Tomorrow I’ll be giving a talk to Northeastern alumni at the Burlington campus as part of the NU@Noon series. My topic will be “Social Media: The Connective Tissue Between News Outlets and Their Communities.” I’ve prepared some slides and plan to riff on them a bit before turning it over to questions. If you’d like a sneak preview, here you go.

Michele Kearney

Now, here is an interesting ethical dilemma.

Last Friday morning, the New Haven Independent posted its final revision of a story reporting that the city’s police union had approved a “no confidence” vote in Chief Frank Limon by a margin of 246-21.

The New Haven Police Department has been beset by controversy since Limon’s arrival last spring over accusations of police brutality and over incidents involving officers’ confiscating cameras from people trying to record their actions. Last week, a group of African-American activists demonstrated in favor of Limon, claiming that the chief is working to reform a troubled department.

But I digress. The story closes with a quote from and a photo of a custodian who works at police headquarters. The custodian, Michele Kearney, says:

There’s been a lot of tension ever since he’s [Limon] been here. There is not a lot of morale here. The last chief [James Lewis] was more understanding of what needs to be done. From what I have seen he wanted to hear their opinions and try to work with them. This one here [Limon] seems like he is working against them and not with them.

The story drew 108 comments — a very high number for the Independent. On Thursday at 3:23 p.m. (in response to an earlier version of the story) a commenter who goes by “da hill” criticized the Independent for quoting “unrelated entities” such as Kearney. Editor and publisher Paul Bass responded:

Thanks for the input. Our feeling was that someone who’s in the building cleaning the floors every day, talking to officers, and watching what’s going on, does in fact have a valid perspective to offer on morale and the overall feeling in the building.

At 5:21 p.m., “NO CONFIDENCE” wrote: “I am so happy to see a civilian like Michele, pictured above, tell the citizens of New Haven how Chief Limon treats his officers.  She works in the police department and is definitely well qualified to make those statements.”

A short time later, “Our Town” posted this: “I sure hope ole Michele is in a union, becuase I have a feeling she might not have a job tomorrow for speaking up.”

Then, at 11:06 p.m., there was this, from “Ken”:

The maintenance girl was fired immediately and we heard it came from, you guessed it, the chief. This is his MO if don’t agree with or lie for him you’re in trouble. City Hall has demanded she be re-hired by O,R&L.  I guess the The Chief never heard of the First Amendment. OR&L should be questioned about it and if they lie they should lose the city contracts. If it came from the Chief he should be terminated.

O,R&L is a private contractor hired by the city to maintain its buildings.

On Friday at 3:49 a.m., “unbelievable” wrote: “She was FIRED and escorted out of the building like a CRIMINAL! and you talk about wanting to do your best for this city!? … Well New Haven Independent, what are you going to do now??”

What the Independent did was post a story by Bass reporting on Kearney’s situation. The events of the day were convoluted. Kearney was fired; no, she’d been placed on leave. Mayor John DeStefano’s outgoing spokeswoman said the mayor had asked O,R&L to reinstate her. DeStefano said he’d done no such thing. The mayor’s incoming spokesman then said the company had informed the city that Kearney had been reinstated.

And, most controversially, the Independent posted the cell-phone number of the O,R&L supervisor assigned to police headquarters, urging readers to make their feelings known. “Members of the public can call him there if they want to express their opinions on the matter directly,” Bass wrote.

For Kearney, the story had a reasonably happy ending. According to the final version of Bass’ story, posted on Friday at 1:59 p.m., she was reinstated with no loss of pay. For Bass, though, the experience was not quite so happy. A sampling:

From “Unreal”: “Reported [sic] gets dissed so they retaliate by publishing a cell phone number?! Completely unprofessional. I don’t agree with the firing the employee however, I will refuse to support the Independent after that juvenile reaction!”

From “Steve B”: “Bush league. At least respectable journalistic ventures make an attempt to appear objective. Would you care to publish your personal cell phone number, Mr. Bass? You do yourself no favors with this kind of trashy behavior. It’s stuff like this that gives readers a reason not to take the NHI seriously.”

