In his new book, co-author Alfred Hermida (disclosure: he is a colleague at UBC, where he teaches journalism) examines the changing relationship between newspapers and the audience. He posts today on his Reportr.net site a summary of his recent presentation on the topic at a conference in Australia.

Hermida notes that the practice of opening content to public comments isn't new, but he notes the digital age's swift impact on the evolution of the relationship.

He surveyed more than a dozen newspapers and their attitudes about the involvement of the public in their content. He was looking for change.

Some took a "conventional" stance that kept some distance with the audience, some were "dialogical" open to audience participation, but most fell into the "ambivalent journalist" category: They recognized the value of audience involvement, but also expressed reservations about users as participants. Even in that regard, though, it amounts to some change in recent years.

Hermida observes that the public is involved at the beginning and end of the journalistic process, but that the crucial and central processes of deciding and presenting are the domains of the journalist. To date, he concludes, journalists have found ways to preserve that role.

Stephen J. Ward, the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at University of Wisconsin-Madison, has developed in the last decade an impressive body of work to articulate how journalism can perform its functions ethically.
(Full disclosure: He is a former colleague at both UBC, where I worked with and for him, and at The Canadian Press, where he worked with and, very briefly, for me.)
Ward, in a post for PBS' MediaShift, identifies the principles of ethics journalism education.
In summary, he suggests:
1. Starting from the students' world, not your own. No laying down of media laws.
2. Assisting with reflective engagement. Help them reach their own ethical views.
3. Insisting on critical, not just fashionable, thinking.
4. Accommodating the transitional. Ideas of old may not work today.
5. Being global in perspective.
He advocates dialectical, holistic, Socratic teaching. The tall order is a very good guide. 

It is far from the dozens of links I have on other pages, but I hope that the new Ethics page added to this blog will grow over time to be a strong resource. I've started to add links, but there are many more to come.
I'd like it crowdsourced, so please send along link suggestions.
Many of the posts here now will focus on some ethical issues involving journalism, partly representative of my new work as CBC's Ombudsman and also representative of my ongoing work at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of British Columbia.