Contact information on a website is a matter of journalism ethics

Contact information on a news site is certainly a matter of customer service. I’d argue that it’s also an essential form of community engagement. But what about journalism ethics? Is easy access to journalists a matter of ethics? I think so.

Whatever factors you think should motivate contact information, I hope you’ll agree with me that many news sites make it difficult to contact them. And nearly all should do a better job.

Before I make some recommendations and examine some news sites and report on how easy it is to find out how to contact someone in the newsroom, I’ll make the case that accessibility is a matter of ethics:

Correcting errors is one of the basics of journalism ethics, mentioned in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, Poynter’s Guiding Principles for the Journalist and Radio Television Digital News Association Code of Ethics. We’ll correct more errors if we learn about more of our errors. And if we’re easy to reach, we’re going to be more likely to learn about our errors.

The New York Times study of the Jayson Blair case revealed that people who read his fabricated stories didn’t bother to contact the Times because they didn’t think anyone at the Times would care. As much as I believe in corrections and accuracy, I don’t bother to request corrections about every error published about news I’m involved in (and my most recent request was ignored anyway). I think news organizations need to invite access and requests for corrections, or they won’t become aware of many of their mistakes.

I think if you tried to reach many news organizations through their websites today, you might come to the same conclusion: that no one there cares. Readers and viewers shouldn’t have to work to call our errors to our attention.

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Brian Charles joins LSU Student Media as adviser

Brian Charles

I am pleased to announce that Brian Charles will be joining me at LSU later this month as a Student Media adviser.

I think I first met Brian in 2013, when I was visiting the Pasadena Star-News for the opening of its “News Lounge,” a place in downtown Pasadena where the public would be welcome to come for events, using computers, accessing archives, etc. I was in charge of community engagement for Digital First Media, the parent company of the Star-News, and was chatting with an editor during the event, which attracted local dignitaries and residents. The editor pointed out that Brian was chatting amiably with the police chief and a police captain. What was remarkable, he said, was that Brian had been providing relentless coverage of various police department issues in the wake of an officer’s shooting of an unarmed man (this was a year-plus before Ferguson). I already was aware of his police coverage, but the scene across the room told me a lot about Brian: Not only is he an outstanding journalist, but he earns respect, even in difficult and potentially contentious situations.

I ran the DFM editorial awards program and a few weeks later, I got to hear judges discuss and praise Brian’s work when they chose him as our Journalist of the Year for mid-sized daily newsrooms.

After excelling for DFM in California, he joined the New Haven Register, where he developed a poverty beat. I spent several weeks in New Haven last year during Project Unbolt, and had several discussions with Brian about his work and more broadly about journalism and the changes that were happening. My admiration for him grew with each conversation.

I was pleased when he applied to be an adviser. On his visit to campus last week for an interview, I saw another conversation that said a lot about Brian and why I think he’s a good fit for this job. I had him scheduled to meet with student leaders of our various media operations from 2 to 3 p.m. Then he had a free hour to check email, call home or catch his breath during a long day of interviews. I broke into the student discussion at 3, saying they didn’t have to cut it off right then, but this was Brian’s free hour if he wanted. The discussion was still going on when the people scheduled for 4 p.m. arrived, and they just joined the discussion. At 5, I finally cut the discussion off, with some of the students who had arrived at 2 still discussing issues with Brian.

I caught only slices of the discussion, but from what I heard (and from the writing on the whiteboard in the conference room), I could tell that they were discussing the important challenges facing our Student Media operation. While most response to Brian’s interview last week was strongly positive, the critical remarks I received indicated he was already starting the difficult conversations we need to have to lead the students through the changes that lie ahead. I’ve long argued that journalists and media leaders need to embrace discomfort to innovate successfully.

Beyond his range of journalism skills, data analysis experience and digital skills, I’m glad to be adding Brian’s conversational skills. I want a teacher who will help me lead our students in some important and difficult conversations about changes we need to make in student media to pursue a prosperous future.

I’ve admired Brian’s work as a journalist since before I met him. I enjoyed working with him as a colleague in DFM newsrooms. I look forward to working together with him as we lead LSU Student Media.

