 One of the many reasons that I deeply respect and I actually love Dan is that Dan, as many of you know, Dan was at the absolute pinnacle in the traditional media. He was a technology columnist and I would say maybe the most respected technology columnist in the country at the San Jose Mercury News. And out of conviction and out of vision and seeing where the world was going and hoping to shape where the world was going to get it to the right place, Dan left that job and leapt into the void in order to be able to pursue his interests in citizen media. And so Dan for me combines the very best of traditional journalism and with a deep respect and understanding of what's going on now as citizens media, citizens journalism, begins to emerge and take shape. And insists, and this is the thing that's key for me, he insists on the best from both sides. He has a sense of journalistic integrity that is unmatched and a set of standards and values that is unwavering and brings that to this wild, boiling cauldron of citizenship. So he's the author of We The Media, he's, which is a seminal book on this topic, he's heading up a new program at Arizona State University and he's here to talk with us today. Bam. Wow. Thank you so much. And thank you all for being here. It's great to see colleagues and including my, especially my lawyer friends at the citizen media law project, who are doing wonderful and important work. And all of you, it's great to see so many friendly faces. I'm going to whip through a bunch of stuff that I would normally go an hour or more with. And especially the stuff at the beginning, which is kind of background and then get to the newer things that I'm thinking about. And that's the agenda. It won't be quite that much. Just quickly reviewing the media shift that we've gone through from the cave drawings, the scrolls, Gutenberg Bible. My Silicon Valley heritage is in the version numbers I put on everything. The pamphleteers, the Telegraph Radio 2.0, I think the mass broadcast TV. And then where we are now, this kind of amazing transition into everything, everywhere, every time. And the democratizing of media that I've talked about for a year that I think it's pretty critical. And I'm going to, this is an impressionistic kind of tour through some of the stuff that's been going on. I won't talk about any of them in particular now, but just the amazing variety of things that we're doing on and about the web. I just, that was a that was compressed about 20 minutes worth. But I love the variety that's there and what's happening. And we could talk about any of those at great length. I want to talk about two things today in particular. We're really three. I'm going to make the argument that we're all worried about supply when it comes to journalism, which is to say, as the newspaper industry implodes as the broadcast news really does the same for the most part or becomes utterly trivial. There's a great deal of angst mostly on the part, I think, of journalists who see unemployment looming in their future or underemployment. It's not bad that people are worried about that. And I'm worried about much of that, too. But I've got to say I'm just not worried about supply anymore the way I was. I think we're really on the road toward a good supply. And I want to, first of all, just get past this question of what is, you know, who is the journalist? It's the wrong question. It's what is journalism? So we can call that journalism without anybody disputing it. You know, we can probably agree not journalism and then move on. But you know, these cases in between the random act of journalism by the guy in the London Underground, the Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, the blogger who covers the Kenyan Parliament better than anybody. Doc Searls, our colleague here at the Berkman Center, says it's an and situation, not or. Not one or the other. It's one and the other and a diversifying ecosystem that is really quite remarkable. And again, I'm not going to go through things at great length, but talk about things that are these are all part of this ecosystem, even a trade association doing something that resembles journalism, human rights watch, other NGOs, advocates doing media with better reporting that is gathering of information than the journalists do in most cases, the best reporting as in getting information on torture and Guantanamo has been from the American Civil Liberties Union, not from newspapers. They've done a good job, particularly in New York Times, but it's not been the best it's been from the ACLU, that famous journalism organization. And the really good news in this, why I'm so sure that supply is going to be solved is that it's really cheap to try stuff and Clay Scherke has put it best, I think that there's no barrier anymore between an idea and just trying it, just do it. And that the process that we're doing at Arizona State is to say to students, do something fast if it fails, do something else and iterate as you go and it's fine. Don't even worry about it. So you end up with all kinds of things that are out there in in this world of new journalism and media. By the way, this is a student project that we think is a is likely to get funded. This is another student project based on the light rail system in Phoenix that we're quite sure is going to get funded as a real company. A little project we did that took two hours with some phones that have GPS in them, showing an event that that takes place over time and space in Phoenix. The wonderful coverage of the Kenyan elections, Barry Parr in Half Moon Bay, California, covering his community because the San Francisco Chronicle the nearest newspaper won't do it unless something bad happens. Pro Publica and other nonprofit things getting into this mix in a very powerful way. The New York Times doing API's I have to my one remaining newspaper stock holding is in the New York Times. It's worth very little. I can tell you but it's I should disclose that. And this this thing that some people are trying to basically create a new aggregator and paywall. I'm skeptical of it, but I'm glad they're trying. That's the point. There's lots of stuff happening an enormous amount of things. I'm just pretty sure we're going to get enough journalism. I think there's going to be lots of stuff out there. It doesn't solve the quality problem. We're going to come back to that. But it I'm just not worried anymore about supply. I think we're going to have more than we want in some ways. I'm kind of worried about demand. In fact, I'm really worried about