LJWorld.com

      The advent of the blog created a new platform for millions of people to disseminate information, ideas, and opinions into the aether of the Internet. Some thought this would be a contributing factor in the death of the traditional media. >

      However, reporters and media outlets soon integrated and appropriated this bold new format, synthesizing the old with the new. Now, with blogs, reporters and news organizations have a new way to present the vast amounts of information that might not make it to press. They allow more stories to be told, and for the reporters to interact with their readers and others.

      Andrew Revkin, environmental reporter for the New York Times, is an excellent example of a accomplished and storied journalist making great use of the blogging platform. Although his reporting often does the same in a more traditional format, Revkin uses his Dot Earth blog to write about humanity's relationship with its environment. With a subject matter that has news nearly every moment, a blog can be quite the useful thing for a reporter, to explore the topic in multiple, nontraditional manners. Also, the environment can be a complex topic, and Revkin uses Dot Earth to answer his readers questions. For instance, after reporting on the falling budgets of government and private research into alternative energy, Revkin answered his readers questions about the subject on his blog.

      Another innovative use of blogging by reporters is their transformation into actual news sources themselves. The various blogs on Wired.com allow the magazine to report on dozens, if not hundreds of stories every day, whether they're from the video game industry, to the U.S. military, to scientists discovering new wonders. Wired covers so many topics of interest to so many different audiences, and its blogs allow readers to access an enormous amount of information.

      Now, the use of blogs by reporters is not without its pitfalls. Revkin makes no secret of his faith in the science behind global climate change, science that has been disputed by many others. The revealing of a reporter's hand, so to speak, on a controversial matter like this one might turn more skeptical readers away, thus hurt the cause of the reporter (and many others). However, this is much like the issue of objectivity with the cable networks. Fox News draws a conservative audience, MSNBC a liberal one, and those who don't believe in the science behind climate change, or care about humanity's affect on the Earth, probably won't read Dot Earth.

      Some standards should have to be applied, of course. Just like anything published by a newspaper, a reporter's blog posts should go through an editor first, and ought to be approved. But any reporter worth his or her mettle probably won't go off doing anything shameful or unethical on a blog. Journalists should hold themselves to extremely high standards, in terms of what they're producing, in any format, print, broadcast, or blog.

      Blogging exists, and we can't go back to a time before it existed or before it became a tool for the news. Personally, I wouldn't want to. As a daily reader of all of the blogs mentioned here, I'm thankful for the breadth, depth, and wealth of information reporters can now present us with. It is an exponential improvement, for one of my generation, over the old ways. The use of blogs by reporters facilitates the expansion of the discussion on many issues, and introduces us to ones we didn't even know were issues yet.

      Last Thursday, I found myself fortunate enough to be invited to the fourth annual Montgomery Family Symposium at KU. The symposium was a day-long forum of newspaper editors from around Kansas discussing the future of the media market in the state. Several pioneering news organizations posed their ideas while the rest of us listened intently, trying to glean a way to start making money again.

      At the symposium, I served a dual role as the only student representative from the William Allen White School of Journalism, and as the inevitable heir to daily newspaper in a very small Kansas town. Now, the part of my day that I bragged about to my friends was eating lunch at the table with KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, Journal-World publisher Dolph Simons, John Montgomery, who's family sponsored the event, and KPA head Doug Anstaett. But it was hearing the innovative media ideas from around Kansas that really made my day. I believe very strongly in the importance of a local press, and I want to bring anything I can to the table to help the family business stay solvent.

      Of course, the biggest focus was the online component of a news organization. With many papers, large and small, this idea of "online" is expanding beyond just a news website and into social media, like Facebook and Twitter.

      Some of the complaints I heard concerning this came from smaller papers, unsure of how to monetize their online presence. This is a qualm I also have with the online approach. I just don't know how to sell ads on a website to business in Concordia, Kansas. With a graying population, they are just not concerned with an online presence. As a side note, I think the website for my family's newspaper is just kind of ugly.

      Despite these contentions with a heavy online presence, such as the one the Lawrence Journal-World has with it's myriad websites, or the Salina Journal does, with its Salina FYI page, several small, quite unique, ideas emerged from the symposium.

