“4 Reasons why linking is good journalism…” by: Steve Buttry
Buttry covers why linking is good for journalism. The first reason being it is good journalism. He states is shows readers that you are honest by acknowledging that some work came before yours. Secondly, he states transparency is good journalism. The whole point of this is to “show your work.” Third off is attribution is good journalism. He states that in the digital age we live in attribution is incomplete without a link. Lastly, he states context is goof journalism. A link can provide more context or more of the story to people who want to know more. Buttry also states it’s good for business. He says having links in your articles can help search engines find your work, which will most likely increase your page’s views, and help interested people find your work.
In my opinion, I think as long as an author puts the article title and author (so it’s easy to search) in their article, it is ethical. But, linking makes it a lot more convenient for readers to access information used.
“5 Ways News Organizations respond to ‘unpublishing’ requests” by: Mallory Jean Tenors
This article covers the relationship between news organizations and unpublishing requests. First it’s important to understand why people may make such a request: sources believe that a story was unfair or inaccurate, those who have had charges dropped want the stories to be removed, source remorse, or writer remorse. Now, how does one handle such a request? Unpublish the story is one way. This tends to be the last resort. Another option is to write an addendum – this usually only happens when someone was charged of a major crime, then the charges dropped. Writing a follow up-story is another option. These are usually not favored as it takes time, but it does offer more context than an addendum does. You can also take out a source’s name and remove the story form Google’s cache. Lastly, they can run a correction of the story.
“A Note to our Readers” by: Rolling Stone (Will Dana)
This article is what Rolling Stones put out after finding out (and getting called out for) their story about the UVA rape was fake. I believe this is good for them to do, and I hope it sat on the front page of their website for at least a week for people to see when they clicked on their website, and was published in an article. Once a story is written there is a certain amount of damage that can’t get undone, but it is imperative for news sources to do the best they can to correct themselves and make the public aware.
“How journalists can do a better job of correcting errors on social media” by: Craig Silverman
Silverman writes how corrections have been a thing for hundreds of years.
-The Times puts all their corrections in one place.
– 63% of readers felt better when they saw corrections
– “The initial, mistaken information will be tweeted more than any subsequent correction” That fact just backs up what I said earlier, how once bad information is out, there will be damage that cannot be undone.
– he advises to promote your corrections to make up the most damage
The world we live in, that demands instant news, leaves a lot of room for incorrect information. This is incredibly dangerous as it is proven corrections do not always get seen as much as the original material. Because of this, readers need to be extremely aware to check their facts.
In class today we talked about whether it is good or not to use the audience as a journalist. I believe using your audience and the public for information and stories can be a good idea, as long as there is extensive fact checking involved and using words like “suggests” in your article.
I thought it was interesting when someone mentioned paywalls. In theory they sound like a good idea, but with how much recycled news is out in this age, people could easily find similar stories for free. For this reason, I do not think they would be good for business, therefore, not effective.