Despite the wealth of literature on classical journalism ethical theory and the principles of the effect of market forces on journalistic practice, very little literature addresses the combination of these premises in the online environment. In order to gain a more thorough perspective of this phenomenon, an interview was conducted with the content manager of an operating portal site.

Austin360

For the purpose of this paper, Austin360.com was selected. Austin360 is a publication of Cox Interactive Media, and a quick survey of the Cox Interactive family showed it to be representative in terms of basic layout and services to the chain’s other city sites. Austin360 is partnered with the Austin American-Statesman, the daily newspaper for Austin, Texas.

Cox Interactive Media (CIMedia), a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, Inc. was launched in 1996 with the goal of building long-term brands and audiences on the Internet that would serve local consumers and advertisers in key markets.

CIMedia has introduced an interactive presence in the 24 major U.S. markets and 71 total cities where Cox Enterprises had already built a traditional media presence through local newspapers, television stations, radio stations and cable systems. In all, Cox has launched 22 City Sites, or channels, of which Austin360 is one. The channels are aligned with 9 radio stations, 10 television station, a cable station and 4 newspapers. In addition, Cox has a number of "brand extension" Sites, so called, because the markets or content of these sites are not as comprehensive as the channels.

According to a content manager at Austin360, the purpose of Austin360 is to "make it easy for the people in Austin to live their lives. They can go and get news, surf the Web and do a lot of other things quickly and from one place. We're designed to save them time (Tait, 2000)."

Although the corporate mission of CIMedia is the official mission of Austin360, the local staff's job is to "implement it in a way that is helpful for the people of Austin (Tait, 2000)."

This system allows the Austin360 staff the freedom to pursue the topics and stories they feel are noteworthy, but also gives them access to a national source of news and information resources. Though Austin360 and the Austin American-Statesman are housed at the same facility, they are produced by different staffs and operate out of different production areas. In the online area, the content from the Statesman is repurposed into an official online edition of the paper, which is presented as a subsection of the Austin360.com domain.

This proximity to the traditional newsroom infers that the production staff of Austin360 has a working knowledge of the ethical norms and issues involved in traditional newspaper production. In addition, each content manager and content producer currently employed has a background in traditional journalism.

Although organizationally structured like a traditional medium, there are two main positions in the production staff, the content manager and the content producer. The content manager’s job responsibilities are similar to that of the editor of a newspaper or magazine. However, in practice, this position includes many different functions and responsibilities, due to the nature of the medium. The content producers were likened by the staff to reporters, but again, more extensive duties were required than in traditional journalism.

According to one of the two content managers at Austin360, the main difference comes from blurred lines of responsibility. The content staff is not comprised of photographers, reporters and graphic artists. Rather, each of the eight producers were responsible for all of these activities in the firm (Tait, 2000).

The organizational structure of Austin360 is more informal than that of a traditional paper. Though there are distinct positions and functions, the employees appear to enjoy an open flow of communication amongst themselves and the content managers.

Austin360 is similar to the other channels in the Cox Interactive system. Of the 22 major sites, all but four are partnered with major traditional media outlets. However, only four of these are partnered with daily newspapers, so Austin360 is representative of a small group within this population. However, the association with a traditional newspaper environment also denotes issues more common to online journalism.

Content Manager Grant Tait

To gain a working perspective of the topic, Content Manager Grant Tait was interviewed. Tait holds a BA in print journalism from Angelo State University. After working for two years as a copy editor at the San Angelo Standard-Times, Tait was hired by Austin360 as a content producer. After a two-year stint in that position, he was offered the position of content manager, which he accepted in January 2000.

The content manager was asked about his perceived role in the production of the portal's content and asked to discuss how he defined the audience, the ethical challenges of the project itself and the producers' roles in the communication process. He was allowed to diverge from the topic when he desired to do so, and was prompted at different times to clarify or define the terms or situations which might have caused confusion during the analysis stages.

Tait's view of Audience

Tait said paying attention to the audience was more central in his day-to-day operations than in print media.

