On Monday, a new Web site called the Online Journalism Review will embark on its mission of training a critical eye on Net-based news coverage.
Published by the faculty and students at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, the OJR will provide a forum for seasoned reporters - and journalists-in-training - to discuss the dynamics of the emerging medium, and the ways online forums are exerting pressure on traditional journalistic practices and news markets.
OJR will offer a mixture of monthly, weekly, and daily content. Monthly, in-depth features on major issues such as reporting ethics, encryption, and the influence of advertising in new media will be written by nationally known journalists," says executive editor Larry Pryor.
The first issue features an article by David Corn, the Washington editor for The Nation, called "Cyber Speed in Journalism," analyzing the events surrounding Matt Drudge's coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. There's also an interview with Ken Layne, editor of Tabloid, and a list of 50 useful contacts in new media for working reporters, compiled by an editor from the Los Angeles Times. A section called "The Fringe" explores independent news sites like the Ain't It Cool News, and this month's Hacker Alert column features a report from DEFCON.
"We want to be a forum, a watchdog, and a public clearinghouse," says Pryor, a veteran of some of the pioneering efforts to port news to electronic media. One such endeavor was a visionary but unsuccessful Times-Mirror project called Gateway, which offered home banking, interactive gaming, and news on set-top boxes in the mid '80s. ("At 30 bucks a month, it was just too expensive," Pryor reflects.)
Pryor will share senior editorial duties with Robert Scheer, a nationally syndicated columnist and correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. In 1976, Scheer, then a writer for Playboy, registered a blip on media radar when Jimmy Carter confessed to him, "I've committed adultery in my heart many times."
One of the things that OJR will try to do, says Pryor, is to take Net-native news organizations - such as News.com, Slate, and Yahoo News - as seriously as the services that were born on paper or in broadcast media. Pryor says OJR will function, in part, as a filter for readers of online news sites.
"We want to be a place where the public can turn to get a sense of what news sources on the Web are reliable," Pryor says. Other newswatch sites include Editor & Publisher, the American Journalism Review, the Columbia Journalism Review, and E-Media.
As part of the online journalism curriculum at Annenberg, OJR will join the Annenberg News Service - which furnishes original reportage to AOL's DigitalCity and the Los Angeles Times - and a new program, launching this summer, that will train high-school students to become Net-savvy reporters and editors.
J.D. Lasica, new media columnist for the American Journalism Review, observes that because OJR will be funded academically rather than commercially, "it could offer a distinctive independent voice that doesn't need to bow to business pressures. That's healthy."
If OJR wants to live up to its potential as an online resource, however, Lasica believes that the publication will have to beef up its interactive component. "You can't just have a link at the end of articles and say, 'We're willing to talk,'" he says. "You have to put someone in charge of starting provocative threads, push hot buttons, be specific, get people involved in the issues."
The issues that OJR will focus on in the first three months will include appropriate story lengths for Web news sites, customization of news delivery, and cannibalization of print readership by online markets.
One of the ways that online newsgathering is changing the vocation of being a reporter, Pryor says, is that the job now runs seven days a week.
"You can't afford to wait until Monday morning for the update," Pryor explains, "you have to get on the Web on Sunday afternoon. Journalists now have no time off. Between their cell phones and their laptops, they have to stay wired all the time."