Other Student Media leadership notes

Tad Odell, an instructor in the Manship School of Mass Communication and head of our journalism area, has agreed to take on a part-time role advising student media as well. I’ve enjoyed working with Tad the past year as we’ve been colleagues on the Manship faculty. He was one of the colleagues who pitched in earlier this year when chemotherapy interfered with my teaching duties, for which I’m deeply grateful. I look forward to working more closely with Tad.

We hope to fill out our Student Media staff soon by hiring someone to lead our student advertising team. If you are (or know) an outstanding advertising professional with strong leadership skills, please check our listing for the position and get in touch with me right away.

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Updated tips for Facebook engagement by newsrooms

This week I saw a post from a Digital First Media newsroom in my Facebook news feed, and was surprised to see it there. I “liked” dozens of DFM newsrooms during my time there, but don’t particularly care to follow their news that much now.

So I decided to unlike the page. And, while I was at it, I went into the list of pages I liked and decided to unlike a bunch more — at least two dozen, maybe three (it was probably an oversight that I didn’t like all 75 DFM dailies and some weeklies). And most of them, I had no idea I was even following because, well, they never showed up in my news feed. In fact, I’m not sure how that one showed up the other day because I hadn’t seen it in ages. I only recognized two or three of the ones I dropped as occasionally showing up in my feed.*

That illustrates a problem for news brands. I know every one of those newsrooms I unfollowed has staff members faithfully posting all of their stories, or several stories they think have the most appeal, to their Facebook pages daily. And most of their “fans” never see most of their posts.

The most recent estimate I’ve seen of the percentage of fans seeing a typical post was 16 percent, and that was in 2012, and the figure has certainly dropped as Facebook has made several algorithm tweaks, all designed to make it harder for non-paying brands to get their posts seen.

Maybe the number is something like 10 percent these days, but it will frequently be many of the same people, and probably 70 to 80 percent of your fans almost never see a post. They’re surprised when you show up in their news feed, as I was when my former colleagues’ post showed up this week.

But Facebook traffic is growing in importance for news sites. Parse.ly reported last August that Facebook drives 70 million page views a month to news publishers, second only to Google and more than twice as much as Twitter.

In addition, Parse.ly reported this month that stories with a higher Facebook referral rate have a longer shelf life, attracting traffic over more days than stories that don’t get strong engagement. Higher Twitter referral rates also help shelf life, but not as long as on Facebook.

So Facebook is an important source of news-site traffic, but engagement on Facebook is more complicated than simply posting links there (since most people don’t see them).

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Slides and links for SPJ webinar on enterprise stories

I led a webinar today on digital approaches to enterprise stories. It mentioned these links as advice and examples:

Questions to help newsrooms unbolt enterprise reporting from the ‘Sunday story’

Five Satins: A ‘Sunday’ story published digitally the Monday before

‘In the Still of the Night’: Five Satins recorded biggest hit in New Haven church basement

Sunshine Week project showed digital-first enterprise approach

Sunshine Week project

Denver Post’s Chasing the Beast

Denver Post’s The Fire Line

Nola.com’s then-and-now Hurricane Katrina photos

ProPublica Patient Harm Facebook group

Gettysburg 150 app

Here are my slides from the webinar:

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A manual for unbolting your newsroom from print culture and processes

From the outset of Project Unbolt, a key goal was to produce a manual for other newsrooms to follow.

As I prepare to leave Digital First Media (tomorrow will be my last day), here is that manual, my recommendations for newsrooms to unbolt from the processes and culture of print. Our work on the project has not been as extensive as I had hoped, but I think we have produced a valid plan for accelerating the digital transformation of newsrooms. I hope my colleagues will continue the work and continue blogging about it.

Thanks to the editors and staffs of the four pilot newsrooms of Project Unbolt: the New Haven Register, Berkshire Eagle, News-Herald and El Paso Times. I applaud their willingness to change and experiment during a time of upheaval in our company and the industry.

Most of the manual is in earlier blog posts published here and elsewhere during the project. This post will summarize the important steps you need to take to transform your newsroom, with links to posts that elaborate on each of those points (some links appearing more than once because they relate to multiple points):

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Action, not the org chart, drives transformation

Project Unbolt is not about reorganizing your newsroom.

