I won't believe this until I see it launched and operating unmolested by higher-ups for a good month or so, but barely a month after relaunching a cleaner, freer web site, LATimes.com is planning to launch a wiki to invite public comment and discourse on its editorials.
This will take the form of something called slyly - but vaguely - "wikitorials," according to today's op-ed message from editorial pages editor Andres Martinez:
• On Saturdays, you may have noticed, this page usually has a unifying theme — say, three editorials on aspects of the weather, or France.
• "Thinking Out Loud" is an experiment in making up our minds in public. Starting with two national issues, immigration and traffic, that are especially important to us in Southern California, we will devote space in all of our precincts — editorials, Op-Eds, the Sunday Opinion section (and watch out for a redesign and name change there!) and our website — to exploring aspects and alternate views of these subjects. We don't have a solution, and there may not be a good one. But that is no excuse for failing to come up with the best one. We hope this process will help us do it.
• We will allow board members to dissent from editorials they disagree with — though only once a year each. Judy Dugan has already used up her 2005 allotment with a strong rebuttal to our editorials endorsing the Republican Senate leadership's efforts to kill the filibuster
• Watch next week for the introduction of "wikitorials" — an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials.
• You may see more editor's notes like this one, where we step out from behind the curtain to update you on what we are doing, or comment on some of our past editorials.
For the unitiated, a wiki is a web page or site that can be edited by anyone equipped with a browser. One of the finer examples is WikiPedia, which I find myself consulting more and more often for authoritative fact nuggets that are made even more authoritative because they've been edited and fact-checked and re-edited by people completely obsessed with their subjects.
While I'm guessing the Times will have beaucoup security in place, this idea is about as wildly radical as if the Harry or Otis Chandler had flung open the press room doors back in the day and handed out chairs at the Linotypes - (along with sledgehammers and cutting torches) to anyone who wanted to take a whack at changing the paper.
Letting the public alter your editorials on the fly could be, at best, a very exciting experiment in building community, audience and public discourse or - at worst - a fascinatingly gory train wreck. This will be fun to watch.
Consider my attention riveted, not to mention spot-welded and duct-taped.
