As if NPR needed anyone to undermine it but itself, NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin wrote (in “When Those Pesky Blogs Undermine NPR News”) about how information is just too darn free. A letter.
Mr. Dvorkin:
You state near the end of a recent column that “The blogs showed NPR, when it posted the Defense Department document, that the Web has changed both the rules and the means of disseminating information.”
The npr.org domain has been around since 1993. Are you seriously saying that an organization that has had an Internet presence for a dozen years, that posts hundreds of shows a week online, and has a fairly sophisticated Web presence itself is just now realizing that the “means of disseminating information” have changed?
[UPDATE] Unbelievably, Dvorkin wrote back within minutes. Believably, the response is virtually meaningless:
Yes. The volume and scope of all internet information is becoming so prominent, that it needs to be acknowledged. NPR website does a good job, but it is a mere drop in the
ocean.JD