First, the recent shoot. Whenever I’m working with a camera crew I haven’t met before, I try to make sure we’re on the same page before we get started. Many freelance crews handle a wide variety of video assignments, including PR shoots and commercials, and it may have been a while since they shot for a news outlet. So I usually say something like, “We’re doing a news story, so let’s not ask people to do things for the camera,” and that’s often reminder enough. But not always.

I’ve grown accustomed to having to repeat myself–the habit of directing people appears to be hard to break. I haven’t had too many knock-down-drag-out fights, though, most likely because freelance crews generally aim to please–and to get hired again. But I have gotten some push back. Eye rolling, on occasion. And, most recently, a snarky remark that I must be “one of those reporters.”

What kind would that be? Well, not the kind of reporter that journalist Tibor Krausz wrote about after covering last year’s flooding in Bangkok.

One recent morning a British television station’s local correspondent stood knee-deep in water speaking to the camera. A few yards away, several Thais stood, unmoving, on a small embankment of sandbags, gazing pensively at their feet. These locals, the foreign reporter explained, were faced with a daunting challenge: whether they should dare to cross to the other side of a small alley covered in water. Off camera, boys and girls splashed about, laughing and smiling, in the flood, while other locals, wearing plastic flip-flops or rubber wading boots, went about their business. Once the foreign journalist had said his piece on camera, he turned to the Thais standing on the small sandbags and thanked them for their cooperation.

When I read that, all I could think of was this infamous video from NBC’s Today Show.

True, neither of these examples rises–or rather, sinks–to the level of the Dateline NBC debacle almost 20 years ago, when the network admitted it had put incendiary devices in Ford trucks to make sure they would catch fire in a crash test, “a bad idea from start to finish.” Also, entirely unethical.

The NPPA Code of Ethics is pretty clear about staging. It’s not OK. “While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events,” the code reads. Reporter and TV producer Wolfgang Achter is clear about this, too. He told the Ryerson Review that staging happens because of sloppiness or laziness.

Sloppiness meaning they missed something because they weren’t paying attention, and laziness because they weren’t willing to spend the time to find something occurring naturally.

I’m well aware that others have their own definition of staging and don’t believe it’s always wrong. Trisha Doyle, who has worked for ABC and CBS, told the Review there’s nothing wrong with getting the video you need for editing, even if it doesn’t happen spontaneously.

Is having somebody walk down a hall staging? I don’t know. I imagine if the person walks down a hall on a daily basis, then it’s kind of a way to help the editing process…I think audiences are pretty sophisticated and know when we have somebody walk down the hallway, that’s just an editing tool that is used.

Maybe. But our audiences also know that staged footage of people walking down hallways is not real or true. And isn’t that what journalism is supposed to be about? We’re not in the video business, we’re in the news business. And yes, there is a difference, or there ought to be. As Achter puts it, “Anybody who stages always has excuses, okay? And they’re all bullshit.”

Fire away.

Photographer Mike Nederbrock had a decent shot using a doubler but he wasn’t in a position to go live. Lamb wanted to get some video online in a hurry but all he had was an iPhone. Then Nederbrock mentioned the pair of binoculars he keeps in his car. Putting the binoculars in front of the phone’s camera lens gave Lamb a useable shot (click link for video).

We were waiting outside for about an hour before those divers went in.  I knew I wanted to get the shot of the diver going in, so I waited until it looked like they were ready to go, then hit the record button.  After it was finished, I immediately posted the video to Facebook and Twitter.

The station never aired the iPhone video because Lamb and Nederbrock were able to get their camera footage back in time for the next newscast.

Chief photographer Kevin Mahan of KSEE in Fresno says he recently faced a similar situation and found a different but equally effective solution.

I have a Panasonic AG-HPX370 with the LCD side monitor. I was out on breaking news, no live truck, zoomed in with my P2 shot some video and then on playback shot :25 seconds with my iphone, e-mailed it back, and we had fresh video for our 4pm.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s that quick thinking can break down what appear to be insurmountable barriers to getting the job done. Your smartphone can do even more than you might think. Oh, and one more thing: it’s always a good idea to have binoculars in your go-bag.

