Steve Perry publishes excerpts from a recent phone interview with Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. He also provides a link to a recent talk Newmark gave to members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
Perry asks about a news project Newmark has discussed “that would involve identifying the most authoritative or trustworthy versions of the major news stories of the day.” He asks whether this whether this would involve “software algorithms, editorial judgments [or] reader votes,” to which Newmark responds “[a] combination of all three of those.”
Newmarket also talks about the need for balance between professional and citizen journalism.
If you’ve read my blog lately, you’ll notice I’ve been emphasizing recently a balance and merging of professional and citizen journalism. The deal is, there’s no substitute for professional-level writing and fact-checking and editing. One of the tenets of the effort I’m involved with is to drive more traffic to professional news sites. People have gotten too excited about citizen journalism, and they’re not addressing the balance well.
He also discusses his interest in promoting investigative journalism and how best to deliver the sometimes unpleasant truths it uncovers:
Me, I’m focusing on—one of the main thrusts of what I’m doing is to try to promote investigative journalism. I’ve been working with people at the Center for Public Integrity. And I had a meeting a couple of hours ago with a guy from the Center for Investigative Reporting. The deal is, how do we promote it better in an environment where people need to know why they’re hearing about things. I have some ideas along those lines. The idea is that—there’s this Oscar Wilde quote, If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you. That’s why, frankly, I get a chunk of my news from—I use CNN and NPR and I read the Chron pretty religiously, but the best source of commentary and unpublished news I have is The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They will often use stuff that reporters have told me they’re afraid to print.
Mitch Shapiro at 1:16 PM|Comments(0)
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