demand, which is to say, I'm worried about a culture that we live in that where media looks like that to most of us. And I don't think that this is an appropriate way to think of media. It's I don't mind sitting back and watching the sci fi channel, but I don't think that's the way we should do journalism in particular and community information. Beyond that this is this is something that's a vestige of a mass media era of a time when we like we said, okay, you tell me what's going on and I'll pretend that you know what you're talking about. You'll pretend you know what you talking about and I'll pretend that's true. It's it's not it's just not working well. And it's it's led to a lazy culture. And I don't like the fact that we're lazy about our media because it's part of being lazy about citizenship citizenship is being lazy about the media. And I think we have to become more active and I get back to there's too much information problem, the the accuracy problem in a Photoshop world where images like that race around before people debunk them and people may still think that's a true thing and not to mention that, you know, our big institutions don't get it right all the time. And sometimes with catastrophic consequences, not directly causing a war, but sure as hell helping it happen by bad journalism, we are we have to think our way through these. We have an ecosystem in bad need of repair. And I want to just suggest that this is not alchemy that we're going to need to do it. But something that goes deeper. And a few months ago, I did a part of a Berkman Center project report called Media Republic that I'm sorry, Persephone is not here. I wanted to give a shout out to her. But the Media Republic looked at where we were and a bunch of us, including I see Tom Steitz here and others did some essays for it. And one that I did was I thought we needed some new principles and that apply to both consumers. And I put that word in quotes, and journalists alike. And I think that basically, it's really two aspects, got to persuade the news consumers to be real active users, like users of media, not just consumers. And of course, never going to changes to persuade journalists of all stripes and all parts of that spectrum to be better at what they're doing. So for the consumers, this is where I'm going with this. And I'll get back to this is the be skeptical of everything and the the everything spans quite a wide variety of things. The the BBC up there has my favorite business model called pay me or go to jail. I think that's a hard one to replicate. But you don't be equally skeptical of everything out there. So I'm I think we all need to establish in our minds as we use media that kind of a bullshit meter, and say, you know, just just have it working all the time, we have that in our minds in general, we kind of know when someone is trying to scam us, or but we don't always, but we need to really, really apply it in this world. And I think it's a mistake to think of credibility as starting at zero. I think we have to consider credibility to have a negative quality, not just a zero quality. And to me, this is a very important thing. So the anonymous comments on the Washington Post stories, and any place that are anonymous comments, they don't start with zero credibility in my mind, they kind of start with negative credibility, they'd have to work really hard just to get to no credibility. And if I start thinking about it in these ways, I think I end up with a more accurate understanding of what these media forms are doing. And I'm not dismissing random anonymous comments. Sometimes there's something good in there, but it's, it's, I have to start with a bias and the biases that this is negative credibility. And I considered that an important notion and the anonymity in the world, which I think we are making a big mistake if we try to ban it. There's a lot of people out there say, Oh, anonymous speech should not be permitted. Well, that would that would be contrary to many things like the First Amendment in the United States and to our history and a lot of other things. But it's contrary to all logic. I just, I don't think that it's, it's not a good idea to refuse to stand behind your own words in most cases. In fact, it's a bad idea. But we need to preserve it for the times when we really need it. And I'm worried that we're heading the wrong way. But we have to, I think in that scale of, of credibility, we have to start as consumers and users. My, my hope is that people will see in a personal anonymous attack or an attack on something. And if it's anonymous, I don't think that the response should be to say, Well, I'm, it has no credibility. I don't, it's probably, you know, it may not be true. You should say to yourself, that's bullshit. Assume it's false. And we may start to correct this problem. The other way to correct this just don't read those things, or pain, pay no attention at all. Then another principle, and I'm skating through these awfully fast. But another principle I'm trying to think about here is just, do you ask your own question? No one, none of us buys a car based on an advertisement, I hope. And we go further, we use the tools that are that are available, including conversation, including research, including a lot of things. And it gets to the Wikipedia question, which comes up a lot in the university settings, which is some professors say, don't ever use Wikipedia. It's terrible. And it's, it's framing again the wrong way. I think it's clearly often the best place to start. But it's usually the worst place to stop. And I ran that by Jimmy Wales, who said that's exactly right. So from the source, or from one of the sources. Of course, you don't stop with Wikipedia, where you go is to that long list of links at the bottom of every decent Wikipedia article that goes to source material, and to other things that have some credibility and some things beyond it. Having said that, Wikipedia gets better and better and better and better. And that by and large, it's becoming one of the most valuable sources of information on the planet. Another principle here in the being an active consumer is to go outside your comfort zone and and to do things that challenge your own assumptions. So, and I'm indebted to Ethan Zuckerman, who I, who's in New York today, I think, who basic who really pushed me hard to include this principle. And I'm really glad he did. Because it's, it's a key one. So I look at global voices to hear from people I would not normally hear from around the world and cultures I would not hear