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The last post about Jeff Jarvis’s blogging the Harvard conference on journalism credibility elicited a comment from a veteran journalist and a recent fellow-blogger, David Tebbutt. Among other things he mentions the need of his readers for someone they can trust to do the research for them....

They need to find someone they trust to do the research for them. I spend a goodly chunk of each month researching for my articles and columns. I even get paid a little bit for the privilege. As long as I am conscientious, and act in my readers’ best interests, I am saving each of them that amount of time. It’s a good deal whichever way you look at it.

My response was predictable…

It constantly puzzles me the assumption of journalists that somehow they have the monopoly on trust and credibility. I wonder where that comes from? Why should I trust what a journalist writes? Where does he get his crebility from? If from the paper he writes for, well, he goes with what the editor and proprietor want to say. If from his reputation and history of writing, then how is it different from a blogger? And how does he compare to a blogger whose credibility is created by linking to all the sources and giving his readers a chance to see for themselves, persitently and transparently.

Later on, I came across an article by David Berlind Can technology close journalism’s credibility gap? Crediblity gap! I mean, there is David Tebbutt asking about why one should trust a blogger whilst another journalist, David Berlind, is conducting experiments to find out if the very technology used by bloggers and podcasting can help to recover credibility for journalism… Don’t you just love internet?

Between these [Rathergate] and other big media gaffs, the public has grown increasingly disenchanted with the media establishment, and is turning to other sources of information such as independent bloggers. Blog publishing has given rise to several questions.  Among them, what’s the difference between a blogger and a journalist? Answer:  None.  Dan Gillmor was a journalist for the San Jose Mercury News.  Today, he’s a blogger for his own operation on Grassroots Journalism.  Now that he has parted ranks with the traditional media, should he also be stripped of his press credentials?  Would trading in their New York Times credentials for Blogger.com accounts be all it takes to disqualify columnists William Safire or Maureen Dowd as journalists?  The integrity of Gillmor, Safire, and Dowd have nothing to do with the frame their words appear in, the frequency with which they publish, the length of their musings, or the brand whose flag flies above their headlines.

His questions is:

What role can and should technology play in contributing to transparency--full disclosure--in the media? After all, given that it’s been such an enabler to the revolution in journalism, shouldn’t it also be a driving force in integrity as well?

By providing the uncensored, unedited raw data used to assemble a news story, opinion piece, or blog entry, the problems of misquoting, quote truncation, placing quotes out of order to arrive at an unintended meaning, quoting out of context, or manipulating interviews in the interests of a particular agenda could go away.

May he be right but just as a newspaper does not make a journalist, perhaps blogging and other technology does not make for a transparent reporting. What blogging does, however, is offers those who crave transparency an alternative to the one-way communication of old style journalism.

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Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine is on the roll reproducing his experience at a conference on “Blogging, Journalism & Credibility” taking place at Harvard University this weekend. There are some worthy points that should be noted here:

Jay (Rosen of PressThink) says that journalists have been slow to recognize the debt they owe blogging and that is because this new medium—this new press—was not developed by them. The people who understand this new press—the ethic of the link, the art of conversation—are bloggers.

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The way to get diversity is for the entirety of media to find diversity and balance. That is what is new: In the past, you had a one-size-fits-all, one-newspaper town. Now you have access to all the media of the world. That is what brings you diversity.

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While on the hit parade of old arguments, we got the argument that bloggers are an echo chamber seeking only their own views. I said that’s a red herring. We link to that with which we disagree.

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Hinderaker goes back to Bill Mitchell’s question from his presentation, in which he asked what tool we need to help build trust. Hinderaker says it would help to show us the material behind the story. The attitude bloggers have is—via the link: “See for yourself. Don’t take our word for it.”

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Chris Lydon gives us his best Emerson quote ever: “Do not destroy the mass media but liberate the individual from the mass.”

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Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia, says that a few years ago, nobody could have predicted that a bunch of unpaid citizens could replace the Encyclopedia Brittanica with its budget of $350 million but it happened. He said that the business model of The New York Times is not sustainable.

Jeff Jarvis moderated another session and this is what happened:

Rick Kaplan, president of MSNBC, said at the session I Oprahed yesterday that blogging actually drives ratings on shows and that there is a corollation between shows that devote effort to blogging and the growth in audience.