What Ben Domenech can teach newspaper.coms

Commentary: The conservative blogger's sudden flameout at washingtonpost.com shouldn't scare publishers away from the blogosphere.

What should newspaper website editors learn from washingtonpost.com's Ben Domenech debacle?

Well, if the initial response is simply "don't hire bloggers," newspaper.coms will miss an enormous opportunity.

The Post deserves credit for courting readers through blogging technology more aggressively than perhaps any other U.S. newspaper. When the New York Times put its op-ed content behind a subscription wall, the Post took the opposite approach, not only soliciting links to its still-free content from bloggers, but returning the favor through linkbacks generated with technology from blog search engine Technorati. The Post has demonstrated an understanding that Web publishing ought to reflect a conversation, unlike traditional, one-way print publishing.

Newspaper.coms that are beginning that conversation shouldn't fear bloggers dropping gigabytes of criticism their way. If bloggers are complaining, that means they're still reading. Publishers should fear, instead, the calm silence of an apathetic Web that doesn't read your site anymore.

Ben Domenech was a lousy hire. Not because he was a blogger, not because he was opinionated. He was a lousy hire because his history of work online revealed a dishonest, shallow writer who added bluster, rather than insight, to his pages. His shrill parting shot at the readers who exposed his plagiarism only further demonstrated his immature self-importance.

Fortunately, Ben Domenech is as representative of online writers as Janet Cooke or Jack Kelley are of newspaper reporters. But, in my experience, too many newspaper reporters and editors continue to assume that most bloggers are just partisan media critics. Such views of the blogosphere ignore the wonderful variety of blogs and independent sites online, some even published by former print and broadcast journalists.

The lure of the voice Blogs are attracting readers in not insignificant amounts. BoingBoing serves two million readers a day, according to one of its writers. DailyKos serves hundreds of thousands of daily visitors. People want information. They want it presented in an engaging and comforting voice. And they want the writers presenting that information to believe in it.

That's why newspaper readers love great columnists. People respond to a friendly, authoritative voice. Even Domenech's blustery RedState delivers its "news" with uncompromising certainty. That isn't to say that writers shouldn't put out something they're unsure about. But they do need to be honest and transparent about what they do -- and do not -- know.

Popular bloggers speak with an authoritative voice, but not a disembodied institutional voice. Good bloggers engage their readers, becoming a real person whom a reader wants to have a conversation with. And the best bloggers know their topic, and deliver and analyzing information that a generalist can't.

Newspapers don't need to hire partisans from the blogosphere to find such voices. Newsrooms and journalism schools have been producing them for generations. And that ought to be the lesson from the Domenech incident. The journalism industry doesn't need more partisan blowhards. It does not need to turn publications over to right-wingers to hold on to its audience. It does need, however, to better connect with readers who are overwhelmed with media choices.

In addition to encouraging new voices that will draw and maintain readership, newspaper.coms should consider a different style of journalistic writing. Why keep making your writers turn out third-person, inverted-pyramid, "Journalism 101" articles if the public responds so well to different formats? Journalism developed its publishing conventions in large part to support the technical needs of print and broadcast media. With the Internet those needs no longer always apply.

Ultimately, we're in the communication business, not the 15-inch-four-source-article business. Why not try new formats in an effort to better communicate? Don't stick to the established online formats, either. The biggest winners in business are those who don't copy the competition, but who find something new.

In search of the truth Of course, writing format is just one of the problems here. A larger issue, one that is potentially more troublesome, is politics. Ben Domenech is a conservative, and many conservatives complain long and loud about the Washington Post. To the extent that conservatives point out errors of fact and unsupported assumptions in news coverage, their views should be heard and the subject of their complaints corrected. But if conservatives -- or moderates or liberals for that matter -- don't like the outcome of truthful news reporting or well-researched and argued commentary ... tough.

As someone who trained in social and lab science research long before taking a journalism course, it drives me nuts the way this industry misapplies the term "objectivity." True scientific objectivity doesn't mean promoting all views, no matter how poorly supported. Nor does it mean refusing to take a stand, no matter how compelling the evidence.

News readers want the truth. They always have. Indeed, with so many media choices now available, they crave someone to do the hard work of sifting through this information and to tell them what can be believed. So, instead of turning over their webpages to partisans spewing the latest talking points, newspaper website editors ought to build their audience by doing what the partisan sites will not -- sharp reporting. At the same time, they ought to let their writers deliver that reporting in freshest, most engaging and conversational formats possible. Even if that ticks off readers from one party or the other.

With millions of publishers now reaching the global audience, someone's going to deliver that kind of coverage. Newspaper publishers will have to decide whether theirs will be among the sites that succeed at that new game.

