To The Chronicle: Letter 1

Readers’ Note: On Oct. 27, Duke University’s student newspaper, The Chronicle, published an editorial, “Blogger’s get point, miss complexity.”

If you haven’t read the editorial, I hope you read it and its comment thread. See also The Chronicle's explanation of the process by which it "writes" editorials.

I’m responding to The Chronicle with a series of electronic letters which I’ll be post at JinC. Each will be headed "To The Chronicle" and enumerated.

Letter 1 follows.

John
_________________________________________________

Editorial Board
The Chronicle
Duke University

Dear Editorial Board members:

I’m a Duke alum and blog as John in Carolina, one of the two bloggers specifically mentioned in your Oct. 27 editorial, “Blogger’s get point, miss complexity.”

In this and a few subsequent letters, I’ll respond to some of the statements you made.

I’m going to include the letters in posts at www.johnincarolina.com. I'll send you links so you can respond on the comment threads if you wish. I hope many of you will.

Except when stated otherwise, I speak only for myself and my blog. I'm no more responsible for the virtues and faults of other blogs, including those that cover the Duke Hoax, than you are for the virtues and faults of other student newspapers. Blogs are a very diverse lot, a fact your editorial ignored.

You claim:

[T]here are no editors in the blogosphere and few checks to make bloggers consistently accountable for what they write.

Actually, there are many editors in the blogosphere. There’s even a blog called The Editors’ Blog at which five Raleigh News & Observer editors blog.

If you’ll allow that an editor is someone who does editorial work, then we can agree that I have hundreds of editors. You’ll find them “working” on the comment threads at www.johnincarolina.com.

The other day I included in a post: "I hope your there." An hour later an “editor” commented: “’I hope your there.’ YOU ARE. Please, use correct grammar.”

I corrected my mistake and thanked the reader. You’ll find all that here.

Recently, I made a far more serious mistake. It concerned President Brodhead.

I pasted into one of my posts a post by Tom Bevan who blogs at Realclearpolitics.com.

Bevan’s post included:

Broadhead's knee-jerk reaction to believe the word of a stripper over his students, to cancel the season and expel members of the team from the University without giving them so much as a chance to defend themselves and prove their innocence is reprehensible and unforgivable.

As you all know, President Brodhead didn’t expel any lax players. I should have caught the false statement. Readers did catch it and called it to my attention.

I immediately updated my post with a correction and apology to readers. I took other actions that included letting Bevan know of the error. Bevan did what good bloggers typically do. He promptly posted a correction and apology for what he called a “significant error.”

While I have no reason to believe President Brodhead ever reads JinC, I sent him an explanation and apology. To further call readers' attention to my mistake, I set up a stand alone post: “My mistake – I apologize (updated).”

One reason I acted as I did is I believe most JinC readers, including many who are very critical of President Brodhead, expected me to promptly and fully correct my error.

If I hadn’t, a lot of them would’ve started thinking about moving on. One mouse click and a reader need never again be at JinC.

That one mouse click is a powerful “check” on bloggers like me who want to attract and hold readers who demand reliability and honesty from their news and opinion sources.

But that "check" pales beside the most important “checks” both bloggers and MSM journalists have if they care to use them.

I hope you all know I have in mind respect for readers, a commitment to truth, and a desire at the end of the day to be able to say: “I saw right and wrong; and tried to do right.”

Thank you.

John
www.johnincarolina.com