You may reorganize pieces or all of your newsroom in doing the work of Project Unbolt, but that is not the goal. We want to change how your newsroom works, not the org chart. Action changes newsrooms, not structure.

I’m not saying that structure is unimportant. But changes in structure should support your changes in what you do. They won’t drive the changes in how you work. I’ve been through too many newsroom reorganizations that accomplished nothing and I’ve worked for too many bosses (at the editor level and the CEO/publisher level) who got bogged down in pursuing organizational change without actually accomplishing change.

Some examples of how organizational change works effectively:

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Tom Cleary explains DFM’s Connecticut breaking news team

Continuing my series of posts on live coverage, Breaking News Editor Tom Cleary explains how Digital First Media’s Connecticut breaking news team works. Newsrooms and clusters of newsrooms pursuing Project Unbolt need to cover breaking news live and should consider forming a breaking news team.  

Tom Cleary, photo linked from Connecticut Newsroom blog

In early February, just as Project Unbolt was getting underway at the New Haven Register, the DFM Connecticut breaking news and digital staff was reorganized. The breaking news team was expanded and a team of web producers was created, splitting the duties that were once carried out by one team. The reorganization was done to improve breaking news reporting and web production and also to allow town reporters to focus more on enterprise reporting.

The breaking news reporting team includes an editor, assistant editor and five reporters (three in New Haven, one in Torrington and one in Middletown). The team is tasked with covering statewide and local breaking news, freeing up town reporters that had mainly been handling those stories to work on day-to-day stories and enterprise pieces.

Here are a few examples of stories the breaking news team has covered, or helped with the coverage of, since it was revamped:

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Newsrooms need to provide live coverage routinely

Newsrooms need to provide live coverage of most events and breaking news stories in their communities.

Live coverage will change your newsroom’s culture and workflow quicker and more profoundly than any other step you will try. It will make your news site more timely and produce more content and deeper engagement than any other step you will try. And it won’t take much more work from your staff; they mostly just have to start working differently.

If a journalist is covering an event for your newsroom, you should cover it live unless you have a strong reason not to (more on those later). Instead of taking notes at the event, the journalist should livetweet it, using the tweets mostly as notes if you need to write a story after the event. (You still might need to take notes of things you need to check out later.)

In all four of our Project Unbolt newsrooms, live coverage has been perhaps the most significant success, in our efforts to unbolt from print culture and processes. In a series of blog posts this week and next, I will address live coverage issues.

We’ll start with situations where newsrooms should consider live coverage:

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Sunshine Week project showed digital-first enterprise approach

Digital First Media’s Connecticut newsrooms did some old-school watchdog reporting in their Sunshine Week project this spring. But they took a digital-first approach in planning and executing the project.

This post is mostly going to be a guest post by Viktoria Sundqvist, investigations editor for the Register Citizen and Middletown Press. Vik and Michelle Tuccitto Sullo, investigations editor for the New Haven Register, led the project, published in March. They started planning the project and did the reporting while I was in Connecticut working on Project Unbolt and I made a tiny contribution.

This was a traditional watchdog reporting project in many ways:

• The project held local police accountable, checking how well every police department in Connecticut followed the state’s Freedom of Information law.
• The work involved shoe-leather reporting, with reporters from DFM’s newsrooms visiting every police station in the state to ask for records that should be public (I checked the town of Plymouth).
• The reporters wrote a big newspaper story about their results.
• The project had impact, forcing changes by police departments that were revealed to be violating the law.

Here’s how the project took a different digital-first approach:

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Five Satins: A ‘Sunday’ story published digitally the Monday before

Returning to my March discussion of unbolting enterprise stories from the Sunday story, I’m going to discuss how the New Haven Register staff handled two enterprise stories earlier this year.

I encourage you to look at both story packages:

• Mark Zaretsky’s story on the Five Satins, the group that recorded the classic song, “In the Still of the Night” in a New Haven church basement 58 years ago (and, amazingly, all the singers are still alive). The story included a video and photo gallery by Peter Hvizdak.
• Digital First’s Connecticut newsrooms collaborated on a Sunshine Week project checking the compliance of state police departments with the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

I’ll deal with the Five Satins here and with the Sunshine Week project in a subsequent post. First, an admission: I should have published both of these posts much earlier, when the stories were still fresh. Life intervened and pushed them back on my to-do list for too long, but I want to publish them as I’m wrapping up my contribution to Project Unbolt.

