Everyone is a journalist

 

 

In 2005 when I was working at MSN Search (which became “Live Search” and is now called “bing”) I was sent to a conference in New York City called “Search Engine Strategies,” organized by public Internet Search consultants and “spammers” (Search Engine Optimization companies).  I worked the booth during my shift, demonstrating both Microsoft desktop search which was part of “MSN Toolbar” at that time and also MSN search.  It is very enlightening, eye-opening, and motivating to have plumbers and jewelry store merchants walk up to your booth, open a check book and start trying to negotiate an advertising deal with you on the spot, especially when you are not associated with Sales.  The standard line we were trained to parrot back is that you need to commit to a $30K per month spend to become “managed” (have a human talk to you); otherwise you should sign up with a credit card at our web site.  The sales guys behind the curtain were backed up and three people with whom I spoke did not blink when I told them I needed $30K/mo.  Search is a big business and many advertisers are looking for alternatives to the evil search giant. That trip was a great introduction to the business side of public Internet search and advertising.

 

The main reason I was prompted to write this anecdote, though, is that a friend recently directed my attention to this blog entry from a casual lunch table conversation from that conference about five years ago.

 

“Mitch Wyle, the Engineering Manager at MSN and a pretty nice guy, gave me the example of his son’s Runescape Online Gaming blog. Apparently Mitch’s son’s Runescape army is the third largest on the Internet and his son’s blog has become extremely popular. We all agreed that BlogAds (Henry Copeland’s Blog Advertising Network) would be more useful for his son’s blog than Google AdSense for selling advertising – mainly because he wanted control of what advertisements would be served on his son’s blog and Google AdSense shows the most relevant advertising results for a blog entry’s content, and not always the blog itself.”

 

In 2005, my oldest son was very active in RuneScape and his character had done fairly well in the game.  In fact, he convinced a few of the other leaders in the game to join his army; they conquered the castle and most of the rest of world-10 (Seattle) under his leadership; after that adventure he retired from the game.  My son used a forum site (not really a blog) to communicate with his lieutenants and friends about RuneScape and to socialize. The blog entry above was published on the public Internet without my knowledge or permission and is now one of those pages people discover about me when they search for my name in a search engine.

 

Now imagine all of the casual, informal conversations you have every day with strangers and people you don’t really know but with whom you interact.  Any of them could be a blogger or youtube video producer and your casual interaction could suddenly become “news,” published for the entire world to view.   Now imagine that this stranger (the blogger) was having a bad day, misunderstood a part of your interaction, and decided to vent about it.  There are no release forms; there is no edit cycle to check facts or screen for malice.  There are no journalistic standards.  You can be defamed, libeled, and vilified.  Your career and future relationships can be severely damaged.  Since there is no penalty or disincentive to the blogger, there is no recourse or remedy available to you.

 

More than a few friends of mine are either professional or serious amateur photographers and a few of them publish casual photos of strangers they see during their commute to work or when they go somewhere to take pictures.  Again: there are no model release forms.  There is no way to know if a photo of you or your child will be published.

 

I have read about how wonderful it is that we have amateur bloggers keeping the traditional journalists “honest” by publishing other points of view, more facts sooner, and how these individuals have debunked or exposed lies in the older “mainstream” media.  I celebrated and supported the spirit of their work and was thrilled to see our freedoms amplified by blogging.  Now I realize how important the older journalistic standards (two independent sources, absence of malice, full disclosure) are.  Enabling everyone in the world to become a journalist now pushes the huge ethical responsibility on to anyone who tweets or blogs.  How can we educate everyone about journalistic ethics?  How can we socialize civics and notions of respect?