As newspapers prepare for their future, inviting readers to their Internet sites, they run the risk of losing exactly what makes them valuable: carefully verified, attributed information.
You see the invitations every day in the Sentinel: “Online Extra,” “Blog Extra,” “Photo Extra,” e-mail addresses for reporters.
It may be frustrating for people without home computers, but it’s a way to make available — for free — a lot of information that won’t fit in the finite space of the printed page. And computers and Internet access are available — along with help in using them — at many public libraries.
One of those “extras” last week, though, brought home the problem I foresee. The Online Extra at the top of Monday’s Local In-Depth section read: ” ‘Buddy Dyer thinks we’re all idiots’ ” and explained in smaller type, “The public — pro and con — talks about downtown Orlando venues at OrlandoSentinel.com/venuechat.”
It wasn’t long before I heard from the office of Dyer, the Orlando mayor. His people were concerned that readers either might assume that the Sentinel was making that observation or that the comment had been made by a prominent individual or someone with standing in the debate.
As those who went to the venue chat on the Sentinel site discovered, the comment was made by someone identified only as “Are you nuts” of Winter Park.
I think it’s safe to assume that such a quote would not appear in the headline of a news report at the top of the local section front if the Sentinel couldn’t identify the person who said it. That’s to avoid serving as a shield for people with personal or political grudges. Yet there it was, in just that position, presented as an invitation to go to the newspaper’s Web site.
So why is the latter acceptable if the former is not?
Although there is a world of solid information and entertainment on the Web, it’s no secret that much of what appears there would never make it into print, because it would violate the newspaper’s standards of verification and attribution. Promotion in print, though, of that material seems now to be acceptable.
I think that’s a problem and one that has the potential to erode the value of carefully collected, written and edited information — the lifeblood of newspapers. If the newspaper fails to distinguish between information its reporters work hard to verify and the musings of people who pop off anonymously about whatever gets their goat, it runs the risk of making the two equivalent in readers’ eyes.
This phenomenon actually predates the current campaign to acquaint readers with the Sentinel’s Web site. It began, from my perspective, with the advent of the Ticked Off! column several years ago in what today is the Good Living section. There, people vent anonymously about whatever annoys them — apparently to readers’ amusement.
Tuesday’s section contained this unattributed gem: “I’m an Orange County librarian, and I have a message for all you parents out there: Keep your brats home.”
Now there’s something you won’t see in the Reader Views section of the Opinion Page, where — in a relatively civil context — letter writers must identify themselves and the cities in which they live.
Including those two features — letters to the editor and Ticked Off! — in the same publication always has struck me as a little like putting a deadbolt lock on the front door while leaving the back door wide open. Now we’re throwing into that mix the comments of people who hurl anonymous criticisms on the Sentinel’s Web site.
It makes me wonder — and I suspect that it will make readers wonder — what separates the Sentinel’s news reports from the unverified postings of people who don’t want you to know their names.
As they navigate the tricky transition to the Web, newspapers will have to guard carefully what distinguishes their content from the mountain of information — true and otherwise — available on the Internet.
