Fellow freelance friend Jennifer Chen and I produced our very own podcast: On the Clock: Set Your Own Hours. This podcast, about time management for working writers, will be the first of many for what we hope will become a regular series. Our next topic, social networking, will air July 14. So stay tuned.
Tag: writing
Digital information’s mortality rate
“How long does something minor like a shoplifting charge have to follow someone on the Web?” asked Brad Dennison, a GateHouse vice president. “My moral barometer tells me that’s not fair. There’s no rule that says this stuff has to live forever.” (Or even be published in the first place, English notes.)
When I was a newspaper reporter, it wasn’t uncommon to get phone calls from people demanding an explanation for why their arrests were published in the paper, especially if the charges were dropped. “Digital Disappearance” discusses this issue, leaning toward showing concern over what happens when a newspaper drops this kind of information from it’s digital archives.
Print products are defined by two things: tangibility and their inability to change content. The Web messes with that because it gives people the illusion that if you hit delete, it’s no longer true or no longer exists. While I do agree with Dennison (see quote above) that there is no hard and fast rule that a report of someone’s arrest should live online forever, I don’t agree that the news of someone’s arrest should simply “fall off” the news organization’s Web site after a specified period of time.
Instead, I would advocate for updating the article on the Web at the top of the story in the form of an editor’s note. The update would include relevant information about the subject’s situation. Further, for the change to be made in the newspaper’s digital record, the subject must contact the paper to inform it of the change in his situation. Then that information must be verified by the public record or a credible official source. Anything beyond that would be dishonest. Anything more than that would be unrealistic given the limited resources newspapermen and their editors have at their disposal with shrinking budgets and newsroom staff.
Link to Miller-McCune story: http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/digital-disappearance-9777/