The Media and Their CMS Apps

https://medium.com/@jotham.sederstrom/regarding-shaun-king-and-the-daily-news-e458523367ce

http://nymag.com/following/2016/04/dont-trust-your-cms.html

I think this says more about the poorly-designed workflow systems in some media orgs, and how the media loves to whine and make excuses for their foul-ups. What about attention to detail?

If journalists are forced to use a wretched CMS or workflow system, then it's still at least the media org's fault. Maybe the journalists should revolt against their internal system and demand better "working conditions."

The workflow steps outlined in a couple articles are amazingly bad and dumb for 2015-2016. It sounds like they are 20 years behind. A self-hosted Ghost blog app might be a huge improvement.

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From the medium.com post, written by the editor who was fired by the Daily News.

So it was with no small amount of shock that I learned on Tuesday the Daily Beast had leveled serious plagiarism accusations at Shaun regarding an exclusive story its reporter had published earlier that morning. Within a matter of hours after Shaun published his own column about Elliott Williams, a victim of neglect inside a Tulsa County jail, a large block of text — sans quotation marks or attribution — was discovered by the Daily Beast to be identical to two paragraphs from their own story. Rapidly, other news outlets pinpointed another example where blocks of text appeared identical to another report, again without quotation marks or citation This was my fault and I accept 100% of the blame.

Correct. But ...

In all honesty, the controversy — a fuck up on my part, to put it bluntly — comes down to two unintentional, albeit inexcusable, instances of sloppy editing on my part and a formatting glitch that until Tuesday I had no idea was systematically stripping out large blocks of indented quotations each time I moved Shaun’s copy from an email to The News’ own Content Management System, or “CMS” as it’s called in media parlance.

First, the workflow problem:

_"... moved Shaun’s copy from an email to The News’ own Content Management System ..."

It appears that their CMS is so bad, that they don't use it until near the end of the writing/editing process.? I wonder how much they paid for the CMS. Copying and pasting from an email in 2016!?

Did the app remove the indented spacing or the actual quotation marks or both? I can see an app removing spacing at the start and end of lines or copy.

The writers should use some kind of start and end text characters to indicate block text, such as Markdown's greater-than sign. Or place a bunch of hyphens or equal signs at the start and end of the block text.

But how did this go unnoticed AFTER it was published or doing the proofreading process? Does the CMS offer a preview mode for writers and editors to use before giving the greenlight to publish to the world?

It doesn't make sense that neither the writer nor the editor took the time to verify that what would be displayed on the website matches what was originally written.

Maybe the CMS acted squirrelly. It definitely sounds like the CMS does not offer a good writing environment, which is probably another reason why some smaller publishers will switch to using Medium.com.

But humans are responsible for final approval before publishing. Blaming the CMS or blaming a busy schedule are horrible excuses. Maybe this is one reason why the public has little trust for the media.

Expanding on the excuses:

In those two cases where no citation or hyperlink appeared in the column, I believe I likely cut attribution from the top of Shaun’s quoted text with the intention of pasting them back inside the block — *only to get distracted with another of the many responsibilities I juggled as an editor.*

I assume that one of the responsibilities of an editor is for the story to be accurate.

This supports my belief that multitasking is a good way to complete many tasks with mediocrity.

On any given day I was tasked with editing not only Shaun’s column but roughly 20 other news stories from five reporters, all of whom filed early and often. Add to that a whiplash-inducing crescendo of breaking news, a handful of administrative responsibilities and the chaos typical of most newsrooms, and it’s easier to fathom how frequently focus can snap from one second to the next.

Focus can snap, that's a problem with multitasking. Interruptions. But this sounds like a workflow design problem. And maybe a business problem. Is the focus on quantity over quality?

Anyway, the editor is making excuses.

This is not an excuse, but here I take issue with Jim Rich’s assertion that these mistakes were “inexplicable.” They can happen easily if you’re not paying extreme attention to detail at every moment.

Not paying attention to detail can lead to mistakes?? What a shock.

Attention to detail should be an unwritten description of the editor's role. That was the editor's job. That's why he should have been fired. He failed to fulfill a basic requirement.

But I don't understand how the writer does not have a role in previewing the final version of the article before publication. If the workflow leaves the writer out of the process, then that's the org's fault.