from. Going out of the zone of comfort that I'm most familiar with, as a white middle class American, that that's a pretty narrow band of the, the world cultural spectrum. I need to get out into those other colors and places. Another thing I try to do is relentlessly attack what I think I believe. And this is an old list I used to keep. I still do and sorry, it's kind of blurry. But I used to keep a list when I was at the Mercury News and I don't I don't update as often when I was calmness that I had a list of 10 things I believe. And they were not about they were not about like moral principles, but they were about things like the top ones here says Microsoft is an abusive monopoly that must be restrained in antitrust laws. And now every six months or so I would pull this list out. And I would relentlessly attack it. I would do more reporting I would say what's changed that makes this not true anymore. Something must have changed things don't just stay the same. And if I don't follow the changes if I don't if I don't take the core beliefs I have as a columnist on business and technology and relentlessly go after them. I'm going to be wrong in a in a big public way one of these days hugely wrong. Now, you know, I'm going to be wrong anyway, but at least this will be one less way to be wrong. And so every six months or so I would go after it. I, you know, if today I would be really tempted to substitute Google. Not quite yet. But Google starting to get kind of scary in some ways that I think are antitrust worthy. We should at least we should at least I better write that down. I'm not there yet, but I no longer feel that Microsoft is number one danger on my list. It's it's certainly still dangerous, but not not at that place. So anyway, that that's just a strategy I personally hadn't worked it worked for me. And then finally using we all need to learn techniques of media. Our kids are great at like creating media with all sorts of devices and tools. Not so good as most of us are not so good at recognizing how media are used to manipulate and and and persuade. Maybe it should be persuade and manipulate, which is the extreme case. But we need to be aware of these things. We need to use things like SourceWatch to go past the the obvious were and news trust. Fabrice Florence experiment and and lots of tools. This is a another of my student projects, doing a media critic site for Phoenix were media critics a project that's about to launch a national site to aggregate media criticism and do some original things that Scott Rosenberg, the former managing editor of salon will be editor of. And this is a Phoenix version of it. We want to at least ask the right questions. I'm not letting journalists off the hook here. Though I think that the again, I think the supply benefits that we're getting from all this innovation will provide us with a lot of good journalism. Again, I can't say well, we'll stop there because that won't fix everything. I'm just hoping that journalists of all stripes, but in particular helping the ones who are emerging into this who weren't journalists before think about the all of those other principles, but then add the ones of thoroughness, which is not just doing some homework, but like asking the audience like Josh Marshall does frequently on talking points memo and gets great results by asking the readers, what do they know? They know a lot. And in accuracy, you know, it's not just the fact checker anymore. Although, you know, fact checkers are wonderful, but we have to go past that into other things. Fairness, the tools of digital technology give us enormous possibilities on the fairness front that were never there before, including something the New York Times did once. I wish they would do it routinely, which is they did a counterpoint with someone who thought he'd been treated very wrongly by the paper. And then the reporter responded to the letter that the congressman wrote to the Times. Great idea. But that's a one off. It's dumb that it's a one off, but it's still a good thing. Yelp, the company that lets people comment on restaurants and hotels and other things has finally realized the right thing to do is to give a right of reply to the businesses that are being pilloried by mostly anonymous commenters. Again, the right thing to do. And I ask again, where is the news business writ large, the news people, we should give right of reply in a pretty much routine way. And the digital world makes us easily possible. It's not a hard thing to do. We can do this. And we don't. Independence, again, we have to think a whole way through. So I put this up as an example of non independence. This is, and it's hard for me to see how they do it. But ProPublica, a wonderful new operation for investigative journalism, is funded in almost entirely by the sandlers, the people who ran a big bank in California that had this image of being, oh, above board on everything. Well, that top little thing is one of two mentions I can find of the sandlers on the ProPublica site that are not about their funding it, with a quick disclaimer and a link to something else. But nowhere do you find on their site something like the Times Day, which was a deep investigation of some very squirrely, if not outright unethical behavior by the sandlers. Now, if ProPublica wants to get the kind of credibility as being independent that I think it should earn, they ought to be doing an investigation of their chief funders, period. Now, I don't expect it to happen any more than I expect a newspaper to do an investigation of the chief advertiser. But independence means more than just not doing, there's a lot of parts of that. And then finally transparency, the transparency when they mentioned the sandlers, they're good, they said, okay, there are big funders. But then you get this horrific thing going on with TV news, where I don't mean to keep pointing at the times, I should have find other papers here, but they want to peel it through yesterday for this and another story exposing the shabbiest kind of behavior by the TV news industry and putting people on the air who were not independent commentators in any sense, a horrible situation that is still unreported by the people who were doing it. And it's funny because Brian Williams yesterday does his news broadcast and talks about the times winning five Pulitzers, including and he mentioned two, but not that one. Gee, I wonder why I'm it's it's really appalling. And yet it's standard operating procedure. And I hope over time we can convince people that transparency is partly there for