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Tag: Dan Gillmor

Three Important Points Dan Gillmor Made the Other Night

I attended an event Monday night sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists/MN Chapter, billed as "New Media, New Standards? Ethics in Online Journalism."  It was held at the very impressive MPR facility in downtown St. Paul, and I was surprised to see about 200 people showed up. Gillmorwideshot
It was mostly members of the local traditional media — reporters, editors, producers, etc — and I’d say it skewed toward senior-level people. There were some academics in the audience, too. And I’d estimate a good 30 to 40 of us independent bloggers came out as well, even though we weren’t really actively invited (to my knowledge, anyway). The event was open to the public, and I actually learned about it from the featured speaker, Dan Gillmor. I just happened to notice on his blog that he had Minneapolis listed in his upcoming travel plans, so I asked him was that was about. Dan was the main reason I wanted to be there, because I have a lot of respect for the man. I’ve met him on a couple of occasions, most recently at DEMO in January, and I always enjoy reading his columns in PR Week.Gillmorcloseup

I Twittered live from the event here (scroll down to a series of posts dated February 25). But I thought I’d also do a little followup post here, as I realized there were three very important takeaways from this event that deserved calling out (and all three confirmed my own suspicions):

1) The New York Times is in state of bigtime decline. Gillmor says the Times "screwed up" on the McCain insinuation story. "They’ll pay for it, and I’m most disappointed they still aren’t admitting it." How many occurrences of editorial screwups do people need to see from this paper to realize it’s dying?  And the fact that Marc Andreessen has declared a "NY Times deathwatch" on his blog is only more evidence of that. Of course, his argument is more from a business standpoint, since they’ve become the best example of the dying newspaper business model. But, for me, the combination of Andreessen’s call and Gillmor’s shock at their editorial demise is enough. Stick a fork in it.

2)  Transparency.  Dan said bloggers understand and practice it, but traditional journalists
don’t. I was heartened by Gillmor breaking this to the audience (not that they shouldn’t have known it already). I started what I think was one of the best discussions of transparency way back in November 2006, when Mark Glaser picked up on something I said and posted about it on his very well respected MediaShift blog at PBS.org. I spoke my piece pretty well there. I’m starting to realize that the fact the mainstream media is widely perceived as biased may largely be due to its journalists not being
transparent as individuals, about their own biases, whether by choice or
because their employers’ policies don’t require them to be. But, net-net, because Dan Gillmor pointed this out, I’m gathering that this
notion of transparency still hasn’t sunk in with the traditional media crowd.

3) Readers are smarter than writers. I’ve heard Dan allude to this before. But I think it merits more attention. He said he first realized this early in his career as a technology writer for the San Jose Mercury News. And it certainly applies to the world of blogging, he said. But he also said that doesn’t mean commenters can be rude or obnoxious. Civil behavior must still be the rule. "Your blog is your living room, and you have every right to not let people come in and spit on your rug."  Right on, Dan.

Dan Gillmor on Silicon Valley’s Declining Image

Speaking of the options-backdating debacle, Dan Gillmor wrote an incisive piece recently in PR Week, where he has a regular column. I met Dan several years ago at an O’Reilly conference, and I have much respect for the man. Few journalists have a better perspective on the Valley than he does, after so many years covering the tech beat for the Merc News. His latest PR Week column was entitled Silicon Valley’s image troubles run a lot deeper than just PR. Since that link is behind a paywall for most of you, let me provide some excerpts:

Like most others in Silicon Valley, I’ve watched Hewlett-Packard’s slow-motion train wreck – its unethical and probably illegal anti-leak spying program – with awe….

The current management is trying hard to spin its misbehavior into something that will let the company go back to business as usual. Good luck.

HP’s woes have shifted focus away from another corporate ethical debacle, namely the stock options scandal. That, you’ll recall, involves corporate chieftains and their obedient (or incompetent) directors, who’ve abused shareholders to further enrich the executives.

As a Silicon Valley resident, I’m sorry to say these affairs have the Valley and its longstanding arrogance in common. The 1990s stock bubble and its predations were bad enough. The latest news has made things worse…

Then he goes on to cite a metric that reminds us we’ve hardly heard the end of this saga….

…when the Valley’s most venerable big company gets caught running a sleazy spying operation, and when roughly half of the companies known to be under investigation for stock options shenanigans are in the tech business, you can’t just ignore reality…

He also mentions the troubles of a man who was previously one of the most renowned, iconish names in the Valley — top tech-industry lawyer Larry Sonsini:

….Sonsini’s role in the Valley’s dual debacles may be the most intriguing. As outside counsel for HP, he offered advice – not to worry, we’re doing nothing illegal, he effectively told the board as its spying operation neared public disclosure – that met a low standard indeed: What’s acceptable is what you can get away with, not what’s right.

Sonsini’s firm has also represented many of the tech companies under investigation in the options matter. No big surprise, given that the firm has been the Valley’s most influential and powerful for years, but it does raise more questions. Handling PR for Sonsini and his colleagues right now must be nightmarish, too.

In his closing, though, Gillmor succinctly lays out the real challenge for the tech establishment:

No doubt, the Valley’s image will recover eventually. But making that happen will require some honest introspection in executive suites and boardrooms, not just clever PR. How likely is that?

Makes one think of the company motto adopted not long ago by a certain new tech leader (whose name starts with “G”). Maybe that motto — “Don’t Be Evil” — wasn’t just window dressing? Maybe these kids had a deeper knowledge and insight about Valley culture than we realized….

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