It's not that I "would have posted it anyway" -- I've been interviewed by e-mail more than 100 times, and never once have I published a transcript, for all the usual reasons you would probably agree with. It's that I see no reason why a journalist should have exclusive rights to *own* an interview, unless he has made that explicit arrangement with the interviewee.

Nor do I think anything like that "journalists who blog are saving the republic and non-web journalists are scum to be taken down a notch." I think the explosion of blogs take away some of the haughtiness of the whole gatekeeper vibe, and I think that's ultimately very good for journalism, but journalists who blog are just journalists who blog (just like those who don't are those who don't). I like those in both subsets who are good, and am not so fond in those in both subsets who are bad.

What gives the journalist asking the blogger the exclusive or the first rights to the interview?

I'm tired of these journalists like Glaser who think they are bestowing some enormous gift on us poor benighted bloggers by interviewing us. Sorry to break it to you, but www.ojr.org is no great shakes. It's Alexa ranking is over 28,000.

I've been taken to dinner and interviewed by journalists from The New York Times, LA Times, three of the major networks, and from over 100 other outlets, and none of them have been so smugly superior as Glaser's comment. They took me to dinner because they wanted something from me.

I enjoyed talking with you Mark and I think you are a good journalist but quit it with the "I'm doing you a favor by interviewing you" approach. I don't think it will cause a single blogger a bad day to realize you will never interview him again. You're good, Mark, but you're not God almighty.

If you don't want the interview subject to write about your interview before you publish the story, request that. If you don't ask for it, don't whine.

Establishment journalists are sad that they no longer rule the roost and that the servant can now become the master. Welcome to the 21st Century.

An interview is not just an interview -- it's a conversation, an exchange of ideas, an experience, a moment in time. Why would only the interviewer, and not the interviewee, have complete proprietary rights to such a thing? This doesn't apply just to email by the way. Mickey Kaus's asking old Joe Gold about Arnold's alleged gangbang at Gold's Gym, for instance, came out of a phone interview I did with Mickey for my CityBeat column...he called me back (as I'd asked) with what he found out, and then put that info in Kausfiles before my column came out. It would hardly be fair of me to resent this, and I didn't; but then, he did credit me, and obviously we both got something out of it. Probably common courtesy could smooth over a lot of journalistic ruffled feathers here. Less control freakism would be good too.

Furthermore, I don't accept that bloggers Glaser interviews are yearning for his approval, and the approval of other establishment journalists.

Most of the bloggers I know are highly accomplished writers, have published books (Kevin Roderick, Mickey Kaus, Eugene Volokh, etc), have published extensively in newspapers and magazines, and often do work in film and TV.

Many of the bloggers I know blog because they despise much of the traditional establishment media for its bureaucracy, mind-numbing rules, cravenness to special interests, and timidity. We're not seeking acceptance from those we despise, like the LA Times and the journalist department of USC, which is composed 100% of leftists.

I blog because I make a good living at it, have almost complete freedom, get to do the type of writing I like, make a difference in the world, and inspire books. My blogs have also contributed to my gaining work elsewhere.

Furthermore, I reject the notion of Glaser's that the blogger must take great account of the feelings of the journalist who interviews him. The journalist will, at the drop of the hat, write things about the blogger that will hurt the blogger, and quote the blogger in ways that hurt the blogger. So why should this ethical stream flow one way? The journalist is ready to shaft the blogger, so grow up already.

And this is why I hate all this "BLOGGER!!!" stuff. It's like some sort of badge of being a renegade when in truth it is every bit as ego-driven and self-serving as "old media," if not more so.

Enough.

There are plenty of "us vs. them" issues. This is not one of them.

If someone interviews me about a subject that I have not written about and I scoop that person by writing about it before their piece comes out, I am an asshole. Period. It has nothing to do with blogging vs. old media or Alexis ratings (a statistical joke, btw) or ownership of an interview. It has to do with, as Cathy wrote, common courtesy.

When Cathy sparked an interest in Mickey Kaus, she wasn’t just asking his opinion. She got him to do some journalistic work. He printed the fruits of his investigative effort and he credited Cathy. Completely fair and honorable. There is a difference between being interviewed for an opinion and being interviewed for information you have done the reporting work on. If Cathy wanted an exclusive, she would have gone sniffing around the gym herself and surely gotten the story.

But if Cathy had called Mickey and asked him how he felt about the trend of gay-themed television and he scratched his head, not having thought about the issue before, and offered an opinion and then done a whole column about how he felt about gay-theme television or transcribed his conversation with Cathy and printed it on Slate before he story ran… that would be shitty.