CBS News recently gave Marsalis the title of cultural correspondent and said he’ll “provide insight into a broad range of cultural and educational developments.” As a Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter, Marsalis certainly knows music. But his portfolio is so broad – potentially ranging from painting to preschool – that the decision to hire him could not have been based solely on his expertise. He is, however, a known quantity, not just to music lovers but to the network. Marsalis recorded the trumpet fanfare that’s been used for years as the opening theme on “CBS Sunday Morning.” And, oh yes, he’s already been on the air, as the subject of not one but two glowing profiles on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

Smart, on the other hand, is being paid specifically because of her personal experience as a kidnap victim. Her role as a contributor to ABC News programs is “helping viewers understand missing-persons stories from the perspective of knowing what a family experiences when a loved one goes missing,” according to network spokeswoman Julie Townsend. Smart’s portfolio is so narrow it’s not clear why the network would bother to sign her. She’s been on the air only a few times since joining ABC last July. But the deal gives ABC exclusive access to Smart, a privilege the network apparently decided was worth paying for.

And then there’s Clinton, hired by NBC News to cover stories for its “Making a Difference” franchise, those feel-good pieces that often end the nightly newscast, and to contribute to the network’s new prime-time magazine show, “Rock Center with Brian Williams.” She’s not the only “first daughter” to be drawing a paycheck from NBC; Jenna Bush Hager is a “Today” show correspondent, brought on board two years ago straight from her job as an elementary school teacher.

Clinton didn’t exactly go looking for the job, either. NBC contacted her after hearing that she was “kicking around what she wanted to do next,” said news division President Steve Capus. If that wasn’t enough to stick in the craw of young TV journalists paying their dues in tiny markets like Abilene or Elmira, there was also this comment from Capus: “Given her vast experiences, it’s as though Chelsea has been preparing for this opportunity her entire life.” Really?

Clinton has worked for a consulting firm and her father’s foundation and served on corporate boards, but she never wanted anything to do with the news media until now. She’s been so dead set against giving interviews that in 2007 she wouldn’t even answer a question from Scholastic News. “I don’t talk to the press,” she told the 9-year-old reporter, “and that applies to you, unfortunately – even though I think you’re cute.”

Let’s be honest. Clinton, Smart and Marsalis are on the air because they’re celebrities, and no one should blame them for taking advantage of their fame. The networks, on the other hand, have plenty to answer for.

You could argue that ABC and CBS tempered the impact of their celebrity hires on their news divisions’ credibility by restricting them to morning shows, which some would say aren’t serious news programs anyway. But “Sunday Morning” is a jewel in the CBS News crown, and every non-journalist assigned to the program takes up airtime that the network’s reporters yearn for.

Marsalis’ deal isn’t unique. CBS also gave the title of correspondent to Mo Rocca, a humorist who was a fake news reporter on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” ABC long ago decided that journalism wasn’t a prerequisite for some of its most prestigious positions by hiring political insiders Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. The fact that they’ve both become good journalists doesn’t mean they were ready for the job when they debuted.

It’s debatable whether the chops once required of network TV reporters are as necessary now because producers do so much of the work. Celebrity hires won’t be the only ones on staff whose stories are entirely planned and mostly written by someone behind the scenes. Just because it happens, however, doesn’t make it right.

I’m not suggesting that the practice of journalism should be restricted to those who major in it in college. But handing out network reporting jobs to people who have never covered a story but who happen to be famous is like starting someone at third base who’s never played baseball but who happens to have inherited season tickets.

If the only credential you need to jump straight to a network news reporting job is that most Americans already know your name, the message is clear. Entertainment values haven’t just influenced TV journalism, they’ve now trumped it.

Originally published by American Journalism Review, Spring 2012

I beg to differ. Mike Wallace may have set the standard for abrasive, irreverent interviews but that wasn’t his only legacy to broadcast journalism. Take the ambush interview, for which Wallace became justifiably famous. He and 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt eventually decided that chasing people who didn’t want to talk generated “more heat than light. We weren’t getting a lot of information from those so-called ambushes. So we quit,” Wallace told Howard Kurtz on CNN. “I have no doubt that what we started has become a plague.”

So, lesson one. Ambush interviews don’t really work. They’re great theater, not great journalism. And the guy who practically invented the genre gave it up. Imitators should too.