      One that certainly caught my eye came from the Hays Daily News. From the obituaries on their website, you can hit a link and send flowers directly to the bereaved.

      Now here's an idea that, while it may pose a few problems, really gets at the kind of innovation small-town papers need to survive the transition into the online world. While I would be hesitant to introduce this idea back home, if we could conquer the logistics of it, then I could easily see this popping up back in Concordia. We need little ideas to get that push to online going, both for the news organization and for the readership. The small-town paper is going to need to modernize its online presence and keep it up to date, while driving traffic and readership toward that presence.

      Hopefully I can borrow a few of the ideas I gathered the symposium and send them back home, to keep the old shop afloat just a little longer.

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      Much of the Kansas press has been owned and operated as a family business, and I was born into one of those families.

      For most of the last century, the men in my family have worked at, edited, and published the Concordia Blade-Empire, in Concordia, Kansas, from my great-grandfather Art Lowell, to my grandfather Brad, and my dad, Jim. There might even come a day when I return to the place that raised me and take over the family shop. I have spent a good chunk of my life down at the Blade office, whether it be in the basement, inserting circulars to earn a little extra summer cash, or more recently, upstairs, reporting and designing the newspaper that my family has put so much work into.

      Small-town newspapers are very interesting cases, because of the close-knit nature of the community. Much of the principles of journalism I've learned at the William Allen White School of Journalism have to be adjusted for Concordia. For instance, there's no avoiding talking with sources you know personally, because you know everyone already.

      If you're the town newspaper publisher, you're also probably one of its reporters, and you're already friends, or at least familiar with, judges, city commissioners, school board members, community college presidents, and so on. And small-town publishers are people who care quite a lot for their community, so they might even be members of those boards. You know they sure aren't in the business for the money.

      Also, in a small town like Concordia, the newspaper might feel a stronger obligation to the community because they are so involved. This obligation necessitates advocacy on behalf of your neighbors, and fellow Concordians, even if parts of the community malign or ill-appreciate your efforts. My family has experienced this firsthand.

      Concordia is the proud home of Cloud County Community College, a school that my grandfather serves on the foundation board of. A few years ago, the president of the college did some things he probably shouldn't have. College credit cards were used to purchase personal effects, some of them quite extravagant and costly. In his role as a community advocate, my grandfather chose to report on this, and use the newspaper as voice for what he saw as justice.

      Now, some might disagree with this choice, because of conflict of interest, or a potential source of bias in the journalism. I contend that because of his twin obligations, both to serving the community and to upholding the truth, my grandfather was, in fact, more reliable and accurate in his efforts. I should mention that in addition to being a concerned and active citizen, Brad Lowell is a member of the Kansas Press Association Board.

      It got ugly, though. College employees were intimidated for speaking out and enimity grew between former allies. Some people in the community did not appreciate being told the truth about the corruption, and might even have viewed it as a personal vendetta. In the end, the president took another job at another college in Kansas, and the grand jury investigation that was sought never resulted in an indictment.

      So I guess what I'm saying is that it's tough being a small-town editor. You fight to keep the paper afloat, and occasionally try and do some good in the community, good that the community isn't always grateful for. But you do it because you love it, you love your employees, and most of all, you love your town, no matter how bad it gets. It's places like Concordia, Kansas, where journalism and the media aren't some detached abstraction for people to feel animosity toward, but an integral part of community, somewhere between its heart and its conscience.

      I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter. As a plugged-in millennial that was born into a family of old-school journalists, I find myself simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by the social networking site. Let me break it down.

      Why I love Twitter: It represents democratization of the media. Twitter has become a platform for self-expression for anyone with Internet access, and globally, that means the opening for individuals previously closed-off societies, like China or Iran. The events in Iran this summer showed the world that innovation has quite the shot at outwitting tyranny. Twitter became a lens for the world to view chaos in a way we might never have had otherwise. Every Iranian gained the potential to be a storyteller, for good or for ill. Some died telling the rest of us their narrative. As sad as it might make me to admit, Twitter helped shape international discourse.

