Crowdsourcing does not always provide the answers that you expect. I wonder what would be on the front page of the NY Times if popularity was the determining factor for what stories got published. Celebrity gossip? If so, would they be obliged to hire Perez Hilton as their managing editor? People also tend to not like depressing news like people dying in wars, world hunger, pollution, etc. Bury those stories? Or maybe Dave is thinking that a paper like the Times would or should not cater to the masses and only consider the opinions of smart users or users who share his values. - scott anderson

Crowdsourcing? Who said anything about crowdsourcing? Who said newspapers should start editing the front page based on popularity? Where did the phrase "cater to the masses" come from? Where are you getting these things from? "If you want to keep their interest, you need to be interested in them." That was his main point. Does that say "edit the front page by market survey?" Jeez-a-roni. - Jay Rosen

Slippery slope. How do you get there from here? Quoting from Dave ... "it was largely considered unethical for a reporter or editor to know which sections of the paper were most read by users of the paper. If the reporter knew, the story goes, he or she might be influenced by peoples' interests in deciding what to write about." Dave indicated that this type of thinking was a bug. I disagree. - scott anderson

It's often commonly known information that some parts of the magazines are more often read than others (while that information is based on the small sample of tests). Anyways, in most newspapers most commonly read page is comics. ;) - Daniel Schildt

Where's the switch? The switch that causes people to hear Dave Winer saying, "listen to users" and yet what the brain receives is "abandon all judgment, all intelligence to whatever people tend to consume." Where is that switch? - Jay Rosen

BTW, here's the piece people are responding to. http://www.scripting.com/stories... - Dave Winer

Jay, it's the same switch that flipped when people told us at Salon a decade ago that we should never look at our traffic reports because it would corrupt our judgment as journalists and turn us into bottomfeeding scum. - Scott Rosenberg

Yes, the same switch; and I recall that battle pretty well. By the way, is "slippery slope" considered a thought? I mean do people still think of that as an argument: "once you start down, the only option is complete loss of balance until you hit the bottom?" To me that seems more like an escape from the necessity of having to think about something, but maybe shouting "slippery slope" at a problem still sounds like a thought to some folks. If so, it's kind of sad, no? - Jay Rosen

My most popular blog post is a throw-away picture of Bruce Lee beating up Chuck Norris. Knowing my stats, do I keep posting Lee/Norris stuff? No. But the next ten most-pop posts are about science, and I notice what style and format appeals to ppl, and I may slightly modify my writing style of posts about science - making them better because of this information. - Bora Zivkovic

I can process the readers' info and not go down the slippery slope. I am still in charge, but feedback - direct through comments and indirect from traffic stats - improves my writing. Newspapers can do the same. - Bora Zivkovic

Right. "Slippery slope" can mean "pack appropriate footwear, move with caution" but too often people use it to mean "that's scary, let's just sit tight." And there *are* sometimes piles of dazed bruised people at the bottom of the hill. - Scott Rosenberg

Maybe this is what it is. When people make that equation, "to listen is to cave," they are not making an observation about listening at all. They are making an observation about other people, what scott anderson called "the masses." The masses lack discipline, the masses want entertainment, the masses want Britney Spears-- not news. Most important: the masses are not me, the observer of other people and their decadent habits. And so to challenge the equation, listening=caving, is to take "the masses" away. - Jay Rosen

But "masses" are interested in stuff other than Britney Spears. Sometimes they don't know it because all the media serves them is Britney Spears: http://scienceblogs.com/clock... - Bora Zivkovic

You never know what you'll learn if you listen, that's what's really stupid about arguing about whether you should listen or not. Maybe the people who want to say something to you might just make the difference between driving off the cliff and finding a new future. Maybe it's keeping *you* from having the great idea that cracks the nut. - Dave Winer

BTW, when did listening become "listening in the aggregate." If you know anything about me, you know that I don't think of users as couch potatoes, passive participants. In the 80s when I ran a software company, we used to design regcards so as to solicit original thoughts, not just box-clicking. When a new batch of regcards came in I grabbed them and studied them for interesting comments. When I had a question, I called them and asked. It's also good for business if people get that you care what they think - Dave Winer

BTW, you might have to listen to 100 users to get 1 good idea. In 1986, I had a meeting with Guy Kawasaki when he worked at Apple. I showed him an early version of one of our products, we had thrown the kitchen sink into it, every half-baked R&D idea, cause our company was failing and this was our last chance. One idea intrigued him. He said everyone at Apple was hand-designing foils to print on Laserwriters (they were new then). He took a piece of paper and drew a box around one of our pages, and... - Dave Winer

asked if we could do that. Of course we could, and we did, and we immediately sold 1K copies of the product for Apple people, but more importantly, they were so excited by it, they in turn sold many more thousands to their customers, and our company went from being in the brink of shutting down to gushing cash. All because (drum roll) we listened to a user. Ask Guy if you don't believe me, he's on Twitter. - Dave Winer

Once again, this leaves me wondering how journalism manages to be arrogant without being awesome. (The profession, not so much the people that practice it -- one suspects they've elevated a rough draft of their core values to a religion, and now can't escape from it.) - j1m

The thinking behind the slippery slope comment was that newspapers are a business that exist to make a profit. The last season of "The Wire" provides a good example of what I was referring to. Once you start down that road, these temporary bailouts become more seductive. - scott anderson

Also, I never indicated that users should not be listened to. I was referring to the actual quote related to ethics from Dave's article that you obfuscated in your twitter post. - scott anderson