Wallace was at his best in one-on-one sit-down interviews, where he had a knack for asking the questions the audience wanted answered and getting revealing answers. It looked easy. It wasn’t. As Wallace told NPR’s Morning Edition a few years ago:

One of the most persuasive ways to get somebody that you’re interviewing to open up is to write down maybe 50 questions on a notepad. And when you sit down with an interviewee under those circumstances, you become co-conspirators – they suddenly realize, ‘He knows a lot about me, so I’m going to help him draw a round picture of me.’

Lesson two: The best interviews come from diligent preparation and planning. Mike Wallace never just showed up to talk to someone. He came prepared. And he wasn’t afraid to ask questions that made his subject uncomfortable.

But Wallace wasn’t one of those interviewers who talked more than his subjects, trying to show just how smart he was. He listened closely and asked pointed follow-ups.

Lesson three: Short questions can be the most productive–questions like “Why?” or “How?”  And listening in one of the most critical skills any interviewer must possess.

Sure, Mike Wallace spawned lots of imitators in local news who tried to take on his hard-nosed persona and chase down the “bad guys.” But it would be a shame if his legacy was all about style and not substance.

One of this year’s top winners, Wayne Dolcefino of KTRK, the ABC station in Houston, also won a medal the first year the prize was awarded in 1994.  Judges described his investigation into local law-enforcement corruption as a “textbook IRE investigation done in a nontraditional style.”

Dolcefino engages the viewer with his irreverent style and high production values, but beneath the entertainment is a rock-solid, water-tight, well-documented investigation. The station made extensive use of FOIA and fought back hard when denied.

Dolcefino’s style isn’t for everyone–thudding music, layered video, undercover camera interviews. But as the IRE judges note, his reporting is what nails the stories, and his stories get results. One target of Dolcefino’s corruption investigation was arrested by the FBI in January. Here’s part one of his award-winning investigation.

One strategy Dolcefino uses that I’d like to single out for applause is getting the target of the investigation on camera and on the air in the first story. Many reporters would have saved that interview for a later piece and teased it to death in the meantime. But that could have raised questions about fairness. Confronting the constable right from the start, Dolcefino is able to use his answers to build the case against him.

The other IRE Medal winner, public TV station KQED in San Francisco, shared the award with California Watch, a nonprofit founded by the Center for Investigative Reporting. In a series of reports entitled “On Shaky Ground,” they found that thousands of schools statewide may not be earthquake-safe.

Reporters dug through more than 30,000 pages of documents, created online maps and databases and visited schools throughout the state to get the story. It took 19 months, but the reporters found California officials abrogated their oversight duties and allowed more than 42,000 children to attend schools with serious safety issues.

Here’s the special report that aired on public TV stations across California.

This report also got results.  As the IRE judges write, “State lawmakers ordered audits and investigations, and new state standards were created to allow schools to more easily tap into a fund to repair seismic hazards.” It’s worth pointing out that reporter Anna Werner is also a multiple IRE award winner, who has two duPonts, two Peabodies and a George Polk Award to her credit as well. She’s now a correspondent for CBS News, based in Dallas.

One more winner of note: the indefatigable Lee Zurik, now at WVUE in New Orleans, who won an IRE award for an investigation into government fraud and corruption that also led to criminal charges. Here’s just one of his award-winning stories:

As always, the work recognized by IRE is impressive and inspiring and there’s a lesson in that. It doesn’t take a network news budget to do great TV journalism. Sure, it’s not cheap and it’s time consuming to produce stories like this. But what’s most important is the kind of dedication and persistence this year’s winners showed in sinking their teeth into meaty local stories and refusing to let go. Congratulations to all.

In the first case, Las Vegas police have agreed to pay $100,000 to a freelance videographer who said he was beaten by an officer last year while shooting video of an investigation across the street from his house. Mitchell Crooks was standing in his own driveway but was arrested for trespassing, battery against an officer and resisting arrest.

The charges against Crooks were dropped and the officer involved was fired last December. Just a year after the incident, Crooks won his counter suit.

The second case took much longer to play out. Simon Glik claimed he was wrongly arrested in 2007 for using his cellphone to record Boston police as they arrested a man in a public park. The city of Boston has agreed to pay him $170,000 for violating his civil rights.

Another case will be in the works soon. A Florida man arrested in January for recording police with his smartphone plans to sue for $200,000 now that the charges against him have been dropped. Steve Horrigan’s attorney said penalizing the city would be a necessary step forward, but not sufficient. “I think training and educating police in First and Fourth amendment rights is an important part of it,” Andrea Mogensen  said. “Hopefully, that will change the way law enforcement does its work.”

