Hi Dave. (I'm a journalist for those who haven't bumped into me.) Interesting comments. I have to say a couple of things here:

1) "casual post interview chat" - sorry, there's no such thing. Ever. With a journalist. Unless you know them at a personal level and totally trust them, based on experience.

2) we are parasites in a way, we feed off the interviewee and, generally, fall well short of their knowledge and, possibly, their intellect as well. This sometimes makes it difficult for us to really grasp the points being made and all but the ego-free would want to admit to possible confusion. We generally hope that when we read our notes later that it will all make sense.

There is a strong case for 'fact-checking' by the sub-editors but I've only ever worked for one magazine that did this - Byte. I never submitted anything to that paper without carefully checking anything of which I was uncertain.

Maybe it would be worth summarising key points or having a 'white paper' to hand that the journalist can plunder (and they will) when they get back to base?

Next time we meet, I'd be happy to chat about these journalist/interviewee conundrums. I've spent the past 19 years helping companies surmount these hurdles. I might also add, that working with bloggers is not so different (I am one) except that you have the marvellous luxury of commenting or cross-posting.

Hi Dave,

with regard to the "self regulation of peer review within the blogosphere," I would have thought the mileage would vary considerably from blogs that are one-sided and biased for whatever reason (e.g. commercial interests, personal biases and agendas etc) to those that are quite well researched and relatively objective.

I think what would create the level of objectivity and quality (for those blogs that demonstrate it) would be either the personal values of the blogger or what I call a 'dialectic' that happens when you have a number of people with shared interests and various points of view and experience commenting on each others' points of view and listening to what each other say - when the points of view or 'facts' put forward are exposed to critical assessment and the community as a whole corrects what is written relative to this commentary.

I guess my claim is that when blogs _really_ enter the blogosphere in the sense that they engage with discussion with other bloggers and that discussion involves listening to the comments, expectations and standards of others then the group as a whole benefits in terms of the quality of information.

This of course is somewhat like the 'wisdom of crowds' and 'predictive markets' you refer to - when you have enough people, in the sense that in the aggregate they have something worthwhile to say that aggregates to something more reliable and informative than the individual points of view.

But this depends on the kind of community they build and the communication styles and shared values about standards they subscribe to. Which you could say boils down to the kind of narrative they have between them. Grist to your mill, I believe! ;)

Speaking of narrative, I am currently tracking through some of the writing on organisational storytelling (Denning, Simmons, etc). If you have the chance, would you be able to point me towards some good resources for getting an overview of your work / point of view on narrative as it relates to KM in the organisational context?

Kind regards,

Lauchlan Mackinnon

Hi Dave,

A quick further note to mention that I added a blog post at my blog on this topic - http://lauchlanmackinnon.blogspot.com/2007/03/dialectic-of-blogging.html

The major additional point I added was that blogging standards are emergent for each blogging community - they arise out of the discussion.

Please feel free to add any comments to the post if you would like.

Kind regards

Lauchlan Mackinnon

David - yes I know there is "no such thing" and I blame myself for any consequences. I remain dissapointed however. You are one of the few journalists to who I would trust a complex idea. In the case of Wired I supplied her with lots of material, but she wanted to tell a story .....

Lauchlan - I think I agree with you on the blog comments

On narrative. I dislike the Organisational Story telling stuff (denning et al) along withe the deconstructing post modernists (Boje). I would look at Gabriel and Tsoukas (I may have spelt that wrongly). On my own work look at the "Brambles in a thicket" article and also any of the other material with "story in the title. Would be very interested in your comments

A more balanced (and witty) contribution from the Sunday Times

It might be naive of me to suggest this.

I reckon you should insist that your website address be included in all interviews. At least then, interested and intelligent people could bounce off the interview and come here to read what you really think.

Of course, those interested and intelligent people will often find their way to your original expression anyway, as opposed to that filtered through the journalist. But it just might help to keep the journalist on his/her toes a bit more to realize that he/she does not have the final word as in the past.

Or maybe not.

However, now that the possibility to blog exists, so does the possibility to draw people of all sorts into the conversation and not simply be stuck with hapless representation by 'confused' journalists.

I'm starting to understand what a disruptive innovation blogging really is.

Hi Dave. You're kind about me, as ever. And I should have agreed that, yes, some journalists have an agenda and seek the 'facts' and quotes to fit it.

Of course, in an ideal world, journalists should not set out with preconceived ideas and sift out only that which supports their viewpoint. I try very hard not to do this but it probably happens.

For example, on the environmental issues of the day, I can happily hold "An inconvenient truth" and "The great global warming swindle" in my mind at the same time because, to me, living on the planet in a sustainable way is common sense.

Sadly, despite my professed neutrality, I am actually biased towards 'as much harmony as is feasible' - which will, of course, mean different things to people I meet. And my reporting will undoubtedly reflect it.

So, if there's time in the pre-interview warm up to ask, "what do you know about..." or "what do you think of...", you might be able to flush out a point of view and the hidden agenda. You haven't got long to do it face to face, and even less time on the phone, but it has to be worth a try.

I'm sorry I didn't address that part of your story in my earlier response.

Not being kind David - I trust you! Good points on the pre-interview

Alex you make a great point. Euan Semple and I had a back channel chat about this. One of the great things about blogs is that you get a chance to answer back ...

just found that she also blogged about it, here: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/03/son_of_tia_back.html
I don't have the impression that she really got the point of RAHS, she's simply pondering the balance of balancing privacy issues vs. threat minimization, the old question.
No comments there on her blog, yet. Including mine (= my comments are also not there). I'd rather post this comment here instead of there.

Because of Wired's high exposure, the Wired version is the one that's (mostly) getting out there. I think the RAHS programme though is a hard one for the press to get a handle on, particularly because of the multiple methodologies, multiple sources angle.

Hi Dave

I came to this in a roundabout way. Another newsletter (Kurzweil AI Net) I subscribe to had pointed me to the Wired article. Saw your name mentioned and the comments attributed to you. Must say, that from the little I know about the RAHS programme, it seemed strange to say the least.

Having recently been on the wrong end of journalistic licence on a project we were doing, I can sympathise. What was most annoying in our case was that it was the local community that suffered most as a result(their regeneration project got canned), rather than us or the journalist.