Huffington Post Loses Its Way

It was reported yesterday that the Huffington Post is giving advertisers the opportunity to “buy” comments in posts on Huffington and pay for tweets that become part of their Twitter stream. Of course, this is an absolutely horrible idea that runs counter to the fundamental principles of authenticity and equal participation that power social media.

Here is how one ad agency exec described it, “It’s interruptive, potentially, but it also presents an opportunity for the advertiser to say something worthwhile.”

I don’t think I need to say anything more.

What is so shocking about this idea is that it comes from Huffington, the darling of new media, not a terrified, old media newspaper. What’s going on?  Here’s what’s going on according to the Silicon Alley Insider: Greg Coleman, the president and chief revenue officer says he will double revenue in the next year and grow it by six times in the next three years.

Coleman’s pronouncement sounds like a that of a company ready to go public. We’ll focus all of our energy on hitting quarterly profit targets year after year after year. Huffington is, of course, a for profit venture. However, it was one with a soul — until now. The site has become the media equivalent of a big box store – everything here for one,  low price! And in the process it has lost site of what it set out to do; provide alternative, citizen voices on politics.

It now looks and sounds more like the mainstream media outlets that Arianna has long ridiculed than the pioneer that it once was. Which leads to flailing around like paid comments and tweets looking for new revenue streams regardless of their ethical fit with the site.

It’s too bad. It used to be a fun, irreverent, alternative voice for progressive politics.

Reflections on Transparency and Journalism

Amanda Michel, the energetic manager of Huffington Post’s OffTheBus citizen journalism experiment during the past campaign season, wrote a terrific reflection piece on the experience.

A few highlights of the piece are:

• I love the description of Off the Bus as a “citizen-powered campaign news site.” That’s the most succinct description I’ve read of a group campaign blog.
• Off the Bus was created to fill the “gaping chasm between the decentralized and often personal political blogosphere, which can overheat when it encounters ineptitude or corruption, and the mainstream press, which focuses on scoop reporting and looks at politics mostly from the top down.”
• And here’s the key line, I think, “This required replacing objectivity with an ethic of transparency.”

The last point is the essence of citizen journalism, isn’t it?  Removing the pretense of objectivity and replacing it with radical transparency that begins with a pact between the writer and the reader that says, “I am writing about these subjects because I care passionately about them and have the following views. . . “

Amanda is throwing out a lifeline to the drowning newspaper industry. It will be interesting to see who catches it. The industry has been rent with despair the last few months as layoffs and closures have sadly swept across the landscape. The pillars are falling quickly – The Rocky Mountain News (heart wrenching video of the last day of the paper through this link), and The Seattle-Post Intelligencer are just two recent examples.

Contrast these reports with an experiment Jeff Jarvis reports on. It is a new relationship between CUNY journalism students and the New York Times that may be sustainable. It’s hyper local and very open, both critical criteria for success. These are the lessons that Amanda is sharing with us from the successful model of OffTheBus.

Vince Stehle writes a cogent argument for newspapers to take the nonprofit route.  I disagree that this is the answer – particular in these very difficult economic times where there is no indication that local foundations or donors are willing to support newspapers. It is also a dangerous mirage to assume that the cost savings of tax exempt status and the possibility of donations will save newspapers from the much harder work of reimagining how they work to reflect the values and operational norms of the Connected Age.  At best it is a red herring, a distraction, that only puts off the having to wrestle with the real problem that newspapers face, which is not a financial problem but a business model problem. The old ways of doing business for news organizations, the high walls and barriers they have erected against citizen participation, no longer apply to this environment and younger readers. The business of gathering and disseminating news is fundamentally changing and as Amanda points out the signs so far point to more openeness, more participation are the right avenues to take.

[Note: In the spirit of radical transparency, I will a contributor to Off the Bus.]

The Wiki That Isn’t on Change.gov

Working Wikily, a paper and idea crafted by The Monitor Institute and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (although originally coined by Lucy Bernholz), describes a collaborative way of working that is inclusive and transparent.

The Obama administration is putting these ideas to work using wikis and public policy on their Change.gov site reports Nancy Scola. Launched yesterday, the health care discussion with two members of the transition team, Dr. Dora Hughes and Lauren Aronson, on a wiki on Change.gov.  This certainly strikes me as more transparent and constructive than the black hole of resumes with which the site started.

I like the opening statement on the page, “Our policy teams will be sharing new developments with you, the American people, and asking for feedback. It’s up to you to respond.”  In particular, the “it’s up to you to respond.” part putting the onus on us, citizens, to participate is great.  Brava!

Here’s the part that I don’t like about this wiki:  it’s not a wiki.

This is a blog post, think Huffington Post not Wikipedia.  Here’s a wiki:  http://votereport.pbwiki.com/FrontPage.  This is what we used to organize Twitter Vote report and you can see the different pages that participants created throughout the project on the right side:  such as partners, media outreach, project tracker, user stories.  Volunteers created these pages, posted content, others revised and edited it.

Perhaps I’d let this technical issue go if the opening question were better. “What don’t we like about the healthcare system” is waaaaayyyyy too broad as a starter.  Here, I’ll give you all the answers and then we can move on:  It’s too expensive, not portable and doesn’t provide things we need, like medications, inexpensively.

OK, so it’s not a wiki and the opening question doesn’t work, is that all I’ve got?  Nope, here’s the big one, and the one that stops too many efforts from being truly transparent: Drs. Hughs and Aronson posted a question, invited us to wrestle with it, and . . . And, what?  What are they going to do with this conversation.  Without a commitment to listening it runs the risk of becoming a long thread that starts out with long, thoughtful responses (and these really are that so far) that will ultimately degenerate into something less civil and run the risk of petering out all together. Why not extend the challenge by posing several questions that people can begin to wrestle with (e.g. what are you willing to pay for health care? what are the pros and cons of a government-run system?  how can we reduce the significant liability risks that health care providers have now?) and asking people to wrestle with them online, and engaging groups like Public Agenda and Everyday Democracy to facilitate local disucssions and develop real proposals and solutions?

You had us at wiki, Change.gov, now really challenge and engage us, please!