Perhaps, but citizens’ rights already are part of the curriculum in every police academy, says John Timoney, former police chief in Miami and Philadelphia. And so far, there’s no indication that the risk of civil rights lawsuits has had any effect on the behavior of police. The latest case comes from Santa Cruz, California, where a longtime photojournalist faces trial for conspiracy and trespassing for covering an “Occupy” demonstration. Journalism groups have protested the arrest of Bradley Stuart Allen, suggesting he’s being singled out because he represents a “disfavored” news organization, the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center.

The settlements in Las Vegas and Boston aren’t chump change, so they may cause police in those cities to sit up and take notice. But will any other police departments pay attention and be deterred from arresting people who lawfully photograph and record them?

The papers did not publish the names of the signers because, they said, the employees had no direct connection to political reporting. Even so, what were they thinking?

A number of the journalists told their editors that they did not consider signing the petition a political act. They equated it to casting a ballot in an election. But we do not make that distinction.

There is, in fact, a distinction to be made. Voting is still done by secret ballot. Petitions become part of an online, searchable public file, which is how the Gannett papers happened to discover that 29 circuit court judges in Wisconsin also signed the petitions. That story that made quite a splash in the chain’s papers statewide, only to be followed by Gannett’s admission that its own employees had also signed.

But Gannett isn’t the only news organization involved. Morning TV anchor Rob Starbuck of CBS affiliate WISC also signed, along with another station employee who doesn’t work in the newsroom. As a result, news director Colin Benedict ”directed that [Starbuck] not participate in any interviews related to the recall elections.”

At the Wisconsin State Journal, owned by Lee Enterprises, six employees were found to have signed. Only one is involved in news coverage, chief photographer Steve Apps. The paper apologized for their “lapse in judgment,” and said disciplinary action is being considered based on the company’s ethics policy, part of which states:

Participation in public affairs or events that may leave the impression that news judgment is being influenced by activism is prohibited.

What’s at stake? How about the credibility of the news organization? Or is that too old-school? Columnist Jack Shafer thinks so. In a column entitled “Free the Gannett 25,” Shafer writes:

In a just and utopian world, news organizations would permit modest political activism by journalists – campaign contributions, placards on their lawns, bumper stickers on their cars, attendance at rallies, even the signing of recall petitions, etc. – as long as the journalists were willing to declare it.

Journalists are human beings who hold political views and act on them, Shafer says. On that point, we agree. I’ve never subscribed to the Len Downie approach of refusing to vote at all in order to keep an open mind. But there’s a difference between journalists holding views privately as individuals, and announcing them publicly via a yard sign or a signature on a petition.

Sure, you can argue, as some have, that there’s no harm done as long as no one who signed had anything to do with covering politics. But most readers and viewers probably don’t make that fine a distinction. For many, this whole episode just confirms what they already think about the news media,  as reflected in this comment on a Wisconsin Gannett paper’s website:

We all know where the liberals are, it’s no big surprise. Just read how the news is written, notice the slant toward the left? It’s not rocket science.

Yes, the public expression of political views is an American right. But it was a right I put on hold when I worked in a newsroom, and willingly so, in an effort to safeguard the public trust. As the Wisconsin editors’ statement notes: “Journalists must have an intuitive understanding of these duties to their readers and to their industry, that override their personal interests.”

So what were all these journalists thinking when the signed the petitions? Apparently, they weren’t.

When I graduated from Michigan State University in 1990 with a bachelor’s in newspaper journalism, I had a vague sense that I might like to dabble in broadcasting as well. I’d done a radio internship and really liked it. I was not overly excited about newspapers. The message from professors, career counselors and recruiters was uniform: Pick one thing and do that one thing really well.

Call me crazy, I opted for television news after graduation, starting with a job at a television station in my native Belize.

After graduate school, I began what I call my Rust Belt tour of news producing jobs: A typical journey(wo)man, I started small as an 11 p.m. newscast producer and made my way to increasingly larger markets. By 1998, I was at Detroit’s WDIV-TV in special projects.

Enter the web

When I arrived at WDIV-TV, there was a “web guy” who did everything from upload news stories to the website to handling IT problems in the newsroom. By the time I left in 2001, there was an Internet Broadcasting crew of four journalists massaging our broadcast stories and mining additional content for the online audience.

