January 28, 2009

Rewriting history as it happens

I really disagree with this practice by the Wall Street Journal. Basically the WSJ is changing stories without noting when and how it has done so. Imagine that on January 20 I sent you a link to an article in which I really liked the opening line of "Rod Blagojevich re-declares his innocence on the Today Show." Well, if that is a WSJ article then when you check it out a few days later the story very well may not contain that line, may be significantly different in other ways (paragraphs completely removed, quotes missing, etc.), and may even have a different publishing date.

While I understand the importance of accuracy in a digital newspaper, I also think the the Portfolio author above is correct when he argues:
The WSJ is one of the key newspapers of record when it comes to this financial crisis, and increasingly it's being read online rather than on paper. In fact, much of the WSJ's online content never appears on paper at all, which means that the web is the only place to find it. It's therefore incumbent on the WSJ to preserve those web pages. If it doesn't, it's essentially erasing not only its own history, but also that of the financial crisis.
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  1. ChrisJanuary 28, 2009 1:48 PM

    Yeah, I saw this.

    I'm also not a fan of WSJ editorials. It's not that they're unfair to Obama/the left - it's expected that they'll disagree most of the time - but it seems like almost every editorial I read there gives me the feeling that the author is asserting a greater authority than he actually has when it comes to the information included.

    I can't think of any examples off-hand, but it would be something like "given that we know than any further stimulus beyond $450 billion will do more harm than good to the economy" without any hard evidence to back up the claim.

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