking questions.

And suddenly here was a speed hump.

It’s on a side street, not the main street, which still leaves some of the neighbors wondering what the county was thinking. Our young journalist is asking more questions.

So far, the county says it was a change in the way it pays for such projects, not the questions, that led to hump’s installation. The residents now think, a bit mistakenly, the student journalists can work wonders.

They might not say it this way, but what they really understand is the power of journalism. And our young journalists now understand that simply by asking questions and seeking answers, they can produce real change in the lives of people who otherwise might be overlooked.

And most of all, in this season of doubt about journalism, they understand a little better why we do what we do.

A hump of asphalt wrapped in bright yellow paint. Not what I expected to get for Christmas, but it turns out it’s going to be a good holiday season after all.

Jay Small leaving Scripps

Jay Small, who has headed E.W. Scripps' interactive design unit, is leaving to join Cordillera Communications as president of interactive at the TV station owner.

But he won't be leaving Knoxville.

Congrats, Jay.

I hope in the new position he'll still be able to share a lot of the information as he has in the past few years - valuable stuff.

Copy Editor's Lament - the video

I've been remiss in getting this up ---
Christopher Ave, who recorded Copy Editor's Lament (The Layoff Song) has now produced a music video. Bittersweet, to be sure - and it isn't quite MTV (hey, these are copy editors!). But let's all give it a boost in the YouTube ratings.

Facinating video of NY Times Web traffic

Nick Bilton, the N.Y. Times' technology blogger at Bits, has shared a fascinating set of videos showing traffic to the Times' Web site on the day of Michael Jackson's death.

There is the usual stuff - the ebb and flow as the day begins. And then there is the big spike shortly after 5 p.m. when word of Jackson's death surfaced (reinforcing the idea that online is more and more where people are turning for that instant info hit - the role TV used to play).

But also fascinating to me is the relative constancy of mobile throughout the day. As Bilton notes in the comments section, some of this may be an artifact of how the cell phone system tends to concentrate outgoing traffic. But still, something to think about -- as the rest of the traffic ebbs and flows, at times mobile becomes a very significant proportion.

I don't know how much of this is applicable to your local Daily Tattler's online traffic. But it would not surprise me if it portends what news orgs will be seeing more of. And I'm still not convinced that the vast majority of publishers and editors understands mobile and its impact on form, function and workflows (and, potentially, revenues).

This is one of two videos on Bilton's blog post. He also has an international one.

The New York Times site traffic, US, June 25, 2009 from Nick Bilton on Vimeo.

Good ideas gone horribly wrong

Time and time again, I've tried to drive home the point that the Web is not a turnkey operation. Yes, parts of it can be automated, sort of. But it's a dynamic thing that really does need tending and, to use the term of art of the moment, curating.

So why, as we approach 2010, is USA Today throwing out gibberish in the "historical figures" part of its site? (And how one gets on that list remains a mystery to me, too, eclectic as it is, from L. Frank Baum, Michael Manly and Jacob Javits (you really have to be a native New Yawker to get that one) to Atilla the Hun and Hannibal. But I digress ...

So how do I know this is gibberish? Because one of my blog entries showed up today under the "Abraham Lincoln" entry:

Why would that happen? Most likely because I have a quote from Lincoln in my blog header. That's it. Does that mean I will be on there every time I post. (Will this post be on there leading to a hall of mirrors effect?)

Someone probably thought they'd be doing something cool by throwing a filter up and sifting through all this information and tossing up anything with the relevant name. Probably just a little digital backwater, but people might find something useful. And it would be "cooooool" and show how we can take all this mass of info and filter it and ...

But it isn't cool. In fact, it's more like a spam blog. And I still can't understand why editors and publishers can't get into the idea that that sort of thing detracts. Yes, less is more, if you do the less correctly. Maybe someday we will have better intelligent filtering. Until then ...

Geek Squad guy looks into future of tech and news

Discovered this today. Worth watching. Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad, prognosticates on technology's near future.

It's from the Future of News conference in Minnesota this past November.

"It feels like the last 40 years are all coming to a head where normal people will have high speed in their pocket."

"There's really only four screens that we are planning on as the plumbers of the future to support" the mobile phone ("the main event, it is the computer; everything else is just a piece of glass that connects to a network"), the anticipated tablet computers, flat screen TVs that really are "large iPod Touches" and in-vehicle systems.

E&P RIP

A sign of the times ....

Nielsen Media says it will stop publishing Editor & Publisher.

Losing E&P is a loss, no matter how many have derided it as old media. Judging from the number of online pointers to its articles, it remains a valuable resource.

E&P now has its own announcement up. And Columbia Journalism Review has an interview with E&P Editor Greg Mitchell - he expresses some outside hope that outrage will at least keep the Web site operating.

Meanwhile, American Journalism Review drops from six to four issues a year.

And Harper's piece "Final Edition: Twilight of the American Newspaper" is now online.