.gif)
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington Hits Back at The New York Times
By Anna Johnson on June 12th, 2009Earlier this week saw something of a collision between the journalistic values of traditional news media with those of blog-based news media.
Venerable news publication, The New York Times, accused technology blog, TechCrunch, of making news out of unfounded rumors. TechCrunch’s founder Michael Arrington then hit back, indicating that his comments were taken out of context, and that The New York Times missed the real story.
In any case, the clash also put the world of blog-based journalism under the spotlight, highlighting the key difference between it and old-world journalism.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened…
On Sunday, in a story about news blogs, The New York Times journalist Damon Darlin seemed to take a couple of swipes at TechCrunch. Firstly, Darlin wrote that TechCrunch, along with some other blogs, published rumors that Apple was interested in acquiring Twitter when this, in fact, was not the case.
Firing back, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington said that TechCrunch not only posted the story about the Apple/Twitter acquisition, but also made it clear that it was, in fact, a rumor. Indeed, the story TechCrunch was reporting was the fact that there was a rumor that was unlikely to be true.
The New York Times’ other main swipe was that TechCrunch favored getting a story ‘first’ over getting it ‘right’. However, according to Michael Arrington, who Damon interviewed for The New York Times piece, this was an incorrect inference based on misconstruing what Arrington actually said.
More significantly, Michael Arrington said that Damon Darlin missed the real story – not that blogs such as TechCrunch were irresponsibly publishing rumor over fact, but that they were heralding in a new kind of journalism.
I agree. Regardless of the slant taken by The New York Times, the more interesting story is how the journalism of blogs differs from old media journalism.
Rather than apply the perfectionist approach of ‘product’ oriented journalism where a story doesn’t get published until all the facts have been scrupulously fact-checked, blogs such as TechCrunch have ushered in ‘process journalism’ (as coined by Jeff Jarvis) where readers can see a story evolve before their eyes.
In the new world of blog-based journalism, the author of a given story doesn’t claim to have checked all the facts, nor does having all the facts stop him or her from publishing the piece. Instead, the author acknowledges that the story may be based on rumor or myth, rather than truth.
But the story doesn’t end there. The blogger adds to it over time, as new information comes to hand.
So rather than aim to have the ‘last say’ on any given topic, today’s blogs aim to start, and then continue the conversation, with readers fully informed and involved in the process. Indeed, with the ability to comment on blog posts, readers can actively help evolve the story.
The key to this working is, as Michael Arrington suggests, to be transparent at all times. To be open about the fact that a story may be based on mere rumor.
A possible argument against such ‘process journalism’ is that it can incite mob reactions to stories that may not be true. I’m not sure what can be done to offset this, but I wonder if it’s a temporary by-product of readers adjusting to a different kind of news reporting.
Ideally, the more people get used to process journalism, the more they will realize that they’re not reading a definitive work, but a work in progress. Armed with this understanding they will hopefully reserve judgment until there is enough information to support a given conclusion.
But even given the risk of premature mob reactions… which type of journalism is really the more honest? The one where the process of researching, recording and updating news is open for all to see? Or the one where everything except a reporter’s conclusions is available to readers?
I think both types of journalism can be performed with integrity, as both The New York Times and TechCrunch have demonstrated. And it’s integrity that is ultimately much more important than the kind of journalism practiced.
I do, however, believe process journalism is here to stay. It’s only likely to become more prevalent as more people turn to the Internet for their news, and also seek to participate in the telling of that news.
Source: Michael Arrington, “The Morality And Effectiveness Of Process Journalism,” TechCrunch, June 7, 2009