their protection in the end. Yeah, they're going to take some lumps. But at least they're going to be they won't be they being transparent as a news person doesn't mean that you're going to be believed more. You're probably going to be believed less. But you'll be trusted more. And I think there's a key difference. And we need to think about how we encourage that. The final thing, and then I'll stop, is the new project I'm working on that's related to all of this, which is called media active. And it just this is the website which is going live in a day or so. And I'm hoping to do two things here. One is, is to explore all these principles. And I think the core of it is the principles. I'm focused more on the users as the former consumers. And I'm what I'm hoping to do here is essentially what it says there, which is to create a users guide for people in this this networked era. Just a simple users guide. The book would be more about principles. The website will be the principles plus the things that change quickly, the tools, the tactics, the techniques, who's doing things. And I'm using it, the second part is to explore what a book is. Because I don't know what a book is anymore. But I think that framing it that way, where maybe the printed thing is the stuff that doesn't change fast. And the digital thing, the online thing is the stuff that does. That feels right to me. I'm going to play with it. I'm going to do the entire thing in public as the last one under Creative Commons. And anyone who follows the blog as I go through this will not need in any way to buy the book. But it's an experiment that I hope will work. But it's really where I want to focus a lot of my time in the next several years, because I think this is an important shift that we have to try and convince people to do at many different levels and places. So let me stop and hear your thoughts and that's my plea for your help in this project, which I hope some of you will agree to do. I've got a question and then a very short comment or suggestion. The question is in your bullshit meter, I noticed that you had media organizations basically or types of media plotted across it. And I wonder whether the unit for a sort of trust system would really be the media form or the media organization, or whether it might better be split among you know say we can trust some New York Times reporters better than others. I had several lines going off the media organizations, one that was going quite low on the scale and one that was going quite high. I probably didn't make that clear enough. No, there are reporters at the New York Times whose work I would start on that 30 to minus 30 scale, I would start them at like a 27 positive. And there are others, I don't know if there's anyone I would ever give a 30 on that meter. Because we all make mistakes. But there are some New York Times reporters fewer now because they the really bad ones seem to have gone. But there's still bad stuff in the times and it's not even a reporter as much as a story. Even the reporters who do egregious things sometimes get it right. It's a I don't know how to measure this we're going to be spending years in the world figuring that out and is there ever an opportunity for people who can code to work on helping develop systems that combine popularity and reputation and reputation being an incredibly complicated word. And when we do that I think we'll get something pretty valuable that that will help along with that. Yeah, you got a comment. Yeah, just the little suggestion that it struck me when you were talking about these principles, especially for journalists that much of what you have there is sort of a an updated version of what we see in the Society for Professional Journalist Code of Ethics. It's there's you know it starts with seek truth and report it and that gets to some of the thoroughness and you know act independently be accountable and these principles there and I just I pulled it up and it turns out that nobody's updated that thing since 1996 so it seems like that might be a framework in which you could sort of offer these principles. They the there are a number of ethics policies and principles and things out there among journalists none of which are followed to a tee. One of my big beefs with the New York Times and the Washington Post and the others is how routinely they violate their own standards and make no apology for it. I you know if you're going to have standards at least uphold them but I see these all as goals you'll notice the word objectivity appeared nowhere in this presentation. Yeah. I'm worried about money in this in the ecosystem that you seem to be moving into because when you combine money with the possibility for lack of transparency or some kind of fake identity or anonymity I think it I think it's scary because people sites or individuals who can appear to be citizen journalists can really be backed by one or another interest usually with money the slash the other side of the money part is the lack of money and resources. Somebody who has to have a job can't actually afford to be necessarily you know or contribute as much to say citizen efforts whether it's a community radio or an online site. So what is your take on that whole aspect of the land that we're kind of sliding into. It's my take is it's going to be messy and difficult but that will have more good things than we had in the past maybe not on focused on the specific things we want them to be focused on at all times. The money used to manipulate as opposed to inform has not that's not a new problem and even you know this has been out there for some time. We need more again we need more eyes on everything to see that when we do find something that's being used to manipulate that we hear about it. Again there's good opportunity for tool makers of various kinds to think about how we would start tagging things and thinking that through but relentless media criticism is is probably the best sunlight on it that we're going to get. I don't know how if it'll be enough. As far as the inability to to be part of it there are going to be varying scales. The person which is like most of us who has you know most people can't do this all day they have a life and family and responsibilities but it doesn't take it there are two possibilities. One is that we have lots and lots and lots of people doing occasional acts that fit into journalism and finding ways to be coherent about that. We need to do things to help people who see something newsworthy to know what to do next. I think that's getting