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by Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros

July 1, 2002 • Today's weblog
JD Lasica's on a roll: Slashdot broke some news of its own when it pointed to JD Lasica's long piece on registration at online news sites at Online Journalism Review. The immensely popular tech blog considers NYTimes' easy registration "grandfathered in," but otherwise will not link to stories on sites that require registration.

Others have pointed out that the Times' relaxed attitude toward registration includes tolerating the NYT Random Login Generator and blogs that link to Times stories and supply a password.

Lasica also takes on a newsroom culture that says, "Everyone is subject to editing," and calls for discussion:"Should newspaper bloggers be subjected to the editing filter?"

"I'll kick off the discussion by suggesting that they should not. Perhaps the chief appeal and attraction of weblogs are their free-form, unfiltered nature. You get to hear people in their natural dialect, writing from their gut (complete with feelings, warts and all -- including typos), saying things that wouldn't normally make it through the newsroom editing machine. It would show journalists as human beings with opinions, emotions, and personal lives.

"I suspect the effort will not be worth it if the city editor or features editor has to sign off on every journalist's weblog. Talk about self-censorship. If that becomes the standard, newspapers shouldn't bother, because the more interesting blogs will be done by journalists on their personal sites in their off hours."

And that's part of what I'm putting to the test in the next couple of weeks!
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