Media: Diversity of opinion on Peoria media panel
The lovely and talented Elaine Hopkins has a summary of today’s The Role of Media in a Democracy panel discussion sponsored by the League of Women voters. I couldn’t attend because of family commitments. I’m sure C.J. Summers represented the Blogosphere well.
Some nits to pick:
[Journal Star columnist/reporter Terry] Bibo said the newspaper is “one of the few places (offering) a variety of opinion,†where “everyone can meet.†As the media splinters, “those who care about governing are just another niche.â€
My two cents: I don’t think Terry must read blogs much. They are all about offering a variety of opinion. Many individual blogs themselves offer a singular world view, but the Blogosphere as a whole offers more variety of opinion and perspective than has ever been offered by the print or broadcast media.
The next stage is for blogs to evolve into news organizations, much like the partisan newspapers of colonial times evolved into modern objective newspapers. Also, free market forces will lead entrepreneurs to create online-only news organizations which will enjoy far lower overhead and less regulatory control than newspapers and broadcasters.
UPDATE: Man, I do wish I could have gone to this panel. C.J. has a post up about the event, and he has much more detail about the subject of editorials hurting the media’s credibility.
I believe that it is the unsigned editorial that hurts newspapers’ credibility. If the unsigned editorial is supposed to represent the official point of view and political stance of the entire newspaper organization — thereby giving the opinion more weight, in theory — then it’s hard to blame the people who are criticized in the editorials to do anything but retaliate in some way against the lowly reporter who is far, far, far down on the totem pole.
The unsigned editorial is a dinosaur in the Internet age. News consumers are increasingly news participants. They want to know the news is gathered and disseminated. They want to know who it is who is telling them what they ought to think about a candidate. The news media should embrace transparency and replace the unsigned editorial with opinion columns.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
Billy,
On one hand I agree with you on the “unsigned” editorial, but on the other hand, the trouble I have with signed editorials is that so many people automatically assign their biases toward the author instead of the content of the editorial.
For example, let’s imagine Al Franken or Ann Coulter wrote a really good and profound editorial. Before even taking in the content of the piece, the reader would instead assign their own constructs before examining the content solely based on their opinion of the author.
Still, when someone does right a piece that involves possible conflicts of interest, then I do think the person should reveal their name and any conflicts.
For example, from buddies of mine, I have learned whenever one bearded and rotund PJS writer writes a police-critical piece, then maybe that person should reveal any biases against cops that he may have, but never does.
Neither JS opinion editor is either bearded or rotund.
I like this format SO much better than the one you’ve been experimenting with the past week or two, Bill.
Well, I did too, but suddenly I’m getting error messages. So I’m back to ther one no one likes … Yikes
Didn’t write it was an editor, but writer – sorry I didn’t make that clearer.
Let’s have blogs become news organizations. Then you can get sued and actually have the potential to lose something. Best thing in the world as then accuracy would matter.