MediaFlect

At the We Media conference in London. Coverage on FishbowlNY or RebuildingMedia.

BBC now is reading user comments I read earlier on the air. On the one hand, I’m glad to see them using comments they’ve gathered online and referring people to the site, here a phone # is given to text messages in. There’s not any 800- number or other way they’re soliciting purely through the radio. On the other hand, it’s odd listening to random voices (apparently of BBC staff) reading notes aloud that I read hours earlier.

Now a journalist fired for fabricating has written a book about his ordeal when someone else — a murderer — scammed him by using his name soon after he was fired for the fabrication.
Michael Finkel tells On the Media he thought at the time he was serving a higher truth, but what this gets me to thinking is: With all the Jack Kelly, Michael Finkel, Steven Glass, Jason Blair, Janet Cooke and other fabricating journalists, how many are there that have gotten away with it? How many of us have knowingly made up a source, or put something in we didn’t know to be provably accurate?

I never did, to my knowledge, make anything up, but there were times when I felt an edit squeezed a story into a preconceived notion, a quote was used to fit that notion even as the nuance of the situation might have been different or more muddy. I also know that, when translating from other languages — something I’ve done from time to time as a journalist (one small example here) — there can be an array of accurate word choices. You’re not making anything up. You’re capturing the truth of a situation. But you also have some latitude.

So there’s a move by the French government to prop up newspapers, it seems, rather than let them go their natural way. Gotta love government intervention — if you’re scared of change or losing your job. Learned about this today at the IFRA-sponsored tour for French journalistic managers (newspaper, wire service, magazine) from editorial and tech sides. Told ‘em what I see as the way to increase acceptance in their main organizations for the organization and make it a win-win: In a nutshell, it’s make sure Internet has a seat at the table, every table, and create both editorial and revenue opportunities.

Came back a couple hours later to watch Jeff Jarvis lay it on pretty thick in on the wonders of blogging — audience participation is good and can be harnessed editorially and commercially, the current business model is broken and blogs may be the answer, sharing and openness is in, informational/organization walls and obliqueness are out. Made some provocative comments about how he left AdvanceNet because he preferred to go out on his own than fight the Newhouse family’s newspapers to change internally.

Was amazed that none of about 15 French journalistic managers had heard of Technorati, or knew how easy it was to do a blog (I set one up and blogged the session for a minute just to show how easy it was, and got a round of applause (I think that’s why they clapped when I stood up to leave )), and I’m not sure they understood “RSS” — many were good enough at English that I don’t think it was a language problem.

But Jeff also repeated a lot of things that seem to be part of the “zeitgeist” now, and unlike common sense, common wisdom is quite common — and ends up being conventional, which is where I see “Danger Danger, Warning Warning” (Lost in Space reference). More to come …

Used to be you’d have to use a credit card to get music from Apple’s iTunes site in Europe. Today they announced a deal with micropayment masters Click&Buy to allow people to purchase from iTunes in sites like this one in the UK without the need for their own plastic. (The deal isn’t working in Switzerland for undisclosed reasons. (Full disclosure: Click&Buy sponsored a conference I covered for PaidContent.org, and I know a couple of their executives.)

Looks like micropayments - once considered a bane of internet existence — may be coming of age.