I also should note at the outset that my observations about the Five Satins story are a rewrite/update of an email I sent Mark and the editors after the story initially published online. The story was well under way by the time I arrived in New Haven, pushing for the staff to rethink how we handle enterprise stories.

The Five Satins reflected some of the unbolted enterprise approach I’m advocating (published online Monday, six days before appearing in print on a Sunday; strong multimedia elements). But I thought deeper planning for the digital audience could have resulted in improved engagement and stronger digital content, so I provided suggestions for doing better in future stories.

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How the Berkshire Eagle plans to update and uphold standards

This is the fifth of seven blog posts about the Berkshire Eagle Unbolt Master Plan (which I explained in the first post). A staff committee developed the plan in response to my call for newsrooms to free themselves from print culture and workflow in six primary areas. This is the plan to update and uphold the Eagle’s standards. Most of this post will be the Eagle’s plan lightly edited, with my comments in italics. 

What are “standards”?

Standards establish the baseline of our credibility at The Eagle. Standards are our accuracy, ethics and integrity that build our brand as The Eagle and entrust us as the No. 1 news source with our readers. Our high standards differentiate The Eagle from the competition.

How do we apply Unbolted standards?

We adhere to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. We aim to avoid errors, and we correct errors as soon as we learn they have been committed and after verifying the accuracy. We may offer explanations as to how the errors were made and how the correct information now affects the context of a news story.

Buttry comment: I’ve blogged about how the SPJ Code of Ethics needs updating and how the first draft of an update is disappointing. I recommend one of two approaches: adhering to Poynter’s Guiding Principles for the Journalist, which have been updated, or developing a few Berkshire Eagle additions or amendments to the SPJ Code.

The notebook

• Create one binder/notebook for all staff members that will include materials discussed in this committee and the other Unbolt committees. Also, we need to create a “digital” notebook as well. An internal WordPress blog? Buttry: I like the idea of a blog on ethics. You need to handle it carefully, discussing issues without embarrassing staff members who have made mistakes (unless they are egregious offenses such as plagiarism or fabrication). While I see the value of an internal blog, where you might be able to be more candid, without causing embarrassment, I also encourage occasional public posts about ethical matters. I think we build credibility by telling the public about our ethical decisions and standards and our commitment to ethics.

Digital consistency

• Put a person in charge of coming up with web uploading standards and making sure they are communicated to all staff. Create a web upload checklist (put in notebook)
• Let’s write these down, be specific, give examples of the proper way to slug, SEO headlines (put in notebook) and make sure ALL STAFF are trained.
• Feedback when doing web uploading wrong. Have a weekly “state of the web” email sent out to let people know when updates to protocol have been made.

Eagle style

• Someone needs to be in charge of updating our Eagle stylebook. This person needs to be given time to do this.
• Updated style guide put into notebook and also online where staff can access it (blog, webpage?).

Corrections policy

• Who does the reader contact with a correction? (Make sure that person’s contact info is easy to find on the web and in print) Suggestions for policy:

o   All corrections from every department should run in the same spot in the paper.

o   All corrections should be slugged the same. Example: (Section)CORRECTION(date) and filed into B2/B3, along with an email sent to Tom and the night desk editors that a correction has been filed.

• Online corrections: Ask online editor Jen Huberdeau to correct the error online ASAP and include an editor’s note in italics at the top of the story explaining the correction and date and time the correction was made. The editor’s note should be included online only when the correction is a factual error (i.e. spelling of name, incorrect information, wrong date, place, time) not for punctuation errors. Those should just be fixed.
• All online corrections should also go in one place online. One suggestion is a live blog of editor’s notes (similar to what AP Breaking news does) that Jen would update after the correction is made in the story. Buttry: The New Haven Register, another of our Project Unbolt pilot newsrooms, has a corrections blog.