kind of ingrained in the culture not in always the best ways but people are now aware that if they see something newsworthy and they're with there with a phone with a camera in it they should get it. What they do next is an important question not everyone I think is fully cognizant of what their own rights are and maybe responsibilities and there's a great opportunity to tell the world here's what you do next and I think what you do next is not necessarily to send it to YouTube that may be if you make an informed decision that might be the right thing but not always. So all kinds of possibilities there and it does create a whole new opportunity space for the people who have been put down as aggregators who become editors of a fashion in ways that we've not had in the past in precisely that way but the wire editor of any newspaper 30 years ago was doing an aggregator function seeing all the stuff that was flowing in on the wires and picking the good stuff. They're just so much more good stuff and vastly more bad stuff. This complicates the new wire editing as it were but I think we can work towards something and communities will help each other find out what's important to the community and to the individuals within that who can over time make their own needs better known to the community in a kind of generic way. It doesn't I don't think this solves everything but it's possible. I'm visiting here with my daughter and I'm with the west coast university and I was making notes because we have a required module that all students mistake before graduation called information literacy and your principles were excellent that we'll have that in our next version of that. It's an online thing they go through the students now. What university? San Francisco State. And I'm the CIO there. And what I'm asking is after you gave your VISTA principles you then went to some things for journalists and I'm wondering do you have any advice for students that are entering this world as you know 18 year olds coming into colleges across the country and I work with the whole CIO system on this and so we're talking about over 450,000 students and we're all trying to orient them toward being more discriminating because they've grown up in a world that's different from the one we grew up in and so I'm interested in any thoughts you have for how to orient them into this world just like you had for journalists as the receivers. Well I think that was embodied in the turning the consumer passive consumer into an active participant in that set of principles and understanding that there's no clear dividing line between them and the people creating media in this world. I didn't mean there to be a suggestion that you flip a switch at some point and then become part of the journalism. It's not that way at all and I obviously need a better slide deck for that but I'm I wonder if it's too late to do it in college. If we don't have people growing up who are skeptical by definition by nature of things if we don't if we don't teach children in grade school and high school to be critical thinkers maybe too late by college although going to college seems to you know liberate people in some ways that that's probably true now as it was in our college days but I I think that you know I think schools at all levels are great leverage points for this to happen. Universities are more likely to do it. The problem with trying to get people in grade schools to think about this is that to teach critical thinking to children in half the grade schools in this country would get you yeah I agree that we probably need to start it earlier but since I'm at a university to have been thinking about it partly as a university level intervention and even there I'm not it's not clear that even at the university so you say at SFSU you have this it's required of all students you said I just looked it up so it's a it's an online course is it? Oasis. Right and so I see it's required by the end of the second semester and what happens People don't all take it so we really enforce it before you graduate. Okay so so I guess it's a graduation requirement I guess part of the supposed to be at the end of the second right right I'm just wondering that even if we agreed which people still I mean we're not at that point but if we got to the point of agreeing that this is something we need we need to institute it it's really not clear at all whose jurisdiction it falls under and is it you know is it the CIO is it some is it the library is it some department and so even at that level I don't think we have the answers and then I think it's even more complicated if you take it down the educational it's yeah and there's one university I'm aware of that has a course devoted to this required of all freshmen and that's the state university of New York stony berth mass also does college republican community service okay required media literacy and and but that's a different set of things it's a it's a well these are related but the it's culturally I remember I remember some English courses that talk critical thinking so I don't I don't know it's not like this is going to be the purview of just one uh you know read read play dough and you get some pretty good critical thinking skills it's a but um the the how how schneider at state university of New York at stony brook has a program called in news literacy is what they're calling it that is actually specifically about this kind of thing although it I don't have I I like what they're doing a lot and I think it ought to spread widely I wouldn't do it exactly the way they do but but this is if we can just have the argument over how to do it then I'll be really thrilled I think the best media chrism right now is on comedy central and I think they have those teams of people every day going through all the cable news and all the print news and finally juicy arts and showing very clearly to a huge relatively speaking audience what's wrong with most mainstream news I don't think it has to be humor but I think it's happening in comedy central because they don't bother to ask those political questions we're asking today which is it's not really that it's so hard it's where's the political will where are the institutions to do this if the mainstream media itself is the machine that's going to be criticized where other than some kind of decentralized network of more and less trusting or trustworthy groups can you do that and it's only that comedy sense you know there's this niche that they call it comedy so it's like the Simpsons on bot you know Murdoch