I don't think Mark Glaser would be upset if Luke printed their entire exchange for more clarity... after his story ran. But that wasn’t, it seemed, what Luke was doing… unlike Jeff Jarvis, who felt he had somehow been misrepresented. Luke was scooping his interviewer. Where is the honor in that?

But from my P.O.V., it is deeper than that. As an aggregator of news, at Movie City News, I feel that I am stealing from other media outlets and the writers themselves, if I reprint something when I can simply link to the piece. When there is a financial barricade put up, keeping my readers from the content, my personal standards changes. Charging $2.50 for a month old story is the journalistic equivalent of the $17 CD. But I would never consider diminishing anyone’s journalistic effort by “owning” the interview they requested, unless there is some problem with what they printed.

Also, I have had many exchanges with Mark Glaser over the years and regardless of Alexa ratings (did I mention that they were completely unreliable?), I believe that he is working to help build the value of the online community. He takes blogging seriously and not, like so many, just blogs sponsored by major sites or featuring already famous people. Luke may be cranky, but I don’t see any evidence of self-deification by Glaser here. (Unfortunately, Luke’s screed reads as though his moral slotting is based on whether Glaser bought him a meal. This, I do not believe of Luke.)

If, Luke, you are “not seeking acceptance from those we despise, like the LA Times and the journalist department of USC, which is composed 100% of leftists,” you probably shouldn’t have done the interview. Or is printing your interview before Mark some sort of political subversion. Ha ha ha.

Luke doth protest too much.

Matt, I was picking up on this part of your comment to Jarvis:

And I might suggest, nastily, that if you don't want your e-mailed questions to be published, well, maybe you shouldn't send them in the first place....I see no reason why the asker should enjoy the proprietary rights to an interview conversation, and I see every reason why it would be good for the interviewee to post the transcripts ASAP. (emphasis added)

If it mischaracterizes you to say you'd have run the interview, I apologize for that.

Luke takes the discussion off in the 'who owns it' direction. My position, just to reiterate, is that repurposing an interview before the initiator has done whatever he's going to do with it is -- well, I'll accept David Poland's descriptions. After it runs, I don't care what they do with it.

Jarvis runs Glaser's questions in his blog because he's "pissed off" at not being adequately recognized as a blogging pioneer.

I suppose there are some circles where being "pissed off" is adequate justification for doing what you want.

In contrast, the host of this blog says it "would never occur" to him to take someone else's questions and use them for his own purposes. This seems like a naturally intuitive reaction, if you have a fundamental respect for the work of others laboring in the same field.

Is this what posters want us to regard as "gatekeeper haughtiness," "control-freakism," or (here we go again) "leftism?"

Dave Poland makes some good points.

Just because "I see every reason why it would be good for the interviewee to post the transcripts" doesn't mean that *I* would do it! Also, it depends on the meaning of the word "is," and I almost never inhale ...

I guess what I mean is that, unless there is an agreement to the contrary, I don't see why *in theory* it wouldn't be a good thing for interviewees to publish transcripts of interviews which are otherwise distilled into a single quote or two. If nothing else, it provides more raw data to the global pool of information, and keeps that tiny minority of unscrupulous reporters that much more on their toes.

In *practice*, I can't imagine ever doing it, unless I was egregiously misquoted or mischaracterized, or if the conversation was simply so illuminating & interesting that I thought people might be interested (in fact, I always mean to do that with interesting interviews *I* conduct ... but I'm too scatter-brained to do it). And in my personal idea of etiquette, I think it's a bad show to scoop your cross-examiner, and at any rate in that rare case where I might be tempted I would likely discuss it with the interviewer, unless he was just a total jackass I wanted to mock.

So etiquette-wise, you could say that Jarvis did something that I personally would find too rude. Still, I don't think that a reporter should have the automatic expectation that he owns that interview, and I have a natural allergy to the "I'm doing you a favor" line of thinking ... even if it's true!

Replying to David Poland:

* I give an interview to everyone who asks, even if I despise them (I do not despise Glaser and ojr.org). I think it is a professional courtesy that all those (reporters, writers, novelists, etc) who rely on interviewing people for a living should adhere to.

* Glaser said the article was going up Thursday. I published his questions to me Thursday afternoon. Ojr.org published his article Friday. I probably used parts of my answers to him in the ongoing stream of coverage I was devoting to the debate about naming Kobe Bryant's accuser.

