At the Editor’s Blog, the readers do the journalism

The Raleigh News & Observer’s exec editor for news Melanie Sill is supposed to engage in “interactive journalism” at the Editor’s Blog.

But that’s not happening. Go take a look. Most posts Sill puts up don’t draw more than a few comments; many draw none at all.

Since June 14 Sill has put up a total of 11 posts. As of noon today, July 14, nine posts have drawn a total of eight comments. That’s right. Nine posts have drawn a total of eight comments.

One post, in which Sill supported the NYT’s national security disclosures, drew 19 responses with a few of them Sill’s.

And one post has drawn 131 comments with about 10 of them Sill’s. Guess what the topic is. You’re right: Duke lacrosse.

The readers making the 120 or so Duke lacrosse comments have most often been critical of the N&O’s coverage. However, readers have also been quick to praise the N&O for any coverage that represents a move away from the N&O’s slime and frame the players coverage.

What’s more, many readers have for weeks been providing information on the story that clearly warrants follow up. But Sill’s mostly ignored what they’ve been pointing out about holes in the investigation, important unanswered questions, etc. She’s derided them for making a “hobby” of the case and told readers “the blog moves on” (read: The editor runs away.)

Such is “interactive journalism” at the Editor's Blog.

Betsy Newmark talked about Sill and theN&O’s failure to respond to readers:

Here are so many questions, many of them just what everyone is wondering about [the Duke lacrosse] case and some which are based on information that even those of us following the case pretty carefully are unaware of. Think of what a smorgasbord of leads that an enterprising journalist would have just trying to find out the answer to a fraction of these questions.

But somehow, the newspaper that pulled out all the stops to report on all the members of the team who had been arrested or cited for crimes ranging from public urination to having an open alcohol container to underage drinking. Interesting, but not all that surprising. Yet, we have in our midst a terrible misuse of the Durham District Attorney's office and the Police Department and the N & O seems strangely incurious.

I plan to continue posting about the Editor’s Blog.

As I’ve said before, my hat is off to the readers commenting there. They’re demonstrating they’re more than ready for “interactive journalism.”

They’re demonstrating the truth of something Gary Pruitt, CEO of the McClatchy Company which owns the N&O, often says: Readers can do a great deal to help newspapers improve and learn how to survive in the new media environment.

Now if Pruitt could only get his editor to stop running away from those readers.