Yesterday, I wrote a post in which I ripped into a Washington Square News column that I believed (and still believe) was sloppy, poorly-reasoned, and downright corrosive to serious discussion of the issues. My response triggered something of a shitstorm in the comments, with several people accusing me of bias, shoddy journalism, dishonesty and a fanatical devotion to Barack Obama.

Let’s be clear: I stand by every word of my post, the occasional typo excluded. I got all my facts straight, I believe my reasoning was solid, and, most importantly, everything I wrote was fully consistent with the ethical standards I would expect of any other journalist.

That last point is the most contentious one–in fact, it seems every time I post something anyone disagrees with, I end up having to reiterate those standards. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s starting to get tired of it. So in the interest of not getting dragged into the same argument ad nauseam, here’s an overview of the standards I use when writing and editing for the National section.

Let’s start with the accusations of bias, since that seems to be the most popular point of contention. And to be fair, the critics are right about one thing: pretty much every single post run in the National section has some amount of opinion in it. What they get wrong is the idea that there’s anything unethical or dishonest about that.

That’s because I have never claimed that the National section is an objective news source. In fact, if I catch my writers trying to post anything in unbiased-newspaper-speak, I tell them to loosen up and add in more of their own voice and views. The reason for this is that I prioritize transparency and honesty over objectivity. Any news that gets reported will be filtered through that reporter’s perceptions and personal prejudices, no matter how hard they try to fight it, and by acknowledging those prejudices I’m trying to do the reader a service. The better NYU Local readers knows where my writers and I are coming from, the better they’ll be able to take in what we report critically and make their own decisions. I trust my readers are smart enough to distinguish my personal opinion from fact.

Besides, I view analysis and commentary as 95% of our jobs here. I mean, sure, in an ideal world, I would love to be Josh Marshall. But the fact is that we don’t have the time, staff, money or resources to keep up with all the other outlets doing original reporting on American politics. Nor, I think, do we have much reason to want to; this is primarily a news site for NYU students. National is a feature, an added bonus. Our role is to take everything that those other outlets are reporting on and distill it down to something palatable. The commentary we provide, besides letting us be upfront about our personal biases, is also one thing we have to offer that the Washington Post can’t. You won’t find a Rob Stengel or Surekha Ratnatunga over there, and our hope is that you’ll appreciate the unique outlooks of some of your peers.

But just because our approach differs from that of a traditional organization does not mean that we don’t take our jobs seriously. While objectivity isn’t important to me, accuracy and a strong logical foundation are both crucial. I require that all of my writers cite every specific factual claim they make, preferably with a link, so that it is easy for the reader to go and check that their premises are correct. In addition, I will not run any post featuring an unsound argument. Ideas matter, and while I encourage my writers to express their opinions, those opinions have to be thoughtful, based in fact, and well-reasoned.

Of course, I’m the one who makes the final call on whether or not those arguments are fit to print. But despite the charges of bias, I will never, ever refuse to run a post simply because I disagree with it. In fact, even though I may be a dirty New York Jew Red, I actually want more conservatives in my section. I encourage debate amongst my writers, and frankly, there hasn’t been enough of it. So if you disagree with everything we stand for and you can argue it well, then you should email me, and we’ll talk about bringing you aboard. Just keep in mind that I hold every one of my writers to the same standards, and won’t print a dissenting view for diversity’s sake alone.

Lastly: Part of championing transparency is being able to admit when you’re wrong. If you see a flaw in one of our arguments, and especially if you see a factual error, let us know in the comments. If it’s a factual error, we will post a correction. But even if it’s just a flaw in the writer’s argument, part of that writer’s job would be to respond in the comments. I will take to task any writer who refuses to engage with legitimate, good-faith criticisms of his or her work.

I don’t know if I can be much clearer than that. And although I’m post this now partially out of frustration, I’m beginning to think I should have written it on the very first day of editing, back in freshman year. This is the last time I’m going to bother explaining how I edit; next time someone bemoans NYU Local’s “bias” in the comments, I’ll just link back to this post and call it a day.

That being said, a willingness to admit error and adjust is one of the foundations of our philosophy over here. I’ll freely admit that I haven’t lived up to my own ethical standards in the past, and I’m sure there will be cases in the future where I won’t either. It’s your job to take me to task in those moments. And if you take issue with any of the guidelines I’ve outlined here, or think they’re not enough, I’m eager to hear from you.

Photo by Flickr user GiantsFanatic used under a Creative Commons license.

