A newspaper's ombudsman talks about the DSM -- Interesting!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

The Minneapolis Star Tribune's reader's representative describes how they learned about the DSM -- through a reader's e-mail -- and how they decided how to handle it. The Strib was one of the first U.S. newspapers to comment about it at all, and they show no signs of forgetting about it. This article also talks about how the Internet is affecting their reporting. Very interesting stuff.

"The U.S. media, as a whole, have been in slow motion reacting to the Downing Street memo, a highly classified report the London Times published May 1.

Word of the memo did not appear in the Star Tribune until May 13 -- and that was way ahead of most American media.

Is there something wrong with the story? Is the memo fabricated? Are readers uninterested? The answers are no, no and no.

The back story reveals a lot about how news travels traditional routes and cyberspace at different velocities, about how the Internet is being used to influence media and about how those on the left and right have learned to puff up their feathers or grow small -- to foment coverage or strangle it..."

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5451062.html

[Rick Myers]

1. I just read that in the paper

This issue is NOT dead!!!

[Hissyspit]

3. 1 in 600 Americans signed the Conyers Letter. No, it is not!

You are correct. That's just the Americans who have HEARD of the letter.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. The fascinating thing about the Strib's story

is that they first learned about it through a reader's e-mail and not through traditional news sources. This article also points out that they know "astroturf" when they see it, but that they take reader input and Internet sources seriously. Kudos to the Strib for deciding to print the story, and later to print the entire minutes (the first U.S. newspaper to have done so) -- and these decisions were made, in part, because readers *demanded* the information. We need to keep demanding that the news media do their jobs -- This article tell us that it does make a difference.

[Hissyspit]

2. Nominated. Minnesota: A haven of intelligent people in the U.S.,

apparently. (See Sen. Lourey, the loss of her son in Iraq, and her railing against Chickenhawks, for a related example).

[BeyondThePale]

4. as long as you forget about the Jesse Ventura thing!

Go Packers!

[Hissyspit]

5. Well, I meant recently.

At least Ventura was honest when he said he fucked whores.

ON EDIT: No offense to anyone in the world's oldest profession.

[greenman3610]

8. my only problem

is that he places the DSM on the same plane as the
Swift Boat shit.
In other words, to these guys, the top secret minutes
of a government meeting are the same as
a bunch of made up shit.
They need to rethink that a little before I can
give them an "A".

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hissyspit]

14. Hunh? I nominated it and said Minnesotans are intelligent.

[omega minimo]

16. At a loss?

"At least Ventura was honest when he said he fucked whores."

Degrades DU. Degrades thread. Breaks the r....................

"ON EDIT: No offense to anyone in the world's oldest profession."

Offensive and divisive.

:hi:

[Hissyspit]

18. Making fun of my username is what right-wing jerks have done to me...

Whenever I was winning the argument. So don't lecture me on derisive and devisive.

Ventura famously admitted he patronized concubines. I was implying that Ventura's candor was what Minnesotans found refreshing. And was making a pun on the idea of what politicians do, in response to SOMEONE ELSE who had brought up Jesse Ventura.

Thanks for helping to break the rhythm of the thread, too.

I give the moderators permission to remove my posts from this thread. It would be nice if you do the same.

[omega minimo]

19. You make the point well

The rhythm of the thread is broken when one is focused on an important issue and is unexpectedly gobsmacked with a verboten word such as "whore."

There is no argument and no lecture. There are rules. You restated what you were "implying" and were able to avoid the word this time.

:hug:

[Hissyspit]

7. Why the hell do we have to hear this from the ombudsmen????

Why hasn't it been in the regular coverage? The MSM - Idiots, all, apparently.

[SmokingJacket]

10. But this is sorta crazy!

I'm glad for this article, but what does it say about how newspapers get their news these days? Why did **I** -- a total nobody, non-journalist -- know about this thing before the nation's top newspapers???

Do they just sit around waiting for news to arrive by email or passenger pigeon or smoke signal?? Whatever happened to going out and FINDING news?

:crazy:

or maybe :scared:


ON EDIT -- on second thought... I don't buy this at all! They must have heard about the DSM, but decided they'd just ignore it until the flood of emails made that impossible. So they tucked a little CYA think in the ombudsman column. I call bullshit -- no way they didn't hear about it.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. They have been relying on "tradional" services like AP

which haven't been keeping up. The article comments on the "rusty news industry infrastructure" that has been pretty much ignoring the Internet:

"The effort it has taken locally to get a string of politically potent stories to Star Tribune readers before they're old news online reveals a rusty news industry infrastructure that still hasn't absorbed the Internet into its newsgathering habits. The wire services, and the national newspapers that feed them, need to log in and begin approaching the Internet with the passion of a foreign correspondent dispatched to his first assignment in an exotic locale."

Maybe this is about to change. We can hope.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. In this case, I don't agree with your last comment.

The Strib's editorial staff is reliably liberal (local freepers call it the Star and Sickle), and they've been consistently very critical of Bush and the Iraq invasion. They've had no reason to suppress the story, and every reason to go with it. So I tend to believe what the ombudsman said.

[SmokingJacket]

13. Okay, I believe you!

But it's pretty shocking, isn't it? Once they get the AP stories, they shut off the computers, go home and watch a little boob tube?

I mean, you'd think the people responsible for reporting news to a major city would keep at least half an ear open to the Internet and other world news sources?

They must be pretty distracted...

[annabanana]

17. in my mind's eye...

I see the author and the editors sitting around the AP machine like it was a telegraph machine in the 1800's..

waiting,,,, waiting...

[marions ghost]

15. well.....

I guess now it's "safe" for the mainstream US media to report on this, after they let foreign media and the 'bloggers' kick it around awhile.

They can still atone by following the story better now, but a lot of us will NEVER forget the media blackout on DSM for the entire month of May 2005.

Not much to say for the Star Tribune, the best of the worst. Who could have confidence in major media in America after this? They have failed us. Do we need better proof of that?

[snot]

20. Re- AP's slowness, c.f. this DU thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3841240

The gist: When the AP finally did report the story, a great many of the on-line publications that posted it apparently pulled it prematurely--i.e., out of an original 121-122 hits, ca. 44 disappeared in less than 12 hours.

As noted recently within this thread, "Note that nearly all the links you give have the same form ending in 'ap/headlines/d8alv5ro1.txt' . I think this means that all the newspapers use the same set of headline stories from AP - so if the AP editor removes it, it automatically gets removed from all 44 (or however many are affected) at once."