Aug. 20, 2006

By STEVE SHIRK
Managing Editor/News
The Kansas City Star

Non-journalists have blogged their way to some notability in recent elections. Now newspapers, including The Kansas City Star, are adding reporters' political blogs to their online arsenals.

With that comes a crucial credibility conversation about how journalists feeding two products with somewhat different missions can keep faith with readers.

Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at The Poynter Institute, believes the key is establishing guidelines before launching – "thinking through the problems posed by the medium: tone, appropriateness of language and how to avoid letting opinion slip in." But she adds: "Most newsrooms are addressing these issues after something blows up."

At The Star, we tried to make the bar settings clear – but at somewhat different levels for print and online. A pinch of voice and a pound of edginess permeate our postings. But not opinion. Keith Chrostowski, deputy national editor who helped create our concept, set up these rules of engagement:

1. Editing. We still do it, albeit on the fly.

2. Tone. It must be light, not condescending or hurtful.

3. Edginess. We apply it to all posts where appropriate, in an odd way being "fair" to all.

4. Reality. Entries must be based on something "real" that we can verify.

5. Response. Everybody gets a chance to respond, although sometimes in a later posting.

6. Scorecard. The editor keeps a loose score of negative and positive, trying to keep it balanced over time.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch began Political Fix, its "daily dose of insider news," a year ago and has suffered no dents in its credibility.

"There was some concern initially," political editor Irvin Harrell says. "The word went out that we were going to be fair and objective but we were going to have a little more fun with it."  Their posts have some edge, but "we don't use a strong voice from the reporters."

Their result: "We started slow, but now Political Fix is on a roll. We get more hits than anything else," Harrell reports.

And so far, so good for The Star. In our first 10 weeks, we put up about 600 posts. They attracted about 200,000 page views (8,000 the day after the Kansas primary) and 4,000 comments. And those comments are focusing on content, not on reporters' ability to play fair on both fronts.