From “ricky perwood”: “so lets get this straight. NHI asked a woman who was in no way part of the story and she gave her opinion. Ok that happens, but why did they publish her quotes and her picture ? and now they publish someones cell phone number to try and get out of their major mistake ? This site and its editor have no journalistic integrity. NONE. I cant believe how vindictive whoever write this article is.”

On the other hand, “ASL” wrote: “I am not sure what the uproar is over the publication of the cell phone number. Is there some sacred right to keep your cell phone number private? I don’t take issue with privatization but if you are a private contractor paid with public dollars, you should expect to be held accountable to the public.”

Still, as Bass himself acknowledged, far more commenters thought he’d erred by publishing the number.

Here is what Bass wrote in the comments to explain why he published the supervisor’s cell-phone number:

Thank you for the feedback on the cell phone number. I knew it was an extraordinary measure. Here’s my thinking:

What the company and that manager did to Michele Kearney was so far beyond the pale of any legal or ethical or moral behavior, a lukewarm “please don’t do that again” response from the press would be pathetic.

I did not burn anyone or violate any confidential information in publishing that number. His cell phone number is widely available. That’s why I got it.

It is common practice to publish phone numbers for people to call to register dissatisfaction. Especially numbers of public entities. I think it’s a canard to pretend a company hired to do a public job is not privy to the same demands put on government. I have personally been up to the state Freedom of Information Commission to fight this question. I have never lost.

We feel very good about quoting a custodian about conditions in a public building. She has as much right to have her voice heard as does a paid corporate flack or high government official. The Independent is dedicated to letting everyone’s voice be heard.

If anybody tries to mess with people who choose to exercise that right, we will stand behind that person 1000%. You’re all on notice.

Now, before I go any further, I want to point out that Bass is wrong about Kearney’s having the “right to have her voice heard.” Although the Independent deserves praise for seeking out non-traditional sources, no one has a First Amendment right to talk about his or her employer’s clients. O,R&L’s reaction to Kearney’s comments was outrageous, and I’ve got no problem with the Independent putting heat on the company in order to reverse the injustice that had been done to her. But she did make a mistake.

On Friday, Bass and I got on Gmail chat to discuss the ethics of his decision to publish the supervisor’s cell-phone number. What I wanted to know was whether Bass had obtained the number as a reporter with the understanding — tacit or explicit — that he would use it to get a comment, not to publish it for all his readers to see.

I’m satisfied that Bass didn’t do that. He told me he called the company as though he were simply a member of the public, not a reporter, and was given the number with no restrictions. Moreover, Bass said, the cell-phone numbers of government employees are a matter of public record in Connecticut, and O,R&L is performing a government function.

“I felt he had the same role as any government supervisor — they just happen to call him a private contractor and deal with him that way to bypass the union,” Bass told me.

Emphasizing the point he’d made in the comments, he added, “What really galls me is this idea that news reporters shouldn’t quote custodians and let them speak in articles. I feel there’s an important principle at stake here about who gets to talk.”

And again, I agree — except that Kearney did not have the right to endanger her company’s relationship with the city.

So, did Bass do the ethical thing in posting the cell-phone number? I’d say yes, based mainly on the fact that he got it just as any member of the public would. If he’d identified himself and said he was a journalist when he called the company and asked for the number, he’d have a problem.

Did Bass do the smart thing? Here I have to say no. I have no problem with his decision to pressure O,R&L to reinstate Kearney. The Independent engages in advocacy journalism, and I think that’s one of the things that makes it interesting.

But Bass could have posted the company’s phone number (it’s got two offices in Connecticut) or the mayor’s number. And he probably would have accomplished just as much.

Our online chat ended with Bass telling me, “Hey, the company just called — she got her job back! They promised me on the record she faces no threat of dismissal, and she will lose no pay. I have no idea if the cell was a factor. I do think we sent a message.”

Bass had a tough call to make, and he didn’t have the luxury of thinking it over for a few days. A woman was on the verge of losing her job because she spoke to one of his reporters. I think he got it partly right and partly wrong.

