Aardvark

depends who else is on the staff

In what sense? Not sure I understand what effect it would have.

Personalisation is always better, generic bylines don't discourage critical thinking but they may not carry the authority of a person (or personality). Have a search and read of articles where "you are your brand"

Interesting perspective. Self-branding among journalists has often been described as a way for them to cope with the crisis with the institutions of which they are a part. There's even a "job security" angle in the way many people describe it. Yet, isn't assigning authority to individual authors dangerous in terms of taking things at face value based on the mere fact that they come from a "trusted brand?" There's a clear difference between "the newspaper as a brand" and "the journalist as a brand." But does either encourage the type of thorough assessment critical readers are expected to do?

I think you have pointed out the combination - there is a certain amount of authority defined by the media organisation (the one I work for is one of the highest rated in the country), and people will relate to that. More recently however there has been a move to increase that authority by having individuals bylined and credited so their individual 'brand' can be built and they can add their margin of authority to the overall brand. Think of havein g a doctor as your senior health reporter etc.

In a way, the current phase in social media development relates to this. Bylines have become a way to assess personal authority. And titles are, in a way, more important than they were before. Can't help but think about William James's PhD Octopus, though. I guess I was thinking about bylines from the other angle: as a way for readers to put content in context. If a piece about obesity was written by a well-known specialists who keeps providing the same perspective, the context of the piece is quite different from a piece written by someone who is in the middle of a research project looking at broader aspects of obesity research. Both pieces have very different effects. In a way, the "authority" of either writer may even be challenged, but critical thinking is enhanced. This enhancement seems more important than the "authority," in my mind. Of course, critical thinking is much more than giving weight to a specific person's idea. In fact, from what has been instilled in me, it's about assessing ideas, not people.

Many people would point to the Economist as a good example of strong, critical journalism (though with a certain ideological slant – which is endemic to all journalism) that rarely features bylines. I would say it's more about editors pushing their writers to chase truth and care about it than about the presence or absence of bylines.

Then, do truth-chasing writers encourage readers to apply critical thinking? When a piece lacks a byline, isn't there a false sense of "neutrality" or "objectivity," as positivists from the late 19th and early 20th C. would have it?

I guess I just doubt the significance of the byline as far as public trust of journalism is concerned. Editorials (in most Cdn papers, anyway) don't have bylines, and they're the least objective part of a newspaper. Next to the ads, anyway. I'd argue that the false sense of objectivity is fostered mainly by the "newspaper" (or "news program" on TV) aesthetic in general; Fox News fools (some) people into thinking it's reporting unbiased information by using the aesthetic signals people connect to "news" – reporters in suits, newsroom sets built to look like information centres. For example.

Right. And some byline formats, connected to glorified bios and well-massaged portraits, can be used as a way to simulate rapport or to give a sense of "trustworthiness." I was mostly thinking about source criticism. How can I assess the source and contextualize the information if the only thing I know about it is "CBC News" ("With files from The Canadian Press"). http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/11/12/immigration-kenney-guide.html As I was trying to take apart different dimensions of that piece, I noticed a voice problem. We hear the reporter's voice but we can't really tell whose voice it is. In this specific case, it sounds like the reporter collected reactions from Chow and Saint-Cyr, either through a press conference or through individual interviews. Either way, their comments sound more like gut reactions in a soudbite format than like parts of extensive conversations on the topic at hand. Of course, this piece is part of a broader dossier. In fact, looking back on this piece, I was prompted to look at other elements in this dossier and watched the two videos which are directly associated with it. One is the usual "off-voice plus carefully selected voxpop" format report, introduced by absolute statements by the newsanchor, oversimplifying the situation. Not sure the same reporter contributed very specifically to the written piece but the tone is similar. The other one has the "anchor and correspondent back and forth" followed by an interview with the key person identified as the origin of the "story." After watching this interview, it seems to me that the piece was written independently of the interview (before the interview took place, most likely) but that there were some contributions from people in the newsroom who were filing the other parts. So, with this three items in the same dossier (written piece in the "print journalism" format with a tv report and a tv interview), I get an image of a rather cohesive news agency which encourages a given angle (that the document on which the dossier is constructed comes from a very specific political perspective). To me, this honestly seems quite representative of groupthink. Almost a textbook case. What's funny is that the interviewee plays the "authority game." Part of his defense is that the document was written and "ratified by experts." In fact, he seems so well-prepared that he names several of these experts without any hesitation. And the newsanchor did mention the presence of experts before the interview. So the notion that having experts contribute is a relevant way to prevent political bias is one which gets a significant level of agreement on the two sides of the power/counterpower model.

So, to go back to the byline issue. It seems to me that generic bylines are associated with a sense of consensus within the newsroom, whether this consensus is real or imagined.