We here at NYU Local tend to get really excited about New Media, and rightfully so – New Media is what this whole enterprise is all about. It’s about a total commitment to exploring the new world of possibilities for journalism that a web-based platform opens up. That leads us in a dramatically different direction than, say, NYTimes.com, which mostly exists to aggregate content that goes into the print version. Sure, they have some pretty good blogs (I’m a big fan of the Freakonomics blog) and some video, comments, and other things, but if you look at the articles that make up the bulk of the site, they’re written in the same style that’s served the Gray Lady since time immemorial.

That’s not New Media, at least not as we see it here – it’s Old Media that you can look at on your iPhone. What we do here is centered around the basic assumption that it’s not just the medium that’s evolved, but the rules underlying what journalists do. And we’re at an interesting point in history where everyone is trying to figure out what the hell that means.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot over the past couple of days, thanks to this post from NYU student Alana Taylor. The NYU Journalism department, like, it seems, a lot of J-schools in the country, is largely clinging to an Old Media model of doing things. Blogs and social networking devices, they say, are all well and good, but only as a medium for disseminating content from the real sources of journalism – boys on the bus with journalism degrees, working against deadline in hermetically sealed press rooms. These are the guys that have to pad their articles to fill up their allotted column space. They’ll hear people lie to them outright, but hesitate to call it a “lie” in print, because that would be against the rules. Maybe they lean a little bit to the left, but they wouldn’t dare disclose their own biases in print, or even acknowledge that they exist.

That’s the old way of doing things. And it has its merits – I’m of the mind that true objectivity is an unattainable ideal, about as tangible and commonplace as the Loch Ness Monster, but writing in a style that suggests objectivity lends the author a certain aura of credibility and opens up sources that wouldn’t be available otherwise. And, of course, it’s always good to have smart, knowledgeable people writing about important issues – the faulty assumption behind most J-schools is that those people must necessarily spend years holed up in a monastery at Columbia University, reading an arcane tome called the AP Style Guide.

That’s not how we roll. You’ll notice that the reporters in our On Campus and City sections don’t even pretend to be objective, and they don’t try to remove themselves from the story – these folks aren’t afraid to express an opinion, and do it plain, colloquial language. So that’s some of what puts the New in New Media, in a nutshell.

Some Old Media finger-waggers, like Lee Siegel, like to bemoan the presence of New Media journalists as some kind of pox upon those with real journalistic integrity (which, by the way, is hilariously ironic, coming from him), and many of the more traditionalist media critics like to complain that having a bunch of irate “citizen journalists” with no formal journalism training running around is damaging to the public discourse. Given that even our most venerable media institutions are not without their own fair share of ethical kerfuffles, it’s led to the ironic refrain on blogs like Atrios that whenever MSNBC or the Washington Post screws up, it’s “time for another blogger ethics panel.”

Of course, nothing’s really simple, and there really are a whole host of potentially thorny questions associated with what we do in the wonderful world of Internet journalism. There is, for example, some debate swirling around NYU professor Jay Rosen’s collaboration with the Huffington Post, Off the Bus, specifically whether or not it was ethical for one writer involved in the enterprise to quote Bill Clinton’s answer to one of her questions without first identifying herself as a journalist. In this brave new world, of course, anyone with a digital camera or WiFi is a potential source for a quote like that.

I’ve been struggling with questions like this on a personal level. I write about the campaign a lot here, and I’ve made no secret of my support for Barack Obama. That’s fine – I write Opinion. But is it also fine for me to be a member of the NYU Democrats and NYU Students for Obama? Is it fine for me to actually volunteer for his campaign? I tend to think of myself as a journalist first and an activist second, but how far is it okay for me take my activism as long as I disclose it?

We’re all still trying to figure questions like this out, and to codify the new rules. Professor Rosen’s been doing a lot of good work on that front, as has my former boss Andrew Golis. But it’s called “New” for a reason, and things are getting more complicated as Old Media outlets make their first tentative steps into the water, and organizations like FOX News and the Associated Press get more and more open about disclosing their own editorial viewpoint. Nothing’s set in stone yet.

So without anything codified yet, who holds us accountable? Well, you guys do. One of the smartest things the New York Times has done in recent years is install a public editor, who critiques the Times’ own reporting on the behalf of its readers. It’s the paper’s way of making their reporters and columnists answerable to their readers.

We may not have a public editor, but we do have a comments section. And if any of you guys has an issue with something we’ve written, you should let us know about it. One of the central tenets of New Media, and one of the things that makes it so great, is the idea that nobody has a monopoly on truth, and what we write is part of an ongoing conversation. We may not all have this thing figured out yet – but I think it’s truly awe-inspiring that all of us have this amazing chance to figure it out together.

Photo by Flickr user Steve Rhodes used under a Creative Commons license.