There is no truth to the rumor that Civil Beat will be closed down if it doesn’t become self-sustaining financially within a year.

That word came from CB editor John Temple, speaking in response to a question during Saturday’s media symposium at UH Hilo. Temple described Civil Beat as “a startup with a very lean budget,” but dismissed the rumor that its patron will pull the plug if its business plan doesn’t prove its worth soon.

There were lots of little nuggets of news and wisdom to be found in the ambitious day-long program featuring panels and workshops on a variety of topics from blogging to libel to sunshine to copyright, much of the day spent with two sessions running simultaneously. The symposium was organized by Tiffany Edwards Hunt, advisor to Ke Kalahea, the UH Hilo student newspaper. That’s Tiffany in the photo to the left, looking amazed that everything had come to together at just the right time. Cue the applause!

In what follows, I’m mushing together comments made in different parts of the program culled from my notes.

Temple said Civil Beat has “completely flattened the organization” by eliminating specialized staff roles. CB writers report the story, write the headlines, take photographs and video, and do their own rewrites, before sending the story for what is typically a single edit by one editor.

One result has been a dramatic reduction in costs compared to a traditional newspaper. He said the entire Civil Beat budget is less than what Temple’s former newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, paid to be a member of Associated Press.

Temple said the move wasn’t only a function of budget constraints, but moving towards a new form of journalism is necessary.

Referring to mainstream newspapers, Temple said simply, “their business is going away.”

“Young people aren’t going to read those newspapers,” he added.

The question of journalism and “objectivity,” of “fact” vs. “opinion,” came up several times.

Independent Kauai blogger Andy Parx (Check Andy’s account of the day here at his “Got Windmills?” blog).) said he writes with a point of view, but “leads readers with the way facts are put together.” Andy says he also tries to use history to fill in the context of currently unfolding issues.

Civil Beat provides both fact and opinion without separating them in different sections as in the traditional newspaper style.

“We don’t have an editorial section or an opinion section, we organize by area of interest,” Temple said. “Interested in land? Read the land section. You’re going to find opinion and you’re going to find news.”

He then added: “People gravitate to opinion.”

I agreed with that observation. On this blog, many more comments are received on posts dealing with opinions than on “hard news” posts.

When I look at it somewhat cynically, I conclude that opinions are easier to digest and reply to than factual arguments, and most readers are not looking to work hard while reading blogs.

Temple said his own approach to journalism has been shaped by his experience as editor, when it became his responsibility to shape the newspapers editorial stances as well as approach to news.

“I had to figure out what I needed to know to reach an informed opinion. That was a profound experience,” Temple said. “If I didn’t report to the public what you needed to know to reach an informed opinion, I was failing. That was really transformative to me.”

Do bloggers have an “obligation” to follow journalistic “standards”? Opinion was mixed. On the one hand, all panelists seemed to agree that an attempt to impose standards would be a disaster.

However, those from traditional journalism backgrounds point to the importance of standards, perhaps as simple as “truth” and “balance.”

“Fundamental human fairness” is one core journalistic value, Temple observed.

Others pointed to voluntary standards such as the SPJ ethics code, and suggested that concerned bloggers could come together to agree on a

News photographer Baron Sekiya, now publisher of Hawaii 24/7, said photo standards seem to be disappearing, both because of reporters doubling as photographers without much training or experience, and widespread use of Adobe Photoshop or other image processing software to alter photographs to “improve” them.

He used the example of using Photoshop to remove a telephone pole in the background of a picture that seems to come out of the subject’s head.

“You’re changing history when you change a photo like that,” Sekiya said, since future historians going back to look at pictures of the location at that time will be misled by the undisclosed edits.

There were practical issues as well, such as how a blogger should handle potentially libelous comments. In this panel, at least, the consensus was that the safest answer is to do nothing.

Court cases seem to have established that if you allow the comments to exist on your blog, but you don’t edit, moderate or review them, then you do not ultimately have legal responsibility for their content.

Civil Beat’s use of facebook for comments, and requiring users to register, are attempts to limit potentially libelous comments.

As readers of this blog know, I don’t follow that good advice. I do moderate comments and, on occasion, will edit or delete offensive comments. This is, in part, because I want to allow anonymous comments, since I know many people can’t speak freely due to their positions, but I want to avoid nasty anonymous comments turning off the bulk of readers. So I’m on a tightrope, perhaps, but hopefully I could defend my decisions if necessary.

How about blogging under a pseudonym? Short answer: “Who cares?” Writing under assumed names has a long literary tradition. No reason blogs should be held to a different standard.

There were other moments. I benefited from the presentation by Hilo attorney Steven Strauss on copyright law, and will try to get back to it later. And I happened to be there when Hugh Clark, longtime mainstay of the press as bureau chief for the Honolulu Advertiser before his retirement in 2002, met Nancy Cook Lauer in person for the first time. Nancy is an award-winning reporter for West Hawaii Today and operates her own online news aggregator, All Hawaii News.

Hugh wrote out his comments, “Why I love & hate blogging,” which I’ll scan and link to shortly.

In any case, the Hilo media symposium made for a most rewarding day, even if I did return from to Honolulu with a cold.