Are You a Web Journalist?
By Michael Swaine
If Life teaches us anything, it is that Life teaches us nothing. Or, to put it more charitably, Life's pedagogy is that of the father who throws his son in the pool to teach him to swim. Life dunks us daily in the gumbo, but the point of the plunging is invariably left, like the Australian crawl, as an exercise for the student. Small wonder, then, that most of us tread the troubled waters of our lives alternately flailing and floating. Still, generous Life routinely lays before us more such lessons in any session than we could ever cram in all our all-nighters.
Take the instance of the San Jose Mercury News article about the CIA connections to the LA crack epidemic, a story with lessons for journalists, Web-site administrators, and Web-content authors. The story in brief: In August of last year, the San Jose Mercury News published a series of articles by Gary Webb detailing links between the CIA, the Nicaraguan Contras, and the crack epidemic in South Central LA. It also provided coverage of the story on its Web site, Mercury Center (www.sjmercury.com).
Although Webb's account of CIA activities was a bombshell and led to calls for Congressional hearings, it was the Web story, rather than the Webb story, that raised many an issue and eyebrow in journalismdom.
As veteran readers of this magazine may recall, we visited with Mercury Center management back in April 1996, ancient history now, at which time we explained how the editorial management of Mercury Center is separate from that of the newspaper.