doesn't care because as long as people are laughing he's happy I do think right now that is the place to be I think that if you can swoop or mock so much of really bad mainstream journalism that's one way but that could be shut down any time and I think we need to find other ways to build that political will to do this just two quick responses I I think that the comedy central the Daily Show has some of the best criticism of television news big television news that I've seen but that's a very narrow part of journalism in terms of its content it's happens to be big impact because of their audience size but and they also have as as you know the large staff of people who are going through these clips and we need better ways to do that incidentally too because it's there are copyright issues that are causing some real problems here the other is that I mean if you want to see really bad television journalism just turn on the local news in any city in America at five o'clock and you'll see the worst journalism you'll ever you'll ever find but the other thing is that we're we have to be critiquing each other as bloggers and others who are part of this new ecosystem we're we cannot let each other off the hook and by just saying well it's these big guys we have to be going after the things we do the thing about blogs that I think is important as there's a level of transparency and a feedback typically right under the posting that does not exist in traditional media except rarely so we have we have this is broader and more potential sometime this year one of the top 50 in population states will wake up and there will be no daily news what happens next what do you think will happen I have an idea what I think what happens the next week that's a I challenge your assumption that there will be no daily newspaper in any of the top 50 cities in this country there won't I take for granted there will be no that the current dominant daily newspaper in some of those cities will be out of business within a couple of years or have it's have it's a or have been through a bankruptcy that basically resets the debt to zero but there's still a business to be had in print journalism for some period of time and I'm this is not this is not going to last forever but the largest problem the reason that most of these guys are are facing doom is that they have so much of debt they can't pay it there's an element of the so if the Boston Globe disappears tomorrow within two weeks there will be other daily newspapers around that are better than the metro we are and the Harold I'm saying if there this is actually a two newspaper town which is able to know what they're they won't go away completely they won't I mean public printed newspapers are not going to just vanish they won't be as comprehensive which is kind of a weird word to use now given how how much they're shrinking their missions anyway and you know if it goes a lot further who's going to notice it's a and I don't mean to be cruel but there will be a huge outpouring of people who say wow this is the best opportunity in years to do something to get an audience and to I hope to have feedback with that audience and do things I do I know exactly what this will look like no but I'm no there will be no lack of information available though there will be it'll be harder to find the things to trust a little bit but there will be more things to find Tom Steitz is working on a project that I hope gets traction and they will have a pilot in the Boston area I hopes in there I'm not gonna the word messy which Weinberger here has made a part of a career on in a sense by help he's he's convinced me that messy is not something to fear but to actually embrace and and recognizing that it's got problems associated but going back to the credibility scale how did you judge that some organization should move past zero if I'm assuming talking points memo started out at negative something how did they get up to towards the end of the scale so talking points memo from the day it started was published by someone who used his own name who put his own background up there on the site for you to judge by who had actually done some journalism in the past so he didn't start below zero he started at a in positive territory because first of all he used his own name he stood by he stood behind his words that's that starts you in a really good place for my credibility scale you have you have to actually do things that harm your credibility to get down to zero at that point and then over time because of the quality he and his team have shown and they're they're the way they listen to their audience and and use this feedback system in a really brilliant way it just it's just going up I I don't have a you know a tick tock that shows how it's gotten there but it's it's gone up over time because of the work they do and I so so this is I think going to be the way it works in general we're going to assign arbitrarily in our own minds a place and then will that it'll move based on how we use it so that I mean I can see that from different people's perspective different organizations or people that have a different spot on the credibility scale and I'm wondering if there's a are we going to get to a point where we can all agree that some outlet has uh you know x level of credibility for example a lot of people think fox news and rush limbaugh have a ton of credibility for some of the reasons you say I mean rush limbaugh uses his name I don't know if he's ever done journalism in the past but you can come up with a list of criteria that you know you could buy but no but my criteria my criteria for for being high on that scale include being uh you know saying things that are actually true and and and not you know it even if most of what you say is true and you lie strategically to create an overall wrong impression of the world that takes you below zero in my in my view and I'm uh so and I in general I think I don't have anything against fox existing I just I just despise the slogan fair and balanced because it's a lie and I'm glad they're around but I I wish they would just tell the truth would be nice and then to and to to be transparent about who they are and what they do we have absolutely room for for that media organization in that ecosystem my objection to fox is largely that they're just not honorable about who they are and what they do other than that it's but I'm so but I don't think we'll ever all agree on anything which is a good thing and part of this reputation systems thing that I that I think we're going to