Geoff Meeker, the man who first demonstrated to me that I could find a job that, in part, allowed me to write, runs an excellent blog at "Meeker on Media." His analysis of television, radio, and newspapers in Newfoundland is astute, rooted in decades of principled work. A few days ago, Mr. Meeker ran an analysis of Premier Danny Williams' critique of resource management in New Brunswick, a post that drew a comment from CBC reporter David Cochrane. Mr. Cochrane mentioned that he was present when Premier Williams once dropped what appeared to be a bombshell in the Newfoundland legislature about the possible sale of their provincial resource assets. The premier quickly clarified his comments and no one in the media scrum believed what Mr. Williams apparently meant to say warranted reporting, nor did they believe that the original comments represented what the premier really meant to say.
It has long been the case in Newfoundland that much of the local media depends on government largess. I cannot say that it is still the case, but when I lived there you could not open a magazine or turn on the television without encountering notices of congratulations from some ministry or another, paid advertisements that fed the bottom line of many outlets. Now, of course, the CBC does not rely on this kind of advertising support, but you can understand why media independence is such a hot button topic in the province. Mr. Meeker lamented the media decision to "suppress" a story on Premier Williams' statement and clarification, a characterization to which Mr. Cochrane objected. Soon, Mr. Meeker acknowledged in the comments below the original post that he would like to describe the media decision as something other than "suppression," and he made a change on his blog.
This was all very interesting, I thought, but it turned out only to be the prologue: a much larger furor has erupted about when and how one can make changes online.
When I was an undergraduate at Memorial in the late 1980s, I discovered in the library published manuscripts of major twentieth-century works -- The Waste Land, The Great Gatsby -- that demonstrated to me that the canonical texts I was reading existed, very late in their composition, in much different forms than the ones we knew. I was hooked. Much of my scholarly work over the last two decades has been concerned with this idea. I work on manuscripts when I can, but there is also much to be gained by looking at the difference between subsequent editions of published texts. Oh, an author inserted another line here? Why?
This seems relevant to the current issue, which has obviously moved beyond Newfoundland politics and what responsibilities the media has when it decides whether to pursue a story. I was taking a class from the well-known bibliographer D. F. McKenzie at Oxford in 1994, when I asked him, "What will writing on computers do to my kind of research?" He looked at me like I was silly: "Well, people will save multiple versions of computer files for scholars to compare. And, if they don't, there will still be digital remnants of earlier versions." He was prescient on that last point, but McKenzie could never have foreseen a world in which one can publish exclusively in electronic form. He imagined comparing multiple electronic drafts with the printed word.
It is good that people are thinking about the impact of "unpublishing," of course, and best practices in the media are surely evolving. But the most strident comments I have read on this topic over the last few days are from people who see this this as both an unprecedented development and one whose implications are wholly clear. That's just not true. Should I have the right to make silent edits? Does anyone? If they must not be silent, what are the practical implications of having to represent different versions simultaneously? These are much, much older questions that have implications beyond journalism.
The media is a long way from consensus in this matter, but I think the issue demonstrates that there are remnants of older formats that can guide us here. When consulting online journals, for example, I like ones that are formatted for conventional pages, published in pdf. They feel "permanent," even on the screen, and they are more easily printed. Students can cite them effectively. The digital media thus moves into a less equivocal format. This is "published," and any changes to that text represent a new version. Short of that, any contribution has a more nebulous standing, in my view, like a canvas on an easel that can be retouched by the artist before or after exhibition. Indeed, some new digital formats should seek to preserve this fluidity. One of the advantages of blogs is precisely that they are available for a similar kind of retouching.
I think it is a mistake to imagine that online versions of written matter, online-only publications, and blogs are all equal and should be approached in the same manner. It is a mistake to hold blog owners to the same standard as newspaper columnists, as least as long as there are still newspaper columnists. As I told Mr. Meeker, he may have been wrong to make such a change, but, if he was, I am, too. I often make changes to the things that I have written and posted here. I have never deleted a post, but I have changed what I have posted. In the end, the issue will come down, I suspect, to the kind of changes we choose to make. Will Mr. Meeker's change come to be seen as too substantive? Perhaps. But I simply object to people who speak as though consensus and clarity has already been achieved.
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