As the consumer producer, I quickly cottoned to the fact that there was endless room online to provide resources for our viewers, information we didn’t have time to provide on the air. Soon, no consumer story tag was without the line, “For more information on how you can file a complaint about (fill in the egregious consumer exploiter here), go to Click on Detroit dot com,” or similar direction language.

At that point, I never dreamed I’d become something called a digital or online journalist.

Crossing over

When I joined Patch.com in 2010 (from Executive Producer at KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo.), I was first focused on hiring a team of 12 full-time journalists. Soon after, I immersed myself in the Patch content management system. Transitioning turned out to be more about using tools I already knew something about in new ways.

So, how does a television news producer become a digital journalist?

1. Study the industry. I was already dabbling in the web and social media at KOMU-TV. As a lifelong learner, I read about how the news business was changing and evolving. I stepped up my self-education when I knew I was going to Patch. Over my 20 or so months as a regional editor I learned more about SEO, tagging, social media, widgets, and new story forms than I could ever have imagined. It’s an exciting world: catch the fever, I say.

2. Polish basic skills and build on strengths. I’ve always been a strong proponent for bedrock basics. What I mean is, the ability to use solid fundamentals and adapt to different media platforms in ways that are appropriate, compelling and informative. For example, I was able to adapt my writing and copy editing skills in order to teach my team and support their individual transitions to the virtual life.

3. Leadership lessons. I drew on my own strengths and faced up to my weaknesses as I built my team and launched 12 websites in metro St. Louis. Managing a team of journalists in a newsroom is one thing; I worked from home (or a coffee shop) and so did my team members. I had to figure out early how to keep us all connected and productive. Again, fundamentals served me well: treat people with respect; listen; admit when you don’t know the answer and promise to find it; patience goes a long way; delegate where appropriate. And a very important lesson: find out what motivates your staff members and help them reach their goals.

4. What do we have in common? For television and radio news folks who want to transition to the dot.com world, there is already a solid foundation in terms of how you work. Broadcasters work with technology (beyond the PC or laptop); so do digital journalists. Broadcasters must deliver news throughout the day, with multiple deadlines; so do digital journalists. My career as a producer was all about local news; the Patch mission is to deliver news and information to local communities.

5. Embrace engagement. This may be the big one. The web allows for an unprecedented level of connectivity between journalists and the communities in which they do their work. People expect more from the digital realm: they want to create a unique experience as they interact with content; they want multimedia; they want to react; they demand a venue for adding their own content and stories.

Evolving titles

Back in college I was a “newspaper major.” Later, I was a “TV news producer.” Today when asked about my profession I say this: I am a journalist. I tell stories using the traditional and evolving tools and techniques at my disposal.

Like many other journalists, I’ve found plenty to learn in each new job over the nearly two decades of my career. When I get the itch to broaden my skill set or find a new challenge, I seek ways to do so: whether in a current position or a new gig. That spirit led me to take a leap into the online realm and I am so glad I did. What I learned about leading and doing journalism in the digital space has allowed me to take another step: going to work for myself–focusing on three core areas: journalism, consulting and teaching/training.

We can’t all be experts in everything, but in the digital realm the possibilities for storytelling and information delivery are virtually endless.

Questions? Comments? Connect! You can find Holly Edgell on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+, read her blog or email me@hollyedgell.com. And be sure to check out Holly’s tips for TV news on backtiming and staying positive.

After years of losing both audience and revenue, local stations have some reasons to celebrate. Viewership for both morning and late newscasts on network affiliates was up, on average, for the first time in five years. Audience growth was astronomical at 4:30 a.m. as the number of stations airing news that early doubled for the second year in a row. Quite a few stations pushed their start times even earlier, to 4 a.m., and said it’s paying off.

[WXIN-Indianapolis] News director Lee Rosenthal…credits the early start with improving ratings for the rest of the station’s newscasts, including doubling viewership for the 4:30 a.m. half-hour compared to the year before. “We’re producing more news and that’s added to our credibility and exposure,” he said. “The earlier we’ve gone on, the more we’ve gained off of it.”

A number of stations even had success adding news at 4 p.m. to replace Oprah. And independent stations gained viewers in every time slot except midday.

Digital audience

Local TV stations aren’t just growing audience for their on-air offerings but also for their online and social media products. In most of the biggest markets in the country, newspaper websites still outdraw local television sites. Greensboro, N.C., (DMA #46) is a rare exception where all three TV sites do better than the local paper. But change could be on the way.

