transparency

In the digital age, journalists are required to don different hats; from multimedia to social media, there is an increasing amount of tools available for telling the story and sharing it. Still, it may not be enough. Research shows that Americans’ distrust of the media is at record highs, and even though social media has made it easier and faster for information to spread, it can be difficult to sort out truth from the deluge of rumors, facts, and everything in between.

At the Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting over the weekend, Eric Newton spoke about how focusing on the story just isn’t enough anymore. Newton, who is the senior adviser to the president of the Knight Foundation, recounted how he asked 800 investigative reporters and editors if their work had significant social impact. Of course, all of them thought that it did. But asked if they thought the average American understood investigative journalism, only one hand went up. Most of them thought that it was not a journalist’s job to educate people about the importance of journalism. Read more

Author and journalist Susan Orlean (left) has written two nonfiction pieces that have been turned into films. She’ll discuss her new book, Rin Tin Tin, in Mediabistro’s first online Literary Festival & Workshops starting July 16. Other speakers include Rebecca Skloot, Jason Boog, and Jason Allen Ashlock. Register now.

How often have you, as a journalist, been asked to provide proof that you are, in fact, a journalist? At least one NPR.org contributor has been asked several times lately.

Alan Greenblatt explains in his story today that increasingly, government officials are asking him to prove his official journalist status before granting him interviews. Tides have turned and now it’s not just the reporter doing background research, but the sources are backgrounding the reporters.

The other day, I arranged to speak with Bob Wirch, a Democratic state senator in Wisconsin. The morning of our appointment, I received a call from one of his aides, instructing me to bring along a press badge or some other credential that included a picture and identified me as a reporter.

This rarely happens. In some 20 years of interviews, less than a handful of people have ever asked me to prove that I was the reporter I was claiming to be.

But, increasingly, elected officials and their staffs are checking journalistic bona fides, going online to read old stories and check out photos.

He points to other instances where this was the case, and notes the irony that the people politicians most need to be on guard against are not those allegedly pretending to be journalists — when someone says they’re a journalist you should be on your guard about what you say because the whole point is other people will hear about it — but from people who gain access and broadcast gaffes never intended to be shared.

His point, however, had me wondering… should you need to prove you’re a journalist? What type of proof is enough? What if you’re not working for an agency that hands out press badges? What’s stopping you from printing up your own press badge and business cards? It’s not like you apply for a license to be a journalist and can hand out your license number to verify with the state, as electricians or plumbers do. (I hope nobody gets any bright ideas.) And it’s not like medical professions where you need a certain degree and set of training to perform the job; you simply do not need a degree in journalism to prove you know how to ask who, what, when, where, why and how, and then write it up accurately. Plenty of good reporters didn’t learn those skills in the classroom. And plenty of bad reporters have a degree but still didn’t learn to apply those skills well.
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At times, it seems like an outright mystery what will make the Google gods happy. What keywords are really going to make your article jump to the top of a search page? How much does spelling matter? What elements make up the secret sauce?

That is all about to change. Google is making a concerted effort to pull back the curtain and has started releasing videos of its internal weekly search meeting, “Quality Launch Review.” The move, says the YouTube video description, is part of the company’s “continued effort to be more transparent about how search works.” Read more

UK’s The Guardian is expanding its open journalism experiment with a new live blog that, according to one editor, aims to “bring readers into the heart of our news editing operation.”

Newsdesk Live launched today and will not only incorporate the news organization’s newslist of daily stories but also a comment thread, writes national news editor Dan Roberts. This new feature allows “readers to discuss what’s going on directly rather than having to do so via Twitter,” Roberts explains. Read more