Goodbye Objectivity, Hello Links

The idea of transparency as the new objectivity has come up repeatedly in more than one of my journalism classes this semester. In my Issues & the News class, we were comparing newspapers around the world, and our professor mentioned that the idea of an "objective" paper is not the status quo everywhere. In the United Kingdom, for instance, partisan papers are the norm, and people know exactly which papers to read if they want a liberal or conservative slant to their news.

In my Independent Media class, we just read David Weinberger's blog on this subject. Weinberger argues that objectivity, a value highly prized in print media, will become obsolete as more and more of our news shifts to an online format. While newspaper readers may be content to take a journalist's claim at face value, online media consumers are more skeptical -- and active. They want links so they can click away and find out more about the topic in question. Online news is a starting rather than stopping point, inviting further investigation and discussion. In Weinberger's words:

"Transparency prospers in a linked medium, for you can literally see the connections between the final draft’s claims and the ideas that informed it. Paper, on the other hand, sucks at links. You can look up the footnote, but that’s an expensive, time-consuming activity more likely to result in failure than success. So, during the Age of Paper, we got used to the idea that authority comes in the form of a stop sign: You’ve reached a source whose reliability requires no further inquiry."

In an era of citizen journalists where anyone can contribute news content, the idea of journalists as authority figures is rapidly disappearing. Instead, they are now filling the role of conversation facilitators, providing readers with resources to learn more on their own.

Weinberger concluded his blog post by saying:"In short: Objectivity is a trust mechanism you rely on when your medium can’t do links. Now our medium can."

During her visit to Ithaca College two weeks ago, Arianna Huffington further elucidated Weinberger's point by saying, "We are now living in a linked economy." She then went on to talk about what this means, that content put behind closed walls no longer works -- online readers want their news for free and have no tolerance for subscription fees.

If the nightmares of technology-phobic teachers ever become a reality and textbooks adopt a solely digital format, links would take the place of bold vocabulary words that hint to students the concept is important and they should look up the word in the glossary at their earliest convenience. In a digital world, links would signal to students that more information is available with the click of a mouse.

In many ways, this is already happening. On an average day, I conduct upwards of 10 Google searches, mainly to find out more information about current events I've just read about on CNN.com. Even more shocking? One classmate recently told our Issues professor that Wikipedia has been the sole source of her history lessons these past four years of college.