Rosen: The Net Knows More Than You: An Open Letter to the People of CB

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Jay Rosen: The Net Knows More Than You: An Open Letter to the People of CBS News

Jay Rosen Sat Sep 17, 1:43 AM ET

I was asked to be the first guest blogger at Public Eye, the new blog that acts like an ombudsman (sort of) at CBS News. This ran there today under the title, "Outside Voices: Jay Rosen's Open Letter To CBS." Here is my slightly expanded version.

To: The People of CBS News
From: Jay Rosen
Re: The Internet and You

Welcome to the Internet, everyone. And I do mean everyone. According to Larry Kramer, the boss of CBS Digital, "all 1,500 people at CBS News now also contribute to CBSNews.com." That means you're all Web journalists now-- by decree, as it were.

Kramer, after selling Markewatch.com to Dow Jones and making a bundle, told CJR Daily that what excited him about coming to CBS was running an online news operation "that is funded largely by television revenues." Not having a cable network has become an advantage for CBS, because "with the advent of broadband on the Web, the Web is really a much more attractive place to get news, even news video, now." In other words, the web site is your cable channel.

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Dick Meyer, editorial director of CBSNews.com, says here that Public Eye is not a response to the "the National Guard memo disaster at '60 Minutes: Wednesday' and the Thornburgh-Bocardi report on it that came out in January 2005." That sounds like a party line to me, and I don't know what good is served by it.

Reading the Signs

Exactly a year ago--during that flight from truthtelling that overcame your network when Sixty Minutes aired its doomed segment on
President Bush's National Guard service--I was frequently on the phone with reporters from the big national newspapers, who were calling for quotes and impressions. (I had been writing about the episode at my blog, PressThink.)........