US: NYT political editor answers readers' questions

Posted by Sarah Schewe on June 24, 2008 at 12:56 PM

This week, Richard W. Stevenson, political editor and deputy Washington bureau chief for the New York Times, will be answering questions from readers. The Q&A is part of the Time's regular Talk to the Newsroom feature, which most recently hosted NYT managing editor, Susan Edgerley.

Stevenson started off by addressing political bias, blogs and content decisions.

What follows is an edited transcript of Stevenson's thoughts on blogging, politics and the attitude that often accompanies the two.

The Blogs/News Balance

Q. As political editor, does your franchise extend to The Caucus blog and, if so, have you established editorial guidelines for the blog that differ from guidelines for news articles and news analysis? I'm not simply referring to tenor but to subjects blogs may cover while articles and analyses shouldn't. It seems schizoid to have Kit Seelye speculating on Hillary Clinton's emotional state of mind in the blog and then doing straightforward political reporting for the newspaper...

-- Patrick Murphy, Lionville, Pa.

A. Mr. Murphy, you are on to one of the biggest challenges we face, and perhaps the solution to it as well.

Yes, The Caucus, our political blog, is a core element of our election coverage, and is fully integrated into our reporting efforts. Nearly all of our political reporters file regularly to the blog, both breaking news and other pieces that are more analytical or observational. The wonderful thing about blogs is that they are infinitely flexible, and we are always experimenting with how we can do New York Times quality journalism that takes advantage of the Web.

But as your question implies, that can be tricky, because the Web ethos is different from a traditional newsroom ethos.

Consider the Web's key attributes. First is speed, immediacy...When news breaks, we can get it online quickly, giving our users quick access to information.

Second is the ability to link to or package with all kinds of resources, from background to primary source documents to audio and video.

Third, for better or worse, is a bit of attitude - or, in many cases, a lot of attitude. A whole lot.

As we have shifted more of our focus toward the Web, we've done all we can to master and take advantage of the first two attributes, while acknowledging but keeping a wary distance from the third.

We have not relaxed our news standards for the Web. The reporting needs to be solid and as transparent as possible. It needs to be presented clearly and concisely. It needs to be fair.

But within those guidelines, we are changing our journalistic culture to adapt to the reality that the Web is a big part of our future. So sometimes we will post on The Caucus or elsewhere on our Web site a first take on a breaking news story. Then we will update it as more information becomes available.

It's a different way of doing things for those of us who came up in a system that was directed to producing a single and comprehensive version of the news at the end of the day. It can be jarring for some reporters and editors to post breaking news on the Web even though there are lots of questions we know we still need to answer for our readers.

... There's much about blogging culture that can work for us on our terms, starting with encouraging a two-way conversation with readers.

Source: The New York Times