In search of transparency

Feb 15 2011 David Poulson 5 Comments

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had an interesting take last week on a Feb. 3 report out of the International Upper Great Lakes Study board.

The news story questioned whether the report provided an unbiased view, and quoted one person confused over whether the information represented a “straight-up” news piece. You can read reporter Dan Egan’s take here.

Echo reporter Jeff Gillies, who had referenced the IJC report in a post the day before, disagreed with that assessment. You can read his take on the Journal Sentinel story in Echo’s staff blog, the Catch of the Day.

There are good issues here – the kind of things that make negotiating the new and fractionating media terrain a challenge. You can weigh in at the end of either of the reporters’ analyses or even in the comments section of this post.

And you should. Your role as a news consumer is key in such matters.

The purpose of this post is to simply note that on Dec. 1, 2010 Echo published a story by the author of the IJC report discussed by Egan and Gillies. It was this story about the future of an automated water-permitting tool.

The reporter is Jeff Kart, a former environment reporter for the Bay City (Mich.) Times and a prolific user and producer of social media. He often writes about Great Lakes issues. Twice Echo has pointed to his stories on Treehugger.com. They are here and here. Once we used one of his photos.

Why should you care? I’m not sure that you should. I’m not sure that it is necessary to make our relationship with Kart clear in light of our Catch post regarding the discussion over the IJC report.

But I received an e-mail from someone who thought that we should.

And that’s enough to prompt this post in Upending the Basin.

Nowadays – always, really – it is best for a news organization to be transparent. You may not agree with all of our news decisions, but we can’t go wrong by giving you information about them.

Then it’s your call.

Echo Editor David Poulson is the associate director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.

Upending the Basin is an occasional column by Great Lakes Echo Editor David Poulson, the associate director of Michigan State University's Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. Commentaries are not official views of Great Lakes Echo or of Michigan State University. © 2012, Great Lakes Echo, Michigan State University Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. Republish under these guidelines.

5 Comments »

Scoop said:

I agree with Egan. Almost to a person, every boater and angler I know on the west shore of Lake Michigan would like to see more water. Many municipalities would be spared the costly dredging in their harbors each year if levels were higher. That alone is huge, and many small launches would once again be usable.

Like or Dislike: 1 0

# 15 February 2011 at 5:28 pm

Noah said:

Thanks for the openness, disclosure, and links to all info. However, the link to the Gillies Catch of the Day post (and previous article) don’t seem to be working.

Like or Dislike: 0 0

# 16 February 2011 at 8:08 am

Jim said:

Possible to fix the links? Error 404 isn’t helpful. Thanks

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# 16 February 2011 at 9:31 am