I don't think that the writer should receive any blame, unless the writer was suppose to preview the final version, but someone got lazy.

The editor receives most of the blame. The org's workflow and CMS choice could receive a lot of blame too.

Many of us in the news industry are increasingly under pressure to deliver an ever higher volume of stories with ever fewer resources and let’s just say, that doesn’t help. I don’t say that to absolve myself of blame, but to illustrate how this happened with no intention on my part to damage Shaun’s reputation or the paper’s.

Whining.

Okay, the editor is a victim of the decline of the newspaper industry, thanks to Craigslist, Google, Facebook, and um, heck, the entire web.

Maybe the website can add more JavaScript, trackers, ads, and other bloatware to their articles. That should help.

Finally, I want to personally apologize to Kate Briquelet of the Daily Beast and Rob Arthur and Jeff Asher of FiveThirtyEight.com for removing attribution and links to fantastic stories that Shaun originally cited. I absolutely did not mean to do that, and fundamentally believe that proper citation is crucial to upholding basic journalistic standards and ensuring transparency about the reporting process with readers. I am sorry.

Removing the attribution links is not the fault of the CMS. As the editor noted earlier, he had planned to add the links, but he got busy and distracted. But this occurred more than once. This part of the story seems blurry.

It would be foolish to leave out links

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http://jothut.com/cgi-bin/junco.pl/replies/69152

https://medium.com/@jotham.sederstrom/regarding-shaun-king-and-the-daily-news-e458523367ce#.kohq1n7yn ---- http://mediagazer.com/160421/p6#a160421p6 #media #writing #cms #design
From: JR's : micro blog - Apr 21, 2016 - reply

16 replies
JR: "... sloppy editing on my part and a formatting glitch that until Tuesday I had no idea was systematically stripping out large blocks of indented quotations each time I moved Shaun’s copy from an email to The News’ own Content Management System ..."
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: Seems like an odd workflow for 2015-2016, and how could the CMS glitch go unnoticed for so long?
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: "... distracted with another of the many responsibilities I juggled as an editor." ---- more proof that in my opinion multitasking means doing many things with mediocrity.
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: "On any given day I was tasked with editing not only Shaun’s column but roughly 20 other news stories from five reporters, all of whom filed early and often." -- wow. 4 stories per reporter per day. Quantity over quality? Possibly a workflow design issue when managing that much content.
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: "Add to that a whiplash-inducing crescendo of breaking news, a handful of administrative responsibilities and the chaos typical of most newsrooms, and it’s easier to fathom how frequently focus can snap from one second to the next."
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: Excuses. But key phrase against multitasking: "focus can snap."
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: #gtd
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: "I take issue with Jim Rich’s assertion that these mistakes were “inexplicable.” They can happen easily if you’re not paying extreme attention to detail at every moment."
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: Yes, happens when trying to do too much at the same time. May need to rethink workflow or priorities within the org.
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: Here we go. The whining of the media industry. ---- "Many of us in the news industry are increasingly under pressure to deliver an ever higher volume of stories with ever fewer resources and let’s just say, that doesn’t help."
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: "False Plagiarism Accusation Against @ShaunKing Shows Dangers of Online Mob Journalism" ---- https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/722841312261607426 ---- come on. The outrage is selective. The deranged social media mob claims many victims.
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: https://theintercept.com/2016/04/20/false-plagiarism-accusation-against-shaun-king-shows-dangers-of-online-mob-journalism/
- 20 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: https://medium.com/the-30/on-the-shaun-king-mess-and-the-editor-in-the-age-of-churn-634b5abe666d#.cyolbnzeg
- 7 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: http://nymag.com/following/2016/04/dont-trust-your-cms.html
- 7 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: Blame the geeky programmers. Good one. I say, blame Craigslist.
- 7 hrs ago - # - reply

JR: "Publishing to the web is, in many ways, hugely more complicated than publishing on a printing press." --- wrong, at least for me and my web publishing apps. Maybe the CMS apps for media are too complex
- 7 hrs ago - # - reply

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http://www.mediaite.com/online/new-york-daily-news-hires-columnist-blacklivesmatter-activist-shaun-king/