User Profile: John C Abell

The rubber began to hit the road today with a brief but most welcome introductory call from our intrepid leader, who took it upon himself to personally answer some of the questions that many of us newbie editors didn't know and were afraid to ask (Never let them see you sweat, Even on the Internet).

First order of business is taking ownership of the topic pages to which we are currently assigned, and await further topic triage.

Of my five pages, I was able to tackle two straight away: Citizendium and Crowdsourced Answers.

They speak for themselves (I dearly hope) but there is one feature I intend to put across all my subjects -- an open invitation for anything:

You're assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to pitch an angle none of the geniuses here have thought of.
Call it the ultimate crowdsource challenge: what are we missing?
Think up a sidebar, timeline, profile, scene-setter or whatever that tells a part of the story you don't think is getting the attention it deserves.
Your reward: first dibs on doing the piece and a place in crowdsourcing journalism history.

Many years ago at a cocktail party two of my Reuters colleagues were approached by a mingling stranger who was making, well, cocktail party conversation.

My colleagues were both general news deskers in New York which, at the time, meant mostly editing overseas copy for consumption by US media, and occasionally, doing some ad hoc reporting around town.

Mingling stranger to Reuters Colleague #1: "You work for Reuters, really! What do you do?
Reuters Colleague #1: "I'm a correspondent." (A bit of a stretch, although both were at a senior pay grade classified "correspondent.")
Mingling stranger to Reuters Colleague #2: "And, are you a correspondent too?"
Reuters Colleague #2: "Oh no -- I make the correspondents look good."

Well, as pompous as the remark was it had its basis in the truth (because he lives, basic decency prevents me from relaying just how umpompous an utterance this was, relatively speaking, for this staggeringly pompous person).

The essence of being a good editor is making sure that a reporter's work makes as good a read as is possible while remaining true to the reporter's vision. Part of that task is remembering that you aren't the writer -- if you want that, take a pay cut and work lousier hours (I mean away from AZ, which is a veritable commune in the salary and benefits department).

It's easy to cross the line, to be tempted to sneak a bit of one's own voice into someone else's work. It's tougher to nurture the voice in others or know when to leave well enough alone. I'm not sure that it is a lesson an editor ever learns in all of its fullness. But I guess wouldn't know because the best editors don't become household names.

My understanding of the basic role of an AZ editor is to be a mentor to reporters: to help them with whatever they need, at whatever the stage, to begin, flesh out and finish an assignment, using whatever passes for my expertise. My own approach is to be 100% available and only slightly proactive, to allow the reporters to be the reporters.

So, be prepared to be autonomous and to show initiative -- and to ask for help when you need it. We have a pretty good Bat Signal here and I'm prepared to be as involved as necessary.

But you are the reporter. I'll do what I can to help you move upfield, but you have the ball.

Is it too late to advise you to be careful what you wish for?

The purpose of transparency is to preempt the perception of bias. But any story whose points are properly attributed -- especially those which contain no anonymous sources -- pass this test. I may be motivated to write about abortion because of a strong interest borne of personal experiences, but my reporting should be self-sustaining. Still, my personal connection (if any) to the story should be revealed, including whether I am a lifetime member of NARAL. Remember also that some readers think they can detect bias where there isn't any, so it will never be possible to satisfy all of the people all of the time.

I think we accomplish our mission here if our reporters are free to tap into the trusted community we are trying to create, and if they are open to suggestions from other reporters and editors. It seems to me the underlying goal is to ensure that reporting isn't done in a vacuum, the better to exploit the unpredictable opportunities of cooperation among strangers.

But I could not encourage a writer to divulge any more than s/he regards as necessary to improve a work in progress. One reason is that journalism really isn't terribly effective when it is a democracy; reporters and editors on the story need to have special standing. The other is that the spontaneous replies of a subject tend to be more revealing and informative than those to prepared answers, which is why face-to-face real time interviews are preferable to submitting written questions. Even if a reporter isn't going for a "gotcha" moment, it doesn't make any sense to provide a subject with a roadmap, things other subjects have said, who else has been interviewed, etc. These facts can alter the outcome, and shouldn't.

(originally posted as a comment in "Jay Rosen on AZ transparency")

Off the topic of Information, but with the resolution of the Josh Wolf case this is a good time to examine some basic questions confronting citizens+journalism.

I've blogged about this on my site (and am not a fan of cross-posting) so I'll quote myself fair-use style and link to the rest:

"It was journalism to the extent that I went out to capture the truth and present it to the public." … "It has nothing to do with whether or not I'm employed by a corporation or I carry a press pass."
-- Josh Wolf

Is that enough? Or is it even the right argument?

(full blog entry here)

Nobody uses the phrase “information superhighway” anymore (and thank you) but this early portend of the Internet is telling. Not “news superhighway” or “advertising superhighway” or virtual community superhighway” – no, “information” got top billing.

Strip out all the hype and the fancy jargon and put aside all the hair-pulling about how we gotta make money off this thing before it kills us and you are left to gaze in awe at the most efficient means of communication coupled with the most comprehensive repository for anything that can be distilled into bit form.

Forget about what that leaves out. What it leaves in is as incomprehensible as infinity.

The basic DNA of life is information. Before we have “Lost,” we have ideas, and these ideas are based on information (nightmares are information, too). Before we have a Pulitzer Prize-winning story, we have people who actually know things we will take credit for writing about, and we need their information. After a scoundrel lies for his own selfish purposes information – hidden or manipulated – is waiting to set us free.

For the first time in human history it is conceivable that anyone, anywhere can accomplish any thinking task that requires information (apologies for that redundancy) by tapping into this thing.

Maybe “Information Superhighway” isn’t so obsolete after all.