Accuracy checklist

Goal: Create one to print out and put in notebooks

• Remember: Who, what, when and where
• Spell names correctly; check with that person in person and verify place names. Do a quick Google search on the name, or even check Facebook, especially when the name is a questionable spelling.) Before hitting send, check the names one more time!
• Check phone numbers (Google search)
• Check web addresses
• Double check locations (Everyone should have a map of their coverage area. Also, someone with local knowledge should put together a “common mistakes” list when it comes to local streets/places to help new reporters.) Is your sense of direction correct?
• When writing about an event: Time, date, place
• Any red flags? Don’t just take the police report/coach’s word for absolute, final truth. Does something seem fishy? Ask. Does a name or city street name look different? Ask.
• Get another read before sending to the web, or putting it on the page. No editors around? Ask a fellow reporter.
• Know your own weaknesses. Do you have trouble with numbers? Triple check your work. Are you terrible with commas? Ask an editor or reporter to double check your punctuation.
• SPELL CHECK!

Buttry: I’m an advocate of accuracy checklists. As Craig Silverman notes, they have proven to prevent errors by other professionals, such as pilots and surgeons, and journalists should use checklists, too. Craig and I have developed checklists, but I encourage newsrooms or journalists to develop their own checklists, improving on ours.

Social media/blog standards

• Live by the rule: “The standard is the standard.”
• Before posting on Twitter, Facebook, blogs run through the accuracy list above.
• Appoint a point person to do a nightly check of what our reporters/editors are tweeting/posting. Is it meeting our standards? Is someone doing a great job — and have they been told that lately?

Buttry: I pumped my fist at the suggestion of telling people that they’re doing a great job (if they are). I have noted before that praise is one of the most important and effective management tools.

Code of Ethics

• Make sure everyone has a copy and at least one is posted in the newsroom and posted online — our readers should know the code of ethics we follow.
• Possible additions: A reminder that these ethics apply to all platforms of journalism: Print, web, mobile, tablets and social media.
• Respect for others in the newsroom/your co-workers. Is your space clean? Avoid using language that offends others trying to work. Buttry: These are good points, but I don’t see cleanliness or foul language as matters of ethics. Might want to change the heading or give that point its own heading.

Communication

• Email should be a back up. Phone or face-to-face is best. Buttry: Excellent point for most important communication. Email is valuable, though, for repeating or reminding of the points made face to face, and can be efficient if people are working different hours or someone is in the field.
• Similar to the meeting we had to roll out Unbolt, let’s have a quarterly meeting to go over large initiatives.
• Departments should have a “huddle” once a week to go over changes, check in to see how everyone is doing, discussions about what worked and what didn’t. The “huddle”  should be quick, efficient.
• Editors should come up with a way to encourage staff who have gone above and beyond. Maybe a monthly wrap-up of what went well? (Similar to the “Strokes and Pokes” newsletter Charles used to create.)
• Praise goes both ways and across departments!

Buttry: I’ll repeat my praise for including praise here.

Features Editor Lindsey Hollenbaugh led the standards committee, assisted by Entertainment Editor Jeff Borak, sports writer and columnist Howard Herman, Sports Editor Richard Lord, Berkshires Week Associate Editor Maggie Button, community news coordinator Jeannie Maschino and editor and paginator David LeClair.

Other posts on the Eagle’s master plan

Berkshire Eagle Master Plan gives direction to the work of unbolting from print 

Berkshire Eagle’s plan to unbolt coverage and storytelling

How the Berkshire Eagle is unbolting planning and management from print culture

Berkshire Eagle plans for mobile success

The Berkshire Eagle’s plan for stronger engagement

The Berkshire Eagle unbolts from its processes and workflow from print

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Don’t be selfish on Twitter; tweeting useful information is good business

A journalism student asked me a question last night that reflects a common concern among professional journalists and media managers:

@stevebuttry How can Twitter be used effectively w/o giving away too much content? I don’t want my work being given away for free #ls260

— Stephen Shiflett (@StephenShiflett) September 4, 2012

I wasn’t exactly pleased with my reply (as tirelessly as I encourage journalists to use  Twitter, can I still blame the 140-character limit?):

@stephenshiflett Effective Twitter use w/o worrying about giving it away will drive traffic to sites where you sell ads.

— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) September 5, 2012

Then this morning I got around to blogging about some analysis Matt DeRienzo did recent of Digital First Media’s branded Twitter accounts in Connecticut, and I realized Matt had a better answer: Serving your Twitter audience effectively drives traffic to your website better than trying to drive traffic.

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