"The only reason you're doing the job is because the audience is out there," he said. "You always need to pay attention to the people who you're working for. We work for them. Without them, it wouldn't be much of a site. You've got to listen to your users and you've got to address their concerns."

This rationale is perfectly normal coming from a traditional journalism perspective. One can easily image a print journalist making a similar statement. However, when discussing in detail the way this attention is put into practice, the similarities between traditional and online media dissipate.

"We're not going to get everyone to look at Austin360, so we have to pick and choose which part of the population we're going after and give them the best site they could possibly wish for. You have to make sure that you know who you are programming for, what your target audience is."

For a traditional journalist, serving the audience means providing important factual information, with a minimum of editorializing and entertainment. Tait said this aspect is different in the world where a click of the mouse can signal the departure of the audience. He said the online audience is a lot more demanding about format and interpersonal contact with the community. Though news is still important, Tait said these elements cannot be ignored.

"In Never-Never-Land, you might could come up with a site that had every bit of important information you ever needed to know, but there's no point in doing that if nobody's going to look at it," he said. "You can't force people to click."

Tait said Austin360 improves its chances of audience retention by serving the information needs of its audience in unusual and at time, unorthodox, ways.

"When we put together a package, it's not just stories," he explained. "We also provide links to other sources of information. We're giving people news, but we're also allowing them to go find out more for themselves, which makes it a richer and more valuable experience for them."

In addition, Tait explained that Austin360 provides many other non-journalistic services for the users. He explained that these endeavors, while not journalistic in nature, were consistent with Austin360s community-building mission.

This emphasis on format and non-news information is a departure from traditional media rationale. In addition, when asked to describe his mental image of who his audience was, Tait's view reflected more of magazine philosophy than the newspaper metaphor Austin360 most resembles. He explained that the core target for Austin360 was an upper-class, 24-45 years of age segment of the local population, and that group was a primary focus of the content efforts.

However, Tait said that the site doesn't simply cater to the desires of the audience. Though he admitted that requests from the audience were important, he said a number of key issues had to weighed, including "appropriateness, feasibility, page views, unique visitors and what we see as being important to Austin." Tait said there are some limits to the response to customer requests.

"For example, if someone tells me that we should be listing a record of every major traffic accident in the last 50 years, that might be interesting to that one person, but we're not going to do it," he said. "But if someone suggest that it's hard to find a particular page, and we look and see that it's quite popular, then it's stupid not to listen to them."

Despite their limits, this level of customer service response appears to be more rooted in the philosophy of business and marketing than journalism. It would be hard to imagine a traditional newspaper making such adjustments based on audience request.

However, when dealing with certain types of news events, Tait explains that Austin360 runs just like traditional media outlet.

"For example, when Austin has political elections we don't think, 'Well, we know fine and well that hardly anyone in Austin votes and half the population could care less who gets voted into office,'" he said. "We're not like 'We're not going to get many page visits off a package on this, so let's not bother.' The fact of it is, it's still an election. It's still important. We try to strike a balance between what makes good business sense and what's it's journalistically correct to do."

Tait's view of Ethics

Tait's views on ethics are rather direct.

"Ethics is tougher for us than traditional media," he said. "When you're online, I don't think that it's that you have to have more ethics, but you have to be more aware of your ethics."

Tait explained that much of the ethical dilemmas faced by Austin360 involved the relationship between advertising content and news content.

"In our advertising content, we have many deals where we're linking to locations off-site," Tait explains. "In a newspaper, these practices are easier, since the format for advertising supplements is quite different. Readers can easily tell the difference between the advertising sections that fall out of the paper onto the floor and the paper."

"But on the Web it's tougher, because there's nothing physical and everything's flat," he continued. "If you click from one place to another, you tend to expect that it will be part of that site. So, you have to be very careful how you handle these situations so you're not misleading the users."

"How you differentiate between and ad and content is important," he continued. "We have set places on our pages where ads can and cannot go. Content people have got to be brave enough to stand up and set standards."

Tait said that one of the biggest differences between his old job in print media and his new one in online media is the degree to which he consults the information relating to Austin360's marketing and advertising functions.

