SFist Does Not Cause International Incident
So color us surprised when Adriel Hampton sent us a note asking if we wanted to join him in a chat with some South Asian media professionals in town on a junket with the State Department. Apparently they wanted to learn more about these "blog" things, and how they relate to journalism, both online and in print.
When we found out that the representatives from the different publications represented a readership numbering in the tens of millions across India, Pakistan and Nepal (the national Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar, for instance, has a circulation nearly 40 times larger than the Chronicle's), we wondered why the hell they would want to talk to us. But hey, we're down for grassroots diplomacy. Anything for Condi's peeps at the State Department is what we always say.
Picture by Jennifer from the State Department -- we cropped ourselves out because, well, we're not as cool as these people.
We met in the light court on the north side of City Hall, and the honored guests had just finished listening to a presentation from the folks at Six Apart. Earlier they had met with our fair mayor, the Gavster. The crowd of journalists included Zebunnisa Burki of Pakistan's South Asian Journal, Sumona Balla of News of Nepal, Sanjay Choubey of India's Dainik Bhaskar, Vinay Kamat of the Times of India, Anuradha Sarma Pujari of Assamese weekly Sadin, Ramesh Kumar Adhikari of Nepal's Ministry of Information and Communications and Saslin Salim of India's Sify.com. Jennifer and Allen were their guides from the State Department.
It was pretty informal, and frankly, Adriel and SFist were probably more interested in what they were up to than they should be in our online hijinx. But we're at, like, the cutting edge of new media, or whatever. Our goal for the discussion? Be as humorously irreverent as possible without mortally offending anyone who commands a readership larger than Mexico City, and introduce them to as much local tech as possible. We hope we suceeded.
The discussion ranged from journalistic ethics to readership numbers. Adriel stressed that what people were looking for here was a populist voice that dealt with local issues. "What's going on with the building construction down the block?" was a stated example. "I don't want to have to go down to City Hall -- that's what a reporter is for." But he pointed out that there are fewer and fewer reporters in American newsrooms, while praising the model of publications like the Contra Costa Times (his local daily), and pointed out the weblog of their Executive Editor Chris Lopez and newsroom staffer George Kelly.
He also brought up the "crisis of objectivity" in American journalism, rightly pointing out that historically, the notion of ethics and objectivity was entirely unfamiliar for decades here in the states. We're a Hearst town, and William Randolph was a verified perpetrator of yellow journalism. And really, is Rupert Murdoch any different? Certainly his son Lachlan's New York Post is setting new standards for slanted, inaccurate, but popular news.
We pointed out that it would be very difficult for a blogger to start a war, Spanish-American style, because if there's anything bloggers and readers are good at, it's calling bullshit early and often. We sang the praises of distributed fact checking, horizontal editorial management and having a low overhead, as well as pointing up the fact that SFist was part of an international network of sites connecting major media across the English-speaking world (and yes, we're totally hoping that one of these folks hooks us up with Mumbaist -- reviews of chaat joints! Angry editorials about public transportation! Why Mumbaist writers aren't getting invited to the swanky parties!).
We also managed to shout out Blogger, Movable Type and WordPress, and pointed out that they all offered self-hosting packages so that the different media outlets could brand their blogs and host on their own domains. We explained that the thin layer of editorial was because we had confidence in our writers to produce good work and our readers to correct us when we get it wrong. We knew that they had the right idea when we mentioned that some blogs don't allow comments, and one editor pointed out, "But isn't that contrary to the nature of blogging?"
So we got our picture, and chatted about living in a town that once had two different newspapers in the same building with a joint operating agreement that basically gave them a monopoly on daily printed opinion, and sent them off with an "Enjoy San Francisco!" Frankly, we learned a lot ourselves, and will be following up on our meeting with an email full of links to resources like Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gillmor, our favorite blogging tools like Movable Type, Flickr and Bloglines, and, well, whatever we think will get us an email back. Because we think these folks are totally awesome and we have more to learn from them than we feel we have to offer.