need is it's that's why I said complicated because it's horrendously complicated but I don't want to only know I so so here's a number of variables here I want to know what people who people who think broadly as I do about the world I'd like to know what they think are the most credible sources and but but dismantle that a little bit by not just opinion but by their by by how how much they go for the truth and there's a place where even left and right can agree on on some level of truth and I want to know what people who don't think the way I do think is important and incredible because I want to be sure to look at that too place where you can't really fully trust everything you read how do you avoid people moving from lazy passive consumer to ultra cynical consumer where you kind of get back to the place you started where no one really cares because they can't really if I can't believe one article I read in the New York Times how do I know I can read I can trust any of it because I don't think trust is binary um I I don't think you trust I don't think my trust level for the times is in a sense also on a scale I by and large trust a couple of things one is they do a lot of work in reporting they do a lot of work in editing and thinking about what they've done and they try to get it right and they usually correct it when it's wrong and they do things that make me furious at the same time but on balance there's this you know I have there's my meter for them which is up here it doesn't mean that I believe them all the time and it means particularly that if there's some if I'm going to make some decision uh core to my life in some way about some big topic or or some personal thing I'm going to do I'm not going to do it based solely on what they said I'm going to go a little further and I just I prefer a world of of this very uncomfortable uh nuance and uncertainty to one where we are uh to to the one where we just say okay it because uncle walter says that's the news that must be the news uh I part of our citizenship seems to me to be to take responsibility for what we know and and what we learn yeah where is the right place to um teach people not to believe and anonymous stuff because the the the technology is clearly enhanced the ease of anonymous publishing and it's quite remarkable the the stuff that I get circulated from members of this community you know who are the last people I should think who would be passing around completely anonymous reports about what really happened in you know in the gulf of aben or whatever uh so um I've often thought that the best single thing we could do to have better journalism would be to have all journalists be covered by some other journalists to have journalism done to them um because it sure as hell made me better because because before journalism I did something where I got covered a lot and and it's it's eye-opening um I don't think it's I unfortunately I I don't think getting your I don't think getting burned is is you know in you know in a in a smart world being burned would not be the way you learn but for some period of time a lot of people are just going to have to get burned by having believed something anonymous before they start recognizing and telling their friends but I don't I don't like what I just said a very effective kind of incentive system it's it's and meanwhile we work hard on trying to teach people that there are consequences to believing things that are that are long and or that are unsourced and that are that are that are simply intended to damage I I don't have a perfect answer by any stretch for this but I don't need to be perfect I just want any kind of answer well I I think this is I think this is going to take a generation before we're going to be able to have a society that in general understands that that anonymous speech while valuable it doesn't deserve your trust out the door in fact deserves quite the opposite yeah questions one was about the demise of newspapers either you know city papers of record or maybe you know the New York Times is the east coast or national paper of record or something even if there are plenty of other sources to get information I think people are going to miss them because of their some type of unifying force that they play where you know everyone saw that or everyone read that some some common ground is that something first question is that something that necessarily is even legitimate or a necessary function for journalism or can something else some type of chat groups or something take that space and is that not even necessary for journalism and second question is just are you prepared to completely let objectivity go I'll answer the second one first the objectivity is a nice ideal that's hopelessly impractical and that those principles that I outlined I think add up to something better so I that that's just the way I'm going with it I I don't mind objectivity is a nice idea but and I still want to preserve I hope we will have reporting where it's very difficult to tell if not impossible what the reporter thinks about the topic at hand and has done huge amount of research but I think in general we're better served by by reporting that acknowledges world views going in where you understand the sort of worldview of the person in the organization as part of your parsing of how how they're doing it so my example is when I go to London I buy the telegraph for the kind of worldview of the moderate right wing and the guardian for the view of the moderate left wing and and figure that I'm kind of triangulating on reality and that that's that's better than a single thing and no one should do and should ever read listen to watch one media source because that's a guarantee that you'll be uninformed that guarantees it on the first one I'm no I'm not happy about this this kind of dissolution of things that gave us some common ground and some common at least common agendas but I I see all these self-organized things happening that create over time a kind of recognition of something happening that's that that amazing video of the women from the UK singing in the contest is before we're before it's over everyone will have heard that I find that you know that's maybe that's not it's not news but I find that's somewhat reassuring and I think that the really important stuff that that and again let me come back a little bit on this to explain the things that are happening right now of supreme importance and I don't mean the car chase of the moment in Los Angeles but the really big stuff we're going to have live we're