"A lot of journalists balk at the idea of talking to marketing," he said, "but when you're running a business, you have to know what people are coming to your site for. In this game, if you don't pay attention to what your marketing people are telling you, then you're going to go under. And then it doesn't matter if you're the best site on the entire Web. If nobody looks at you, then you're not going to last very long."

"Marketing and advertising people aren't evil," he quipped. "They just don't think with the same mindset as content people. Being on the Internet means an awful lot of balancing."

An even tougher ethical challenge faced by Austin360 is the presentation of content gathered from other sources. Tait explained that Austin360 was in partnership with several content providers, each of whom shared content with the portal.

"You have to have these partnerships because there is no way that one company could produce all of this content and still remain in business," he explained. " But its how you handle that content that gets sticky. The trick is to make sure that the partnerships you strike up are kosher ones. You have to keep the best interest of the company and the users in mind at all times."

Tait said that Austin360 initially had problems with some of their partnered materials. He explained that consumers would have been unable to distinguish which content was generated in-house and which content was taken from Austin360's partners. Tait explained that this situation is unacceptable, since not all information vendors are unbiased in their construction of information. The solution for Austin360 was thorough documentation and references to every story that appears on their site.

A third ethical dilemma faced by Austin360 is the degree to which the audience influences the type of content selected. Tait said he was very aware of which stories were selected at any given time, and that this information is present in the back of his mind when making news judgements. However, he was quick to point out that the audience is not the best judge of news.

"We've experimented to see what types of teasers people click on," he said. "We came across a story about a sex offender in Florida who had murdered someone. At the same time, there were a lot of important local events happening in town that we had prominently teased in our news section."

"As an experiment, we put a tiny blurbed tease of the sex offender story at the bottom of the rail, and it wound up being the highest viewed story that day. In fact, it wound up being the highest viewed story for a month a so. It was tiny little link, but that's what people wanted."

Incidents like these have caused Tait to redouble his journalistic style in making sure people have access to the news they need.

"I could very easy construct the perfect Web site for page views, but it's going to be nothing but sex, sports, weather and death," he said. "I could also put up the perfect news site, where every single piece of news you ever wanted to know was there."

Tait said he thought either of these solutions would be a professional failure on his part. Journalistically, he said he feels the need to provide a solid source of pertinent information. From a business perspective, he said he felt a duty to keep the company financially afloat.

"You've got to strike a balance between what people want to know and what people need to know," he said. "And that's pretty tough."

Yet another field of ethical problems unique to the portal is the handling of content generated by users. At Austin360, users can read the news and log into related chat rooms and post-it forums to discuss and debate the events among themselves. However, this content can become a headache, as users are not aware of the ethical issues involved in mass media practice.

"The audience is beginning to play more into the site's production," Tait said. "We provide content from other sources and that's driving traffic to forums where people are setting up their own communities. There they discuss what's important to them, or what's bugging them. They can hash out their problems online with other people. You've got a virtual community, but it's actually forming real communities by bringing people together who might not have found each other otherwise."

Tait cited Austin360's coverage of the 1999 Texas A&M Bonfire tragedy as a proud example of this phenomenon. He said when the accident occurred, Austin360 posted some of the first briefs. The site then continued to update these briefs every five to seven minutes, as new facts were revealed.

"The worst feeling someone can have is when they know something has happened, but they're not exactly sure what has happened," Tait said. "Especially when there are a lot of people talking about what they think has happened, but nobody really knows. We had so much information and it was updated so quickly. We created a forum for people to go and share their condolences and sympathies. One of the best things to do to help is to create a place where people can go and talk about it. We provided so many ways for people to get to the information they needed."

However, this situation was not without its ethical challenges. As users began to post information on the post-it boards, Tait said they began to cite information that had not been released to Austin360.

"People we posting that they had found out so-and-so had died or that someone had been found," Tait said. "We just didn't have any way to verify the information. So, we had to contact these users and ask them not to post any more names. We monitored the boards and restricted the content to general sentiments and condolences. It was tough, but we can't be held responsible for that content."

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Introduction and Literature Review

Case Study

Conclusions

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