One of the joys of Brooklyn is being immersed in history. My apartment is in a house built just after Lincoln’s presidency. Down the street is Brooklyn’s first park designed by Olmsted and Vaux and standing on the site of a Revolutionary War fort. As editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Walt Whitman lobbied for the creation of that park.

Roaming in Thought
Walt Whitman — Leaves of Grass

ROAMING in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality,

And the vast all that is call’d Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.

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Tag(s): Brooklyn Daily Eagle, editor, Lincoln, Revolutionary War fort, Whitman Poem

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From Huffington Post, Washington Times Runs Obama Girls’ Photo With Story About Murdered Chicago Kids

Editor John Solomon told Greg Sargent technology, not a person, was to blame.

“The theme engine, through automation, grabbed a photo it thought was relevant, and attached it to the story,” Solomon said, acknowledging that the photo had gone up without a person seeing it. “There was no editorial decision to run it. As soon as it was brought to our attention, we pulled it down.”

“There was no editorial decision to run it”??

Who decided to acquire/build a search algorithm to publish file photos without human oversight?

The example is outrageous but using loose tags to associate photos of people to stories of crime and human tragedy? Under what circumstances does this technical solution make journalistic sense?

Technology to blame? Not even the technologists. Doesn’t this newspaper have an editorial board?

How about applying the same standard of care to your online property that you’d use for print?

Mistakes happen but blaming your tools just betrays how unequipped you are to use them.

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Tag(s): editor, ethics, failure, Greg Sargent technology, John Solomon, Murdered Chicago Kids, online property, search algorithm, technology, Washington Times

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