Not sure how much conversation I can generate about this story, but I’d love it if this were just the beginning. I’d especially like to hear from O,R&L, the mayor’s office and any media ethicists who happen to be reading this.

Photo by Melinda Tuhus for the New Haven Independent. Republished by permission.

On May 18 I had a chance to sit down with SeeClickFix co-founder and chief executive Ben Berkowitz in his second-floor office in downtown New Haven. Berkowitz, a hyperkinetic 31-year-old, had forgotten we were supposed to meet, but he graciously agreed to a video interview despite having a full agenda.

Berkowitz describes SeeClickFix as “citizens working collectively,” and explains that he started it three years ago when he was trying to get graffiti cleaned up in his neighborhood. The site has been growing rapidly since the New York Times published a feature story on it in January.

Today, the company has some 400 media partners and employs five people thanks to a $25,000 We Media prize and several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of venture capital. Although the basic service is free, SeeClickFix charges media sites for certain premium services, and posts advertising as well.

One aspect of Berkowitz’s philosophy that I found particularly interesting was his insistence that SeeClickFix is not just for holding government accountable — citizens, too, should take responsibility. As an example, he pointed to a similar project, the British website FixMyStreet — a great name that he nevertheless doesn’t like, he says, because it removes accountability from citizens and places it entirely on the government.

Does Berkowitz, who previously worked as a Web designer, consider himself a journalist? He pauses before answering. “I think SeeClickFix is a tool for journalists,” he replies. “I don’t think that I am a journalist. I don’t think of us as a news organization.”

For a good example of how journalists can use SeeClickFix as a reporting tool, see this story on “the ugliest storefront on Chapel Street” in the New Haven Independent.

Sorry to be coy, but I’m not ready to tell all just yet. I can say that it’s about the new generation of community news sites, with a major emphasis on one in particular.

Robert McChesney (left) and John Nichols

What role should the government have in preserving public-interest journalism? If you’re a First Amendment absolutist (and I consider myself to be pretty close), you might immediately respond with a resounding “none.” Yet such purity has never been the reality in American life.

Heavy postal subsidies from the earliest days of the republic helped create the most vibrant newspaper and magazine industry in the world. To bring matters up to the present, media corporations are now given virtually free use of the broadcast airwaves, theoretically owned by all of us, with little expectation that they will fulfill the public-interest obligations that were once required of them.

Earlier today, John Nichols and Robert McChesney visited Northeastern to promote their new book, “The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again.” (You can read excerpts of it here and here.) I won’t pretend to write an objective account — I introduced them, and we all said nice things about each other. Rather, I want to discuss briefly their idea that at a time when journalism is in crisis, government ought to step in and prop it up to the tune of some $30 billion a year — a number they say correlates, in 2010 dollars, with what was spent on postal subsidies in the 1840s.

To their credit, they do not propose taking taxpayer funds and handing them to Rupert Murdoch and Arthur Sulzberger. Instead, they would like to see a variety of initiatives that, properly implemented, would bolster journalism without raising the specter of government interference: greatly expanded support for public broadcasting with an arm’s-length funding mechanism; an AmeriCorps for young journalists; even a $200 tax credit for every family to spend on the news media of their choice.

And they are correct in asserting that other Western democracies, particularly the Scandinavian countries, subsidize their media to a far greater extent than we do without suffering any loss of freedom.

Yet I still worry that theirs is the wrong solution. Consider, for example, that non-profit organizations, including news operations, are forbidden from endorsing political candidates — a ban on free speech that dates back to 1954, when then-Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson acted to silence the opposition back home in Texas. That underscores what I think is the real problem with government assistance: once you start relying on it, you are forever subject to the vagaries of the political moment.

Afterward I asked McChesney about an idea recently proposed by Dan Gillmor, best known as the author of “We the Media,” to emulate the original idea of postal subsidies by using government funds to pay for universal broadband access. As Gillmor sees it, that, combined with a guarantee of net neutrality, should be enough to allow market forces to do the rest.

