The foward-looking experiment by the L.A. Time’s editor Michael Kinsley in “wikitorials” has bitten the dust, RIP after just two days after some readers turned them into wickedtorials by posting…ahem…eye-opening illustrations:
A Los Angeles Times experiment in opinion journalism lasted just two days before the paper was forced to shut it down Sunday morning after some readers repeatedly posted obscene photos.
The L.A. Times wanted an interactive readership, but this was not what it had in mind. The New York Times piece goes on:
On Friday, the paper introduced an online feature it called a wikitorial, asking Web site readers to improve a 1,000-word editorial, “War and Consequences,” on the Iraq war.
Readers were invited to insert information, make changes or come to different conclusions. The model was based on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia where anyone can add facts or update information.
“It sounds nutty,” said an introduction to the wikitorial in Friday’s paper. “Plenty of skeptics are predicting embarrassment; like an arthritic old lady who takes to the dance floor, they say, The Los Angeles Times is more likely to break a hip than be hip. Nevertheless, we proceed. We’re calling this a ‘public beta,’ which is a fancy way of saying we’re making something available even though we haven’t completely figured it out.”
What they had not planned for was hard-core pornography, which the paper’s software could not ward off. Its open-source wikitorial software allowed readers to post without vetting from editors, who could take down posts only after they appeared. Any contributor who persisted in bad behavior could be blocked.
In retrospect, that was the first mistake. Blogs such as this have no editor. But we’re lukcy bekuz we dont mkea many mistakes.
A gatekeeper of some sort should have been in place at the beginning. And not just due to porn. What if there had been a libelous statement? If some blogs have to eliminate trackbacks and comments due to SPAMMING, why wouldn’t a newspaper face the same problem if it gave readers unfettered power to insert whatever they wanted? MORE:
During most of Friday and Saturday, readers thoughtfully altered the editorial. By Friday afternoon, hundreds had weighed in. Some did add profanity but just as quickly a Web master from the paper took it down.
“Nothing bad happened really until after midnight on Saturday,” said Michael Newman, deputy editorial page editor. At 8:32 p.m. Saturday, a posting on www.Slashdot.org, which bills itself as “news for nerds,” directed readers to the Times wikitorial.
“Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious,” Mr. Newman said. “We were taking stuff down as soon as it went up and staving them off. Finally we had to go to bed. Someone called the newsroom a little bit before 4 a.m. and said there’s something bad on your Web site, and so we just took the whole site down.”
The paper put a note on the editorial page Web site explaining the disappearance and thanking the “thousands” of people who logged on.
Andres Martinez, editorial page editor, said: “I was heartened by how seriously people took it. I was really impressed by the level of high-minded participation. It’s not a total shock it ended up this way. Now we will evaluate what this means.”
Well, it may mean that if all else fails L. A. Times could boost its circulation by providing X-rated content and going after a different kind of readership. They’d be able to get lots of money from “enlargement ads.”
Jeff Jarvis offers a more serious and detailed MUST READ analysis here on what he believes went wrong. He shares one of our reactions to this experiment — an experiment we predict WILL eventually be repeated with some safeguards and refinements by the LAT or some other newspaper that wants to be more attuned to 21st century news culture.
Read Jarvis’ whole piece but here’s our favorite quote:
The truth is that an editorial is just another blog post written by one person with one viewpoint. Here’s a case where you can’t argue that it makes a difference having a journalism degree and a newsroom. Editorialists and columnists get to read the same stuff we do and they put on their pants and opinions just the way we do. So why should they have rights to the mountaintop? Who died and made them Moses? Let the people speak.
As someone who wrote and sold lots of op-ed pieces in the 70s, I can attest: Jarvis is correct.
Before the era of the blog, the way to get your opinion across was to stand on a corner and shout it and risk being carted off to County Mental Health (unless you were in London) — OR get an op-ed piece published in a newspaper.
To do that you sent it in, the op-ed editor read it, and if he liked it they ran it. It was a clearcut experience, no hidden negatives: op-ed editors even today look for good, compelling stuff to put on their pages. They WANT diverse opinions (which is why when Bill O’Reilly attacks a newspaper for running an op-ed piece it’s downright silly: the op-ed pages are SUPPOSED TO be for OPINION and the more clear-cut the better). I liked and LIKE op-ed editors who — regardless of their views — ponder broad issues more than reporters or news editors, who are often too busy on deadline chasing facts on news stories.
But now you have the BLOG. And anyone with an idea, energy, and the desire/stupidity to write for free or little money can sit on their bottom, write a piece quaintly called a “post,” press a button and — without an editor checking grammar, facts, spelling or sanity — send it over the Internet for everyone to see.
So the editorial page still exists…but it doesn’t have a monopoly anymore.
It’s likely it will continue to exist — but be less influential overall and also assume the extra role of providing the raw material for others (bloggers) to use for THEIR editorial pages (blogs).
Kinsley was on the right track. We’re betting this was just a BETA run…and we’ll see the LAT or some other newspaper incorporate some of the Internet news culture real soon.
UPDATE: The L.A. Times is already suggesting “wikitorials” could be back in some other, presumably more porn-can-be-prevented form:
An announcement on the newspaper’s website, http://www.latimes.com , said the feature had been removed “at least temporarily, because a few readers were flooding the site with inappropriate material.”
But managers of the newspaper’s editorial and Internet operations, which have undergone a number of changes in recent months, said they might attempt to resurrect online editorials written collectively by readers.
“As long as we can hit a high standard and have no risk of vandalism, then it is worth having a try at it again,” said Rob Barrett, general manager of Los Angeles Times Interactive.
Once again: the CONCEPT was sound; the execution needs some mechanism to weed out the dorks.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.