Biased partisanship is the problem of the mainstream media; more, improved, even better, balanced, biased partisanship is not the answer.What's lacking in their writing is the non-partisan person without a preconceived idea of what is right and wrong -- but is a truly inquiring mind.

Instead, they give us more biased, close-minded, smug people of the familiar sort -- of the kind their organizations are dominated and infested with. And like failing businesses everywhere, they insist on selling us what they have -- instead of what we want. Their response is to go out and recruit better salesman to sell us what we don't want.

We don't want more biased, partisan information, no matter how good their deceptions and manipulations are. We don't care how much they claim they are "objective" because we can tell how biased they really are -- which further undermines their credibility.

And then when they do locate talent of this ability and quality, they promptly try to make them write just like them -- in the narrow-minded, biased, partisan way they call "objective," undermining that attempt. They just don't get it and all signs point that they never will; they will go down the way they are, and something new and fresh will supplant them.Intelligence has the ability to respond and change -- instead of their editors demanding that the world change to suit them -- and recognize them as the next messiah -- the self-anointed ones who should do the thinking for all mankind.

It'd be appealing if they weren't such narrow-minded, petty people, who are to intelligent discourse what Helen Thomas is to beauty, truth and graciousness. But she's the best they've got -- and they wonder why there are no takers.

I heard that all the plagerism charges were false and that even the Wash Post exonerated him, but told him they would fire him anyway because the backlash showed that they do not need to cater to a conservative market.

I think what you heard reflected his first explanation posted at Red State, but not his second. The National Review apologized to their readers for publishing his articles where parts were plagiarized, his editors at his college newspaper denied his charge that they inserted the plagiarized material in his articles, and P.J. O'Rourke denied that he had given permission for the use of his material.

Pretty conclusive.

It is boldfaced, and I also can't figure why a rational person would do that, when some of it was obvious, and checkable. I'm not sure what you're getting at - I can't imagine PJ O'Rourke would have given a college kid rights to his material, and I can't see why O'Rourke would have lied about it afterward if he did give him the rights. Not to mention the National Review apologizing to the columnist whose work was plagiarized by Domenech.

Virtually all journalism is plagiarism. Show me one original idea or piece of writing that isn't a plagiarism or paraphrasing of what somebody else said a thousand times before. The whole curriculum of journalism is to say what somebody else said before -- hoping to find somebody more ignorant than they who hasn't heard it yet.

So for the Wapo and Nuto to demand original writing from everybody else while they merely repeat MoveOn press releases and DNC talking points as though they wrote them themselves, is a bit much.

Show me one original idea or piece of writing that isn't a plagiarism or paraphrasing of what somebody else said a thousand times before. The whole curriculum of journalism is to say what somebody else said before -- hoping to find somebody more ignorant than they who hasn't heard it yet.

To an extent, that may be true. But if you take someone's exact words, you're supposed to put quotes around them and attribute the quote, not pass off someone else's work as yours. And for those who make their living writing, like O'Rourke, plagiarism = stealing.

Wasn't he a student at the time, writing for a student newspaper?

As a young kid growing up, most aren't aware that what they take as common sense, somebody may claim as original authorship. I would think that P.J. O'Rourke wouldn't be demanding credit and royalties from every school boy who's ever repeated what he wrote.

Even Jesus would have been honored.

It's a fairly typical media (liberal) ploy -- to make a big to-do about doing something fair and then holding the other to a different standard than themselves so that he has to fail. Then they can pat themselves on the back saying, "Look we tried to be fair and balanced but they were all crooks, and so there are just us honest, objective, magnanimous great noble souls here who have sacrificed great riches, beautiful women and unlimited personal power to bring you the news at ..."

Their capacity for self-deception and self-promotion is endless and shameless.

Wasn't he a student at the time, writing for a student newspaper?

Some of these (but not all) happened when was a college student, so he really should have been aware -- even in high school we are taught not to plagiarize. Perhaps his school was lacking in something?

The National Review Online is not, to my knowledge, a student publication. I can understand wanting to give him a pass on some of the college work, but not the NRO.

The only thing that should matter is that they have the best writers and thinkers in the world working for them now -- and not the world's greatest collection of mediocrities whose entire collection of work is forgettable and a disgrace to human intelligence.

Who cares if their words that should never have seen the light of day and come to human consciousness, are plagiarized or not?

There are far greater crimes than plagiarism; deception, omission, suppression and manipulation are done routinely by every editorial staff in the country -- pontificating piously as though their shit is sweet, aromatic and even curative.

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