Workshop on ethical aggregation

I will be leading a workshop this afternoon on ethical aggregation at the conference of the American Copy Editors Society.

I will draw heavily on points from my earlier blog posts on aggregation and curation. I also commend to your attention Maria Popova’s Curator’s Code.

Here’s the definition I will use:

Aggregation = republication of information originally gathered by someone else.

— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) April 5, 2013

I also mentioned this tweet from Andy Carvin and the subsequent Storify account of how he found his answers and his book Distant Witness (which I haven’t read yet, but a participant said the episode is discussed in the book).

They ID it as Israeli. Maybe, maybe not. Need help to ID it. Anyone? RT @jan15egy: it’s posted on Al Manara Press FB http://goo.gl/LMfeU

— Andy Carvin (@acarvin) March 12, 2011

 

Here are my slides for the workshop:

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Journalists need to use links to show our work

I am participating today in the National Summit to Fight Plagiarism and Fabrication. For the past few months I have been working with an outstanding group of colleagues on an ebook, Telling the Truth and Nothing But, intended to help journalists and newsrooms prevent plagiarism and fabrication.

Before I share my contribution from the book, I must applaud three people in particular who drove this process:

• Craig Silverman, whose Summer of Sin blog post set this summit in motion, and who contributed to the work of the book.
• Teresa Schmedding, American Copy Editors Society president, who answered Craig’s call for journalism organizations to take this issue on and invited leaders of other organizations to join ACES in the project.
• William Connolly, retired New York Times copy editor, who led the project.

I was pleased to represent the Online News Association and Digital First Media in the project and applaud the others who contributed (who are listed at the back of the book).

The project is summed up well in this passage (which I didn’t write, but wish I had; would the author please identify himself or herself?):

Our hope is that  it’s sufficiently provocative and practical to prompt in every newsroom in every medium a habit of asking a question that’s been grunted by generations of grizzled editors: “Says who?”

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