The Hindu : International : A marketplace of ideas

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 22, 2005

International

International

A marketplace of ideas

A newspaper suspends an experiment letting readers rewrite its editorials

LOS ANGELES: A bold experiment by the Los Angeles Times in letting readers rewrite its editorials has lasted all of three days. The newspaper suspended its "Wikitorial" Web feature after some users flooded the site over the weekend with foul language and pornographic photos.

The paper had posted on its website on Friday an editorial urging a better-defined plan to withdraw troops from Iraq. Readers were invited to add their thoughts. Dozens did, with some adding hyperlinks and others adding opposing views.

One reader split the long editorial in two, something that pleased Michael Kinsley, the paper's editorial and opinion editor. But the number of "inappropriate" posts soon began to overwhelm the editors' ability to monitor the site. On Sunday, they decided to remove the feature.

"Wikis," based on the Hawaiian word "wiki wiki" for "quick," are online communities that encourage users to write and edit articles collectively, and even override and delete other contributors' work. The end product can be thought of as a community's shared knowledge. There are Wiki cookbooks, collections of quotations and an encyclopaedia.

The newspaper's Web page was to show the original editorial and interim versions along with the readers' final product. "The result is a constantly evolving collaboration among readers in a communal search for truth," the paper said in its Friday edition. "Or that's the theory." The newspaper said it might be creating a new form of opinion journalism — or an embarrassing failure.

In a statement on Monday, it said the feature would stay offline indefinitely while it looked at what happened and how to fix it. "We thank the thousands of people who logged onto the Wikitorial in the right spirit," it said.

"I applaud them for trying a bold experiment," said Steve Outing, senior editor with the journalism think tank Poynter Institute. "That being said, I'm not at all surprised [by the problems]. Wikis are pretty new, and we don't entirely understand them and know how they are going to work out yet." He said Wikis "are most suited for factual information where the content can become accurate because of the power of the intelligence of the group."

The Wikitorial is one of several changes to the paper's editorial page being made under the leadership of Mr. Kinsley, the political commentator and columnist who founded the online magazine Slate in 1996 and took charge of the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times a year ago.

The newspaper is also allowing editorial board members to dissent from editorials they disagree with and criticize editorials from other papers.

Board members will also be writing bylined articles reflecting on life in Southern California under the title "A SoCal Life."— AP

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