      Another way Twitter is democratizing media is user control. Retweeting? User-created. Hashtags, the little # by a tweet? Same thing. Twitter lacks a faceless corporate overlord like Facebook or Google (both of which expressed interest in its purchase), so it is an entity beholden only to it's users. Those users have taken a very simple little thing and increased its complexity tenfold, into the beast it is today. One Wired magazine article on the subject said that "Twitter left a ball and a stick in a field and lurked on the sidelines as its users invent baseball." That, I do love.

      Why I hate Twitter: Nearly the same reason I love it, because anyone can post anything on it. Like all forms of media, it has already engendered its own absurdist scandals. Twitter's use by celebrities has become self-satirizing. Do I care about Miley Cyrus's very public breakup with the social media site? No. Have I seen her "Twitter rap?" Yes. Even an actor whose work I respect, Stephen Fry, had a silly public disagreement with another Twitter user.

      I will admit to being a media elitist. In general, I like the things I consume to come from sources that have something interesting or worthwhile to say, i.e., not Ashton Kutcher. I don't even tweet myself, because I don't ever have anything I care to say to the pittance of followers I have. (Good move, guys and gals.) Even worse, is when traditional media outlines use the site as a source for their information. (I'm looking at you, CNN.) So our public discourse becomes even more cluttered with trash as a result. That, I do hate.

      So in conclusion...well, I'm not really sure. For now, I will continue to follow Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Gabriel from Penny Arcade, and Stephen Colbert. (I know, I'm a nerd.) And I'm very intrigued as to where this whole Twitter thing is headed. Maybe it will merge with the new Google Wave and create an information dystopic Panopticon with zero privacy. Who knows? I sure don't.

      The issue of media bias is certainly not a new one to be discussed in the public forum, but in recent years it has been increasingly mentioned, during both political campaigns and major policy battles. Last year, we saw spokespeople for Senator McCain's campaign claiming that the New York Times is no longer a legitimate news source, and now we see it again in the Obama administration's recent tiffs with Fox News. Some people are concerned with the alleged press bias one way or the other, and have grown cynical toward the media as the fourth estate. I acknowledge that many media outlets do have an editorial bias, but Americans should analyze the reporting done by places like the Times as wholly separate from the (quite-existent) bias.

      First off, we should not immediately discount news sources based on their biases, because the idea of a partisan press is not new in American democracy. In fact, the concept of objectivity is the newcomer to the political press arena. It used to be that newspapers were published specifically in favor of one candidate or set of ideals, and these biases were stated. Now, in the case of television outfits like Fox News and MSNBC, they might as well come right out and say who and what they advocate for, because viewers already know. However, I have been involved in more than one political discussion in which I would reference a New York Times or other newspaper story to support my claims, only to have it decried as being lies fabricated by the liberal media. Now, while I know that yes, the Old Grey Lady has a left-leaning agenda, I have enough faith that it does not compromise the professional integrity or ethics of the reporting staff. In fact, much integrity has been sacrificed in the name of objectivity over the last decade or so. There was the admittedly poor work of Judith Miller, the Times, and really most American media during the run-up to the Iraq War. As the fourth estate, they should have been asking questions about the war instead of cheerleading it. Also, reporters sometimes work too hard in an attempt to show "both sides" of an issue like climate change, when in fact one of those sides is composed only of kooks and "scientists" on Exxon's payroll.

     Also, this facade of objectivity and the alleged necessity of it is purely an American concept. In the United Kingdom, newspapers have preset and publicly-known political allegiances. The Guardian leans left, the Times of London is the centrist paper, and The Daily Telegraph is the Tory rag. Everybody knows it, and often your political affiliation is made known to your fellow Tube riders on the way to work every morning by what paper you've got. The British still seem to hold some faith in the capability and truthfulness of their media, even if it's publicly politicized.

     So I guess what I'm saying is that political bias in the media shouldn't be a big deal. It's been around forever, and is still the main modus operandi in most other countries. Those media outlets should just come right out and say who or what they root for. Now what readers and consumers of media in our American democracy should do is assess the quality of the reporting as something wholly independent of that paper, television network, or website's partisan links. I'm certainly not saying that every media outlet has good reporting. They most certainly do not. It might be my own political bias, but my assessment of Fox's reporting is that it's atrocious.