In Albuquerque, N.M., where the local paper put up a paywall in 2001, KOAT now reaches twice as many adults online as the newspaper. Hofstra University’s Bob Papper, who surveys stations annually for RTDNA, says that’s a sign of things to come.

Newspaper paywalls are going to make that increasingly common, and TV stations are poised to be the biggest beneficiaries of those paywalls.

Financial outlook

Local TV makes the vast majority of its money from broadcast advertising, and in 2011, stations made less. The decline was predictable for a non-election year and the forecast for 2012 is substantially brighter, with spending on both candidate and issue ads expected to set a new record.

Other sources of revenue for local stations are growing year after year: retransmission fees and online and mobile advertising. According to one study, television stations enjoyed the highest growth rate in online advertising of any medium. All of these revenue sources are still relatively small, however.

Worrisome signs

So is everything coming up roses for local TV? Not entirely. The one-time “newscast of record” in the early evening keeps losing viewers, on average, although the rate of decline has slowed. Across the board, the largest audience gains were in time slots with the smallest viewership. And a troubling trend appears to be continuing: share is outperforming ratings in early evening and late time slots. In other words, stations are drawing a larger share of a smaller audience, because fewer people are watching television at all when the news is on.

The long-term outlook isn’t entirely upbeat, either. As the economy improves, overall viewership could decline. “People in recessionary times watch more television,” said Jerry Gumbert, chief executive of the consulting firm AR&D. “We’ve seen that over 40 years.”

[Full disclosure: I'm the lead author of the local TV chapter in the 2012 State of the News Media Report.]

But two things happened this week that made me think that we can’t do enough to remind journalists that accuracy has never been more challenging to ensure, and never more important.

First, a student journalist at my school reported a story inaccurately. Not so shocking, you say — after all it was a student , right?

Unfortunately, it was a story on a topic that was of interest to a much more widely read publication than our campus newspaper. That more widely read publication picked up the story and re-posted it online. Now, the inaccurate story has gone from a site with a few thousand readers to one with hundreds of thousands of readers.

Who’s at fault? The student? The faculty? The student newspaper editor? The editor of the big-time publication that picked up the story? Maybe all of the above?

What’s clear is that the systems to ensure accuracy broke down in this case, all along the line.

The second event was more high profile and has been documented by a former boss of mine, Forrest Carr. Carr is the news director at KGUN-TV in Tuscon, Ariz. His station was ground zero for an incident that garnered national attention last week.

On Thursday, a school shooting in Willcox was widely misreported in local, state and national media. Here is a sample of the various headlines appearing simultaneously on various Tucson, Phoenix, and national radio, TV and newspaper websites around 5:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon, which was more than two hours after the shooting:

1. “Willcox schools on lockdown following shooting”
2. “1 student shot, wounded at Willcox High”
3. “Willcox schools locked down after shooting… no one was injured”
4. “1 student shot, wounded at Arizona high school”
5. “Willcox lockdown ends; no student was shot, says superintendent”

And then there is this headline, from a national and well respected news organization’s website. I’m not totally clear on just when it first appeared but it was still live on the site’s national news page as of 12:30 p.m. Mountain time Friday afternoon, long past the point where most other media had changed their stories to show that although one student had been injured, no one had been shot:

6. “Ariz. student hit by bullet intended for man at ballgame”

So — Six headlines. Each mutually conflicting. Only one can be right. Which one, and how do you know?

Carr goes on to take readers behind the scenes in a TV newsroom, describing the chaos that occurs in a major breaking news story, but making no excuses for organizations that get it wrong. He describes what his station does to prevent errors, but notes that no newsroom is infallible.

However, his point about the inaccurate headlines is one that our text, Advancing the Story, has tried to impress upon student journalists since 2008. Just because the Web allows you to “take down” errors soon after they’re published, that doesn’t absolve a news organization of responsibility for disseminating inaccuracies.

The best news organizations have policies in place on how to correct errors that are published online. The San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com have one of the most highly regarded. ESPN has a policy that tries to promote transparency as well.

What about the news outlet you work for?

Of course, job one is to get it right in the first place. If you don’t, you have to do what you can to make it right for the audience by admitting the error and making an overt correction.

Sourced from: Advancing the Story