“I think we need that no matter what,” McChesney replied. But he added there was “not a shred of evidence” that universal broadband access and net neutrality would be sufficient to guarantee a vibrant press.

Nichols and McChesney’s presentation combined gloom-and-doom with optimism for the future of journalism, if only the public can be mobilized. Like Clay Shirky, they think we have entered a post-advertising era in which it will prove impossible sustain journalism as a commercial enterprise. But whereas Shirky has called for a variety of commercial, non-profit and volunteer-driven experiments, Nichols and McChesney believe the public ought to pay more directly for what it needs to govern itself.

“We are at a 1776 moment,” Nichols said “It is your democracy that is threatened.”

Nichols and McChesney are co-founders of Free Press, an organization that is fighting the good fight on behalf of local ownership of radio and television stations and government guarantees for net neutrality. My reservations aside, Nichols and McChesney are making an important contribution to the discussion over paying for news, and I look forward to reading their book.

Michael Chaves was a “lumper”: He worked as a laborer for long-haul truckers and slept in their trailers. Dale Anderson was a lumper too. One night they were hanging out at a truck stop when Anderson, drunk, urinated on the spot where Chaves slept. They argued, and Chaves beat him to death with a bat.

That’s the story Chaves told to police in Phoenix, Arizona.

And that’s one hell of a good way to begin.

I’ll be speaking later today at a conference of the Northeast Massachusetts Regional Library System, which Mrs. Media Nation reliably informs me is pronounced NIM-rils. The event is being held at Nevins Memorial Library in Methuen.

My topic will be a familiar one — reinventing journalism in the post-newspaper age — but I hope to add a few wrinkles to it based on some recent developments at the Boston Globe, and on the time I’ve been spending with the folks from the New Haven Independent.

I’ve posted the slideshow I’ll be using. For some reason, a few odd breaks crept in when it was converted from PowerPoint to SlideShare. But you’ll get the idea.

Tomorrow I head back to the Merrimack Valley for a panel discussion on how blogging on newspaper Web sites has affected the news cycle — and how that can create challenges in breaking-news situations.

The panel, part of a conference being held by the New England Society of Newspaper Editors (NEZ-nee? I’ll have to get back to you on that), will be held at the Eagle-Tribune in North Andover.

The event was sponsored by the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Service and the Ford Hall Forum, and was held at Suffolk Law School. The moderator was law school professor Alasdair Roberts.

As you will see, one of Starr’s main themes was that, with the Internet having hollowed out the economic model for the newspaper business, government needs to step up with some type of subsidy — preferably an indirect subsidy created by tweaking the tax code, for instance. (Here is Starr’s recent congressional testimony on that subject.)

Before you start spluttering, Starr would not favor newspapers over other forms of media. And he pointed out that he’s not talking about anything new: Newspapers as we have come to know them got a huge assist in the earliest days of the republic through massive postal subsidies.

“Newspapers … have helped to create a self-aware urban public,” Starr said.

Baron disdained subsidies, saying, “I feel very strongly about our independence, and we have to maintain that.”

Instead, Baron suggested two governmental changes — a shift in the copyright law aimed at extracting money out of Google News and other aggregators, and an end to what he called the “antiquated” cross-ownership ban, which prevents media companies from owning a daily newspapers and a television or radio station in the same market.

Starr disagreed with Baron on copyright, noting that if linking without permission were made illegal (an extreme remedy that Baron did not actually suggest), the Web as we know it would soon cease to exist.

(Personally, I think the fair-use provision of copyright provides all the protection that newspapers need. If Globe executives want to opt out of Google, all they have to do is insert some code. They don’t for the simple reason that Google provides the Globe and other newspapers with a considerable amount of Web traffic.)

I talked about emerging alternative models at the local level, such as the New Haven Independent, CT News Junkie, Baristanet.com and the Batavian — projects that are too small to replicate the newspaper’s traditional mission in its entirety, but that have established themselves as vital news sources in a time of cutbacks.

Hope to see you there.