going to get it live we're going to because it's obviously going to be that important we'll get some view of it live the things that are important as topics that we take understanding and thinking about and and and work it's not that it's we have a better chance of getting it figuring out over time because on the web as opposed to the manufacturing era of journalism when it was manufactured and put in trucks and sent out and it was done that's it now and we don't know hardly anyone does actually the best example of this is Wikipedia of all places the news the information the knowledge the understanding accretes over time to a place where there's much more clarity about something that was just a big story but we didn't know what it really meant and if the bigger and more important that is the more likely people will have gotten to see some of this or all of it again I'm not happy about the idea that and I don't believe by the way I do not buy the echo chamber notion that we will only go to the things we believe in I just don't believe that I think that's easier to do in the era of broadcasting but Fox News doesn't have hyperlinks the TV version but and actually they don't do much of that with their website but the right-wing bloggers I respect and there are a lot of them put lots of links in their stuff to the things they vehemently despise right to those things and I think that is the that's an underappreciated value of what we have and where we're going sort of skeptical about one theme of what you've been talking about only one well yeah in fact one I like the rest pretty much it's the lazy user thing don't you think it's just a consequence of the division of labor in a society I mean you know these lazy people are not that lazy I mean they are hardworking hardworking and that's the point after hours they just want to relax right and get entertained my favorite and it also reminds me the or resembles the culture discussion high culture and you know like folk culture my favorite director is keselowski he's polish like me but and you know that like his movies touch upon you know very deeply moral human issues but it's it's sort of fringe phenomenon you have to be in a good mood you have to be well educated and so on to really enjoy it so don't you think that and don't you think that this civic journalism and what you've been talking about is like trying to ask the average people all of the people to watch movies keselowski's movies instead of really relax after hardworking I can see I have to do some photoshopping of that particular slide and you're right I do not at all denigrate kicking back and watching TV and being entertained and and just you know emptying your mind into the tube as opposed to getting something what that picture should what that TV screen should show instead as a news broadcast which I think is I believe it's a it's it's not lazy to want to sit back and be entertained after a long day of work at all I'm not claiming it is but I think it's lazy to sit back and watch a news show as if that's giving you all the information you need about things in which you're going to make some key decisions in your life I think that's a laziness we have accepted and embraced partly because we don't have as much time as we would like which is not a bad reason but but on things that matter to us and things ought to matter more than they do in many ways the I think there's a civic obligation to learn more and to to at least have some responsibility for for finding out more than we seem to know today and it's I don't want to come off as some kind of you know someone's great aunt scolding the world because that's the way it sounds I know and I'm trying to find I know I need a better way to put this but I do think that the era of mass media news has encouraged a an intellectual and civic laziness in our culture that is dangerous and that that if we don't do something about collectively that we're going to be in even more trouble than we are today so I'm I guess I am I am saying very very much that we start we need to all take more responsibility for knowing what we know and and for being part of of that world I I don't have a better way to put it yeah one last question somebody who hasn't asked or to follow up staying away from the image just just the idea that the Dan has a concern about the the demand side not being strong enough I've heard you know practical applications of media wisdom being imbued in San Francisco state and the Jim Clearfield and in University of San Francisco in San Francisco San Francisco State and Stony Brook and and UMass and other places but if even if it were installed in in every university in the United States there would still be two-thirds of the people who don't go to universities would not get a shot at this so do you have or have you seen anyone working on practical applications of bringing this kind of wisdom to people other than at the university level oh yeah there's lots of work going on in what people have been calling media literacy for a long time at all levels of education I avoid the expression media literacy at all costs because I I think it works better than ambience to put people to sleep but this is you know the answer that no one wants is that this is going to start with parents or it's not going to happen and I think it's going to be a long and hard path to get it into the you know universally into schools where it belongs at a much younger age partly because we have a consumer culture that that maybe there's going to be some pushback on that now that we've seen the the limits of that I don't know but there are many leverage points and I'm I have to say I'm really disappointed that the one of the institutions that should have made this a core mission over the years is the journalism business and they utterly didn't do it which is weird because it would have actually given them a much better reason for existing than they have today but you know it maybe the media journalism institutions of the future will take this on as a core mission but it doesn't have to be just them but literacy about many things should be part of many things I mean if we could get if we could get eBay to put up a little educational module on how business works for people who who don't understand that if we could get all kind you know all kinds of places to think about having some role in this that would be cool but it's it's going to just be persuasion it's it's it's going to take a lot longer than probably my career is going to be at this point thank you very much thank you thanks