When Wall Street Journal reporter Kara Swisher spoke at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism last year, she called online journalists "linkalists" -- a joke, she insists, though some didn't find it funny. That may be because "linkalism" creates not only opportunities for new kinds of journalism but new challenges in setting and holding to journalistic standards, challenges that the world of new media is only beginning to wrestle with.
Online journalists say that most discussions about standards center on the relationship between content and commerce. "Those lines are blurrier than I'm comfortable with," Swisher says. Emerson College journalism professor Jerry Lanson agrees. "Often, issues about what is journalistic content become secondary," he says.
This spring the Online News Association, along with the Columbia University School of Journalism, created a new set of international awards for the best of Internet journalism. The awards are meant to encourage high standards. And they will also make an important distinction between the kinds of sites that include news. According to TheStreet.com's Jamie Heller, an ONA board member, the organization has agreed that for a site to qualify for the award, "the primary purpose of the site has to be to inform, rather than to sell products." Some fear that the many new sites featuring news content as a sideline may find many new ways to blur standards.
But such blurring is possible on journalistic sites as well. New media create unique issues because of the possibilities in the technology. Sites not only put related advertising adjacent to articles, but they can embed advertising within an article. Either way, linking articles to commerce is far more immediate and powerful online. While a print advertisement requires you to visit a store to make a purchase, online you can simply move your wrist slightly to buy. "Just because you can make such links, doesn't mean you should," says Swisher.
Should The New York Times on the Web include a link to Barnes & Noble directly below a book review? Should Newstream.com sandwich a news report on Clinton's Memorial Day speech between a Ford press release and an advertisement for their own company? Should Slate magazine put a paid advertisement--labeled as such--in its list of the day's stories? Should Yahoo! FinanceVision pop up an advertising window when you research financial news through the Yahoo! site? Should Salon's online shop feature music CDs for sale through an online store that features Salon's own album reviews? Should Time.com review a Panasonic digital camera--complete with picture and price--with a link to Panasonic's online store?
It depends, journalists say. Rich Gordon, who headed The Miami Herald's online site for four years, says he is not necessarily troubled by commercial links embedded in news. "Consumers often want to be able to buy a book if they read a positive review," he says. "But of course, you can envision scenarios where this could be abused -- if you only chose to review books that Amazon wanted, or if you didn't run negative reviews, for example."
Still, it is more difficult for readers to recognize the line between commerce and content online than in print. Visual clues have been developed over time in print; online, we are all learning them. For this reason disclosure is essential, according to Rich Jaroslovsky, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal's Web site. "The real issue is whether or not these sites are playing fair with their users," he says, "by making clear when content is really an advertisement." Les Blatt, managing editor of Newstream.com says, "It's largely a matter of making clear where the information on your site comes from."
Blatt says that all of the information on his site clearly states where it comes from -- including information from public relations companies. The troubled APBnews.com has been labeling all advertisements with the word "advertising" printed alongside each one. Fred Mann, former general manager of Philly.com, Knight Ridder's Philadelphia site, says that information on his site often runs with a disclaimer if it is not fact-checked by the staff. "I don't think at this time you'll find sites that are crystal clear on this," says Mann. "But I think as we go along, there will be more labels."
Most online journalists have a print background, and bring their sense of print-world ethics -- or lack of ethics -- with them. "The Web magnifies bad ethics," says Columbia University journalism professor Steve Ross, "But it doesn't create bad ethics."
"The rules haven't changed," says Bruce Koon, a regional vice-president of KnightRidder.com. "Credibility is actually a driver of traffic." *
Tracy McNamara is an assistant editor at CJR.
