[Boston-editorial] Wealthy Say article- for discussion please

[Pete Stidman]

I am very sorry to take such a drastic action but I
felt it was neccesary.  I took the article written by
UFE down.  

Please let me explain my position and we can discuss
this article and perhaps the one before it as well. 

One of the main reasons I took it down was that it had
not appeared on national yet, and I wanted to prevent
that from happening before we had discussed it.   

This article again highlights our own confusion, as a
group, over the issue of activism vs. journalism, or
how do the two mix and what are the boundaries.  

First of all the reasons for taking this down.  

UFE (United for a Fair Economy, the parent of
Respnsible Wealth) is a well funded non-profit group. 
We have had articles by them before, and by MGA and by
others, but they have always been commentary or
analysis.  

This article claims to be, or puts on the airs of,
journalism.

FOr instance, who is this group of wealthy people? 
THere are no names, no evidence of this event.  And
more importantly, the writer is a paid worker for
RW/UFE and so has a real monetary incentive to make
his side sound better.  

The real problem, as I see it, is the style of the
article.  I would be open to this if it was written
straightforward but I still wouldn't want to center it
as a PR from a group of paid professionals.

Incidentally, we could all take a hint from the
immense stink recently put up about news stations all
over the country using promotional videos-reported as
news- that were actually created by the Bush
Administration.  

This same issue has caused many a scandal at a small
town newspaper too cheap to pay a reporter to cover a
story.  When they publish a straight PR piece and get
caught, they take serious hits to their credibility as
a fair and balanced news source.  

Now I realize that this reflects back on our last
battle about the JP article.  When I look back on it,
I realize that the first paragraph could possibly be
newsy but the second paragraph reveals that it is a
call for action.  

So then I took down that article!  Two of you were
opposed to it anyway.

There is a second difference to consider too when
discussing these articles.  The JP one was not done by
paid staff.  But we will not always know that

I admit that I may have been wrong about it.    And I
may have taken us down the wrong road there.  

We need to sit down at the next webitorial meeting and
really get to the bottom of this particular
distinction.  and figure out what the boundaries of
our particular brand of activist journalism is going
to be.  

I apologize. 

As far as what this may look like from the outside,
the JP call to actions deadline is over, so it is
logical to take it down.  The Wealthy article was only
up for an hour and a half I think.

I tried calling Matthew before I did this, and I
confered with Petrina who also thought we should
discuss it more since I was so freaked out about it. 
I hesitated to call more folks because it is midnight.
 So I did try to take the options I asked Matt to take
after he pulled on of my stories down.  

Maybe we should reinstitute the old voting scheme? 
where a certain number of us (maybe three?) have to
vote on an article before it gets centered.  We have
Tim Petrina Matt Pete Rob Joe as editors right now and
john too if he wants to use it.  We could call or
email folks when we want to get an article centered. 
It might not be as slow as we think it would be.  And
it would go a ways in helping this problem.


-Pete




		
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