Please editor Sill: Stop the fuss and answer the questions.

Folks,

Here's some past, present and future concerning Raleigh's News & Observer. Pay attention. What you don't know could hurt you.

If you read this recent JinC post, N&O news editor and media critic disagree, you know there's been a fuss involving New York University professor, media critic, and blogger Jay Rosen and Raleigh News & Observer executive editor for news and blogger Melanie Sill.

Things got hot when Melanie came to believe that at a conference she did not attend Rosen said something like: Journalists are "used to being the filter from God, but people don't accept that anymore."

Now, you and I would hear something like that and say,"Sure, Rosen means we won't accept Rather and CBS telling us their anonymous source is "unimpeachable" when he's a long-time Bush hater; and we won't accept stuff like The N&O's front page headline the other day about that alleged spy being an "Ex-Cheney aide" when the guy first went to work in the White House for Vice-president Gore, and worked for him for 19 months."

But that's us, folks.

Melanie responded with:

Heavens. Perhaps Rosen has spent too much time peering at journalism through the lens of his computer screen. He ought to take a tour through some of the material in the latest American Journalism Review, which reports on how journalists covered Hurricane Katrina.... He ought to be out with a reporter trying to get a reluctant local sheriff ...

There's lots more but you get the drift.

Visit Melanie’s blog and read her entire post and all the comments. You'll see that many professional journalists including Rosen are involved, along with bloggers and readers.

Now, Melanie has posted this in the comments section:

Comment from: Melanie Sill [Visitor] • http://blogs.newsobserver.com
10/13/05 at 16:34
Thanks for the comments and trackbacks. I'm still out of the office but have some thoughts to add in a new post when I return. Jay (that’s Rosen –ed.), thanks for taking time to expand upon the filter metaphor. Rather than debating it, I would like to set forth briefly an alternate idea on how N&O editors frame our choices each day and our overall mission. I do appreciate the discussion.

Does all of this sound familiar?

Remember this post: The editor, the governor, and we, the readers?

Remember Melanie had run that foot-stamping column about public officials not responding when the N&O came round. She really lit out after Governor Easley and his staff. She didn’t like an email one of the Governor’s staffers had sent her. She filtered the email, as journlaists say, and gave us readers a summary of its contents. It sure sounded bad.

But what Melanie was telling us didn’t sound at all like Governor Easley or his staffers.

Thanks to the Governor's office, we were all able to see and read for ourselves what the staffer had actually sent Melanie. And the email wasn’t much like what Melanie had said it was, was it?

So I put four questions together for Melanie including why she hadn't made the email available to us in the first place and whether the way she represented to readers what the staffer had written was typical of how N&O reporters and editors report what public officials and their staffs say.

It's all in the post: A link to Melenie's column, a copy of the email, and the questions.

We never heard another word from Melanie about any of it, did we?

Now we’re going to be given “an alternative idea.”

Melanie, how about first answering the questions we asked about how you could report to us on that email the way you did? The offer to publish in full your answers at www.johnincarolina.com still stands. And I’ll bet other bloggers will be happy to do the same at their blogs, just as they were the last time.

If the problem is publishing at blogs, OK, no hard feelings. But then why not publish in The N&O print edition your column and the email? N&O readers would be very interested to read it all.

Folks, I’m emailing this post to Melanie. In a few minutes, I’ll also give her a link at her blog.

Please share your thoughts with Melanie at her blog.

Comments here are welcome.

John