Glaser interviewed me about a subject I was writing about constantly. Nothing I published detracted his piece.

I think the ethics of this are situational.

David, I "scooped my interviewer" in your words before I ever heard of the interviewer and before he ever contacted me. It is on rare occasions that a writer is going to be interviewed about something he has never written about. David is setting up a straw man.

Alexa rankings are no more reliable than the Dow Jones. So what is better than either for measuring their respective stats? Nothing. Deal with it.

In the final analysis, I agree with David's point that it comes down to being a schmuck. If you steal someone's exclusive simply by taking from what they give you, you're a schmuck.

I have not seen any scoops in anything Mark Glaser has written, certainly not in the Jeff Jarvis affair, or in the Kobe Bryant affair. Could someone please point out the big scoops that were stolen by perfidious bloggers?

I am not the friendliest sunniest person around regarding human nature. In every single article ever published about me (with the exception of four), there have been significant mistakes, usually ones that make me look bad.

Ergo, I now generally tape record those who call to interview me. I let them know I'm taping.

I don't trust journalists. I don't trust people unless I know them well.

When there's something specific that I want from a stranger who I am interviewing or he is interviewing me, I ask for it specifically and try to get a clear written agreement. Those who don't, like Glaser, should learn. Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. Glaser has this keep happening to him. And he still doesn't get it.

Mark threatens he won't call back bloggers who play these nasty tricks on him. I know our lives will be sorely incomplete.

David, it doesn't really matter whether Mark Glaser or OJR or the LA Times takes blogging seriously or not. We don't need their imprimatur. Whoopydoo.

I find my work self-authenticating as far as its importance as does any serious writer.

Let's say Disney does not take me seriously. Don't give me credentials to different events. So it is an obstacle for me to write about them. All I need is a scoop to bust through and get a serious response.

A blog is as mighty as the quality of its information. We don't need the blessing of others.

I love it when people try to put bloggers down (or any writer) by saying, "I've never heard of you." Or, "I never read your stuff."

If we write a devastating story about you pally, or someone you care about, you'll hear of us.

Matt, I think we completely agree then.

Could someone please tell me the last time the LA Times had a scoop? LA Magazine? Ojr.org?

Genuine scoops are rare and precious things. And guess what? Journalists who have one of these beautiful things don't give them away. Glaser didn't have any scoop with Jarvis. Ojr.org simply publishes thumbsuckers. They rarely break a story.

I've dealt with journalists at the LA Times, for instance, who were digging into the gay porn past of a guy who was working with Michael Jackson. The journalists pumped me for information but not for a second did they give away their scoop.

This is a tempest in a teapot. A reporter with a genuine scoop is not going to give it away to his interview subject. If the reporter does, then he's a fool. Why can't reporters who feel burned repeatedly by bloggers (that means you Mark Glaser) takes responsibility for your actions?

Real reporters with real scoops don't whine about these things. They guard their treasure.

Now, I want all those of you jumping on Jarvis, that means you David Poland, to lay out the big scoops that Mean Jeff stole from Poor Mark. If you can't lay out any, then that says something obvious.

Whiners.

I spend a lot of time in search of insighful commentary and opinion in print and on the web -- mostly on politics, but also other cultural interests. And I daily frequent numerous blogs.

I see blogs as a great alternative. If Weintraub, for instance has to go through an editor to be reviewed, I feel it's unfortunate as the timeliness of some of his comments are affected. But I will make the following comments, and they mostly reflect LA Bloggers.

a. Sometimes I wish to see more argument/discussion on the issue at hand rather than all the commentary on blogging and who pioneered it, and blogging ettiquette, etc.

b. LA Bloggers seem like such an incestious bunch. All of that interblogger kissup and coming to each others defense, etc, isn't that interesting to those of us seeking alternative commentary and opinion.

c. GET OVER the LA Times bashing. It's a big ship and takes a while to steer, and besides has come along way since the General Mills administration.

Not trying to stir things up here, just offering comments from a non bogger.

Above comments refer not to postings in the various blogs, but more so in the comments area attached to various posts.

I suppose wariness about email interviews are well-taken and Kevin's rules of thumb are good to think about, but all email interviews are not created equal.

The Glaser-Jarvis episode consisted of one guy with a web site interviewing another guy with a web site about policies that web sites should follow. If Jarvis "scooped" Glaser by posting his thoughts first, well, I hardly think the Republic or the Fourth Estate was rocked.

