|
Soapbox Philosophy: Before tweeting, help your town with best sources of information
by Gregory R. Norfleet · Op-Ed · February 01, 2018
West Branch school leaders suffered through a lot of hand-wringing and time-wasting last year responding to ridiculous online claims about the $22 million addition project or answering the same questions over and over again on social media.
And I can empathize with them to the degree that all of the significant points were addressed and all of the major questions were answered in our coverage of that very important issue.
For or against the project, those who took time to read their local newspaper knew what they were voting on. Both school leaders and this editor wonder how many went to the ballot box purely based on what they read online.
That said, West Branch-area residents, as well as the nation on the whole must find ways to tame social media and the “cheap speech” — a significant portion of which comes from behind pseudonyms — injected into any community conversation.
California researchers in 2015 figured that the average user checks their smartphone nearly 85 times per day, spending more than 5 hours each day absorbing information of various quality.
Now contrast that with journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette conducting a “byline strike” during union contract negotiations. Those reporters realize the value of their personal reputations to the newspaper and chose to publish their stories anonymously because it hurts the integrity of that 231-year-old newspaper.
There’s only so much information our brains can absorb in one day, so we will do ourselves immense benefit by consuming more by good quality than high quantity. Greatly reduce the junk food of the mind.
It may come as no surprise to our readers that news editors hate Media Aggregation Platforms — web sites that try to filter out all but what they think users want to read.
It’s not that we’re worried so much about getting held back by those filters, it’s that the filters only let through certain facts, and only in the ways they want it.
In other words, they’re masquerading as news organizations when they’re really opinion organizations — they’ve declared their opinions as news, or worse, as facts themselves.
And with the supercheap prices of web pages and no-cost social media, free speech changed from the “freedom” to speak to “the freedom to speak with little or no consequences.”
Aggregation sites, or MAPs, distance themselves from consequences of their “reporting” by citing the source of their news, but often leave out the other side of the story that conflicts with their agendas. When we tweet opinion as fact, we act recklessly in regard for our community.
I write this with a level of frustration and humility. A couple of weeks ago, I prepared a talk for middle school pupils about what it’s like to serve as the editor of the West Branch Times. In my preparations, I discovered two bits information: 1. In the past 10 years, I’ve won 48 awards for news, persuasive writing, design, graphics and photography; and 2. I’ve had to publish in that same decade 96 corrections — exactly twice as many as the number of awards.
So why is it my boss never fired me? The children guessed the first reason and I provided the second: 1. The mistakes were not very serious, and 2. I publicly admitted those mistakes, preserving not only my personal integrity, but that of the newspaper.
Weighing the awards-versus-corrections ratio, I come out the other end feeling pretty good, of course, but I really hope our community weighs the value of what the Times puts in print and what appears on social media.
School leaders, as well as volunteers, spent a lot of time working on that $22 million plan to bring our buildings up to date and make the school district run more efficiently. I’d like to think that the uninformed did not change the outcome, and that the school board can take lessons from this unsuccessful proposal and produce a successful one.
With a lot less hand-wringing and time-wasting.
Gregory R. Norfleet is the editor of the West Branch Times. You may reach him at gregory@westbranchtimes.com or 319-643-2131.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
