"The woman had made several frivolous allegations to the FBI against then Greensboro Police Chief Michael Wray."
and this:
"When one read Ahearn's column, one distinctly got the impression that Sanders had worked at the department's bequest..."
Monday, March 30, 2009
Oh, the irony
I'm pulling for the Greensboro Telegram, Greensboro's new online "newspaper," I really am. But, in an article about the News & Record correcting a Lorraine Ahearn story (hat tip Triad Media Watch), the unidentified Greensboro Telegram reporter writes this:
and this:
and this:
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Which is why Jay Rosen said about the Huffpo Investigative Fund this a.m.:
ReplyDeleteBut I also counseled Nick and Arianna (she will help raise money for the fund, and find partners for it) that the best approach is to have no orthodoxy and to support very traditional investigative reporting by paid pros who are good at it, as well as teams of pros and amateurs, students working with masters of the craft, crowdsourced investigations, and perhaps other methods. They were already there with an ecumenical approach, combining old and new.
Obviously the Fund must also support a very high standard of verification. Its reporting has to hold up. Compared to that, everything else is a detail.
(You can have ALL the cool online reporting you want, but without high standards of verification, it's all worth only a passing glance. The danger is when people BELIEVE unverified crap. On wait. We're there, aren't we?)
I seriously doubt if this is why Jay Rosen said anything.
ReplyDeleteThe GSO Telegram article is sloppy, but hardly "unverified crap." It gets the name of the former police chief wrong, embarrassingly misuses a word and is structurally clumsy in places. Beyond that, it jibes with the facts (although one might expect an online newsorg to hyperlink to the sources it references).
ReplyDeleteIt's worth the paper it's printed on.. Oh... right.. online only.. Then it's worth even less.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea. But I have to ask, are these folks from Greensboro? I mean, how could they confuse Michael Wray for David? Maybe it was just a big mistake, I can understand not having an editor for an online paper, but that's a pretty big flub. Thanks for the link though, I had no idea they were doing this. Also, sucks we can't comment on the articles.
ReplyDelete--brandonB
I noticed today they corrected the article to get Michael, er I mean David Wray's name right and issued an editor's note about the error at the bottom, so I guess they read Roch's blog.
ReplyDeleteAlso I'm kind of confused here about some of the comments about the credibility of online newspapers. Wasn't this article in the Telegram about some factual errors in the News & Record, a daily PRINT newspaper?
I guess others fail to see the irony here that a small online paper that I never heard of has to call out a big daily here in town on its own errors (even though they spelled the chief's name wrong.)
In one of the Telegram's early editions I was misidentified, my job title mangled and no attempt was made to reach me -- or at any rate no call put in to my office number or message to my work e-mail, publicized daily at the bottom of my stories --- in a story in which I was a major character.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of an online-only paper but when you run something on a shoestring with freelancers who aren't familiar with their subjects you sort of get what you pay for.