Interestingly, the first thing I read from link that Kevin has provided was a discussion about how Jarvis was upset about being asked to pay a registration fee at a conference he was being asked to speak at. He made the very wise observation that if the speakers and the attendees were basically in the same class, then it raised the question of whether they were all just speaking to each other.

I enjoy blogs quite a bit, especially for early reactions to events. (For instance, earlier today my refresh key was eagerly scanning Hasen, Kaus and How Appealing for instant reaction to the Ninth Circuit oral arguments.) And while blogs can certainly break news, on occasion, I think of them more as op-ed pages than news sources.

I see this as related to the controversy over the Sacramento Bee subjecting Weintraub to an editor before posts go up on his blog. As Kaus as noted, the freshness, the off-the-cuff nature of blogs, which has made Weintraub's California Insider so interesting, is threatened by adding a editor layer. As an op-ed columnist, Weintraub should be subjected to a minimum of editing. If he were reporting news, it would be an entirely different story.

All of which is a round about way of saying that interviewing bloggers for their opinions on issues doesn't strike me as journalism. Consider the idea of Maureen Dowd interviewing Thomas Friedman ... a frighteningly tedious ordeal indeed.

If a blog falls down in a forest full of blogs, will anyone hear it? We are in danger of approaching a similar online precipice crossed not too long ago when TV went from three channels to Tivo/Direct TV/Dish/etc.

Or, put another way: Luke Ford can be the white noise equivalent of Fox News Channel and we're stuck without a clicker.

Dear Luke,

What kind of rodent crawled up your anus and passed away?

My knowledge of the details of your interaction with Mark Glaser is limited to what you have written. I’m not actually concerned in the least about this specific event. But the entitlement you seem to be preaching is a bit much, on principle.

Leave it to an Orthodox Jew to preach situation ethics.

My principles are not flexible. Situations are. The L.A. Times does not have to be the best paper in the world for me to give it the respect I believe should be accorded all of my colleagues. Nor does their unmitigated lack of respect for me and for others I both like and respect mean that I am free of any responsibility in how I deal with them. Or for that matter, Mark Glaser.

Unlike the L.A. Times and others, I am consistent in that professional respect for anyone who does their work in earnest – online, bloggers, comic book artists… whomever. And I am conversely enraged by those who pretend to be professional and flaunt the responsibility, again, regardless of the size or status of the outlet. But two wrongs do not often make a right. Tearing down Mark Glaser’s efforts does not make you stronger. It makes us all a little weaker. Every piece of the puzzle counts. Particularly in a business where outlets speak much louder than actual talent, good intent or quality reporting.

Does Dennis Prager’s fall to a lesser radio outlet make him less important to you? Of course not. Is Jess Cagle any different working for People than he was for Time? No. If Slate folded tomorrow and Mickey Kaus was on his own, would he be forgotten? No. Dick measuring is beneath you, Luke. Really.

I have zero problem with anyone writing about or publishing a complete transcript of an interview that someone done with you, presuming they know they are being taped and that you protect them in the ways any decent journalist would protect their interview subject. The greatest value of the web is that it allows for a lot of space and therefore, a great deal of perspective. I have felt a need to clarify my position after reading it bent into some unrecognizable mess by an interviewer. The right of response is pure first amendment.

The word “scoop” is being bandied about like a party favor and I am guilty of that as well. However, as a writer, when you are working on something, it seems reasonable to want to publish it before it starts being deconstructed.

Alexa ratings are NOT as reliable as the Dow Jones. The Dow Jones is quite literal. You might be suggesting that Alexa is reliable as Nielsen TV or radio ratings. But that is not true either. Internet sampling is quite a different animal because of the niche nature of this medium. Yahoo! and AOL are fairly represented, since they have a large enough readership that sampling is viable. Trying to gage sites that actual daily readership is in the thousands by traditional sampling is idiotic and inevitably inaccurate.

Finally, on a side note to “Just A Journo” – I assume that “interviewing bloggers for their opinions on issues doesn't strike me as journalism” is a line of amusement. If the subject was “op-ed columns,” then I imagine that you would find Dowd or Friedman’s thoughts on the subject interesting.

Well, I can't really disagree with anything you've written here except the vulgar beginning. You did that with Michael Medved too, accusing him of taking film criticism into the toilet. Your repeated fascination with all things fecal is truly disturbing. It's your constant referant when you want to down another man. I don't think I have to be too Freudian to understand these putdowns as your sublimated desire to have a particular form of engagement with another man that used to be illegal and certainly against the Torah.

Well, shit...