Lastly, for the record I am not a journalist. I don't even claim to be a good writer. I am a user of the news attempting to communicate my concerns related to this topic to those that in my opinion appear to have a self serving agenda. - scott anderson

Who is it that you're saying has a self-serving agenda? I like the "in my opinion" part. In my opinion your mother wears army boots! Heh. - Dave Winer

@Dave: You and Jay. I believe that blogging in all its forms has a valuable role to play in our society. However, I also believe that MSM publications that maintain strict journalistic ethics, including accountability, also provide great value and that the two should not be mixed or try to emulate each other. - scott anderson

Well there you have it. You should make such accusations carefully and with evidence and back it up. What exactly is my supposed undisclosed (and unknown to me, btw) conflict of interest? (Can't wait to hear this.) - Dave Winer

@scott "The last season of "The Wire" provides a good example" of a talented auteur unfortunately working out old grievances in public, spinning an entirely unbelievable tale of willful ignorance of total disregard for the truth. Simon also managed to transplant a 1995 newspaper into the current day, an organization that apparently has never heard of the internet, either for reporting the news or checking it out before starting up the presses. - tim windsor

And I'm with Scott Rosenberg. Slippery slopes call for greater caution, but not total avoidance. - tim windsor

I've seen this careful to not listen approach in interviews, too. It seems like a lot of journalists only ask questions they already know the answer to. Of course, they want the expert being interviewed to give the answer, but they might as well be putting words in his/her mouth. - Gordon Vaughan

The line between listening and trusting your own judgment and expertise is a challenging one, no matter how you cut it. But I agree that the "slippery slope" argument is nonsense. If a journalist lacks the judgment to avoid the slide, h probably doesn't deserve the title. - Pete Forsyth

Also, @davewiner -- I've been trying to participate in this discussion on your blog, but my comments have not been making it past moderation. Can you take a look? - Pete Forsyth

It's unfortunate that the intent of my original question has gotten lost in this discussion. I blame myself for being too flippant and not tying the point I was attempting to make more directly to the exact issue I had a problem with. I'll try to rephrase the question again in a more precise manner. Dave was informed by the Berkeley J-School crowd that they believed it was unethical to use the data about which sections of a newspaper are most popular in decisions papers make about where to invest resources. - scott anderson

I responded to Jay's post because he had generalized and distorted the opinion of the "J-School crowd". In hindsight I should have called him out on this and left it at that. All of my comments have been directed to how this specific type of data is collected and used and this issue alone. In regards to the more general question of whether newspapers are listening to their users or not, they typically have letters to the editor sections. I'm assuming that these are read by the editors but I could be wrong. Dave's advice to newspapers has typically been to invite bloggers into newsrooms, which I see as a self-serving agenda. - scott anderson

That said, for those that believe it is beneficial to use the data about which sections of newspapers are more popular than the others, how should this data be compiled and applied in an ethical manner? Do you survey all the potential users of a paper like the NY Times (aka the masses, the aggregate, etc.) or do you isolate a sample group based on some criteria? What is that criteria? Once you have this data and know what type of content is popular and what is not, how do you leverage that data to benefit users and not end up becoming a tabloid that values circulation numbers above all else? - scott anderson

The problem with the letters to the editor is that they are designed to protect the existing power relations. See this dust-up about the inappropriateness of letters to the editor in science publications: http://scienceblogs.com/clock... - Bora Zivkovic

There are much better ways to listen to the readership than letters to the editor. News outlets have many opportunities -- some more legitimate than others -- to shape the public discourse and influence public opinion. In reporting, in the structuring of the medium, in the archiving of information. Proactively seeking out feedback is important -- and is commonplace in other industries. Some approaches clearly have ethical implications, while others don't. - Pete Forsyth

@davewiner If your claim is simply "news outlets should listen to their users," it seems there isn't much for anyone to argue with. I think that's pretty uncontroversially true. However, it's seemed at several points that you are taking a stronger position than that. - Pete Forsyth

I don't equate listening to caving or that listening will result in bottom feeders but I do not discount the effects that come from the pressures related to being a profitable business, especially in tough economic times. A blog or a niche publication is a much different animal than a news corporation. Are there specific processes or firewalls that exist in the news industry that provide for publishing information that may not be popular but useful to society or only useful to a small segment of readers within the context of a for profit business? - scott anderson

I think knee-jerk or reactive answers come out of a specific context, and to suggest that news organizations are dumb or naive misses a more nuanced point. The kind of influence that advertising directors etc. sometimes try to exert over editors can be extreme, and so editors' developing a tin ear to that sort of thing can, in many cases, be a very good thing. It's important hear feedback, but it's also important to not waste one's time hearing repetitive feedback that you can't ethically act upon. - Pete Forsyth

When Obama said he was not against all wars, just "dumb wars" people seemed able to handle it. Their heads did not explode from having to make a distinction. So...There's smart listening and dumb listening. I think everyone can handle that too-- including everyone looking in on this thread. - Jay Rosen

Jay, I think we all agree that the distinction is important. The point I'm trying to make is that resistance to input is not always, or necessarily, a bad thing. That is a starting point for finding a solution though, not an end-point. Trusting journalists to have good judgment implies respecting their right to say "in my judgment, this particular feedback is garbage." - Pete Forsyth

As an aside, I have been blocked from commenting on Dave Winer's blog, for reasons that aren't clear to me. That's why I haven't been involved in the discussion over there -- not a lack of interest. - Pete Forsyth