Back Story to Mayfair Flowler, Huff Post's "Off the Bus", Citizen Journalism and the "Bitter" story

[housewolf]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-rosen/the-uncharted-from-off-th_b_96575.html?view=print

This is a brief snippet from an in-depth article about the story
...

This assumption -- implicit, never fully articulated -- was tested by what Mayhill heard from Obama as he tried to talk to Californians about people in the small towns of Pennsylvania. She knew it was newsworthy. She felt it showed bad judgment by her candidate. She also knew it was likely to be distorted and used against Obama, which worried her. Touching off a media frenzy worried her too. Her friends and contacts in the Obama campaign were giving her grief (and worse) after her first report from the fundraiser, suggesting Obama was too cocky. OffTheBus project director Amanda Michel knew she couldn't force Mayhill to write anything more because we weren't paying her anything. Citizen journalism doesn't work by force and there is no rule book for it yet.

The decision that Michel and Mayhill arrived at: only when she had worked out a solid and truthful way to contextualize Obama's most explosive quotes ("it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them") would she feel comfortable reporting on them. When her piece arrived, it started the action in Pennsylvania, and approached Obama's comments in California cautiously. Instead of turning it into a blaring news report with scare quotes, Cooper left it as a simple blog post.

It was anything but a traditional approach to news. Indeed, the explosive quotes from Obama appeared very late in the story and were not broken out at the top nor particularly highlighted (though they did shape the headline that I wrote).
...

Along with Amanda and Roy Sekoff, editor of the HuffPost, I made the decision that after a copy edit and some light rewording here and there we would run the piece in the form in which it came in.

Except for the headline, this is not how a professional newsgathering operation would handle the story. But a professional newsgathering operation would never put itself in the position that we bargained for when we started OffTheBus. Journalists, the pro kind, aren't allowed to be loyalists. But loyalists because they're allowed to write for OffTheBus may find that loyalty to what really happened trumps all. And that's when they start to commit journalism.

After asking Mayhill Fowler a lot of questions, I told her "let me see if I grasp what you are saying."

...

[rinsd]

1. Interesting

"It's not surprising to me that Tim erased Mayhill. And it's not a shock that some misguided Obama supporters tried to turn her into an enemy of the regime, which she is not. Or that Jay Newton-Small of Time magazine changed her scoop into a leak from someone inside the campaign to the Huffington Post."

[ErinBerin84]

2. Already,

this is making Huffington Post drama central. Josepoh Palermo wrote an article saying that Fowler was a "fraud", Jane Smiley wrote one saying that Hillary is a fraud, a writer responded to THAT by writing a "You've gone too far, Jane Smiley" article. And the article referenced above seemed to go after Joseph Palermo's, in saying that Obama supporters are trying to scapegoat by blaming Mayhill Fowler. I've only started reading the Huffington Post a couple of months ago, but is this standard? In the past, I've read writers respond to specific articles on the Huffington Post that they did not agree with, but the attacking of specific bloggers (not that everyone on the Huffington Post should agree with each other, obviously they don't) seems sudden. Maybe it's because, as the article above points out, this is the first time (?) that Huffington Post is the actual source, so it raises extra controversy.

[housewolf]

7. The piece was written by Jay Rosen...

He's a NYU journalism prof and helped create the Huffington Post's "Off the Bus" project. From the sounds of the article, he was involved in the decision to publicize the Bitter story, but I'm not sure of his exact role.

The "Bitter" story was first published on Huff Post's "Off the Bus" page. His point in writing the article was to discuss/explain how it came to be published there so, yeah, that's why they are central to his article.

[ErinBerin84]

10. Um, yes, I understand that...

I was glad that he wrote the article, it was interesting. I'm not sure why you think that I need the purpose of Jay Rosen's article explained to me . I didn't mean that Jay Rosen was specifically attacking other writers who felt that the Huffington post "crossed the line", just that Mayhill Fowler shouldn't be blamed, since she has the unique role of a citizen reporter. I'm sorry if I did not make that clear.

[housewolf]

11. I'm sorry... I thought you were "complaining" about the attention Jay Rosen gave to Huff Post

in the article, so I was trying to explain to you why. I misunderstood. I'm sorry!

:blush:

[Major Hogwash]

3. Let me know if you guys ever catch Obama telling stories of "ducking sniper fire"

By gawd, then you'll have a story!

But, when you keep writing stories about what socks Obama wears, it isn't newsworthy.

[Lord Helmet]

4. she isn't unbiased and admitted writing the story because Obama pissed her off

I don't think that's a very good demonstration of journalistic integrity because you are not supposed to insert yourself in the story.

[rinsd]

5. I didn't see anyone say boo when positive Obama stories were written for Off the Bus.

This was a supporter reporting comments even though she felt they may do the candidate damage.

[Lord Helmet]

6. bullshit - I saw her interviewed on MSNBC - her intentions weren't at all pure

[rinsd]

8. Read Jay Rosen's article.

This crap of "wit us or agin us" ginned up by the fanatics on both sides is getting old.

[housewolf]

9. That's some of what the article is about...

Mayfair Fowler is not a "real" journalist, she's a "citizen journalist", for whom there are no rules. In part, the article discussed how they treaded the waters where there are no rules in deciding to publish the piece.