If that is lost, then much of their future is likely lost as well. The same as academic and scientific publishers need to get in front of the issue of plagiarism, the need is possibly even more urgent for news organizations. For newspapers and other news organizations, this issue is only going to get more urgent.
The public is getting better armed and becoming more aware about these issues. For example, Churnalism U. Simply by installing a browser extension, a reader is alerted when content from questionable sources appears in an article, letting the reader make the decision if the content was used and cited in an appropriate way.
The simple truth is that readers are not going to become less savvy about these issues. As the technology becomes easier and cheaper, readers are going to get better at checking after journalists and, through the Internet, have a powerful way to share their findings with the world. In short, where the Jayson Blair scandal was truly prophetic was in its public nature. The days of newspapers learning of a bad reporter and quietly working to correct their record are done.
The Internet has made the issue of bad journalism a public one. A new age of curation in journalism. At age 27, Blair was the lead reporter on the Beltway Sniper shootings and trial, one of the biggest stories at the time, for the most prominent newspaper in the country. However, in late April , Macarena Hernandez, a reporter at the San Antonio Express-News and former colleague of Jayson Blair, noticed similarities between a story Blair had written and one she had published two days earlier.
She notified her editors, who in turn contacted the New York Times. Shortly after the paper started investigating Jayson Blair handed in his resignation and checked into a mental health clinic. Blair would never work in journalism again but turned up years later as a life coach in Virginia , a job he continues today. At the time of the scandal, The New York Times was the premiere newspaper in the country, possibly the world. Such a huge black eye on such an important paper had a major impact not just at The Times, but also on journalism as a whole.
The most immediate and obvious impact was that The Times created the position of public editor. The idea was that, if such a position had existed while Blair was engaging in his misdeeds, one of the interviewees Blair had falsely claimed to have spoken to or someone else from the public could have easily come forward and stopped him sooner.
Leading this group should be one or several highly ethical consensus-builders who can solicit and synthesize ideas from throughout the profession. In the case of the Times , stakeholders range from the humble retiree who simply reads his paper in the morning to the power-wielding diplomat who relies on foreign-policy reports to inform her decisions. Journalists, too, lose ground when a colleague lowers the public's value of their work. As a group, biggest stakeholders are citizens of democracies, which depend on journalists to grow trust in readers with accurate reporting.
WHY: The Blair case raises questions about hiring, management and overall editorial policy. First, there is the issue of relative inexperience in a super-high-stakes newsroom. Is it fair to senior staffers to allow a fresh-out-of-college writer to step into the ranks? More importantly, is it fair to expect such an inexperienced writer, however talented, to produce reporting as sharp as that of a decorated correspondent?
While a pure meritocracy allows an individual of any experience level to fill any role, talent in the absence of experience could lead to diminished professionalism: Blair's ability to impress editors with his writing may have led to him feeling that facts are less important than prose. Blair, who faded from the spotlight after his not particularly well-received memoir about his time at the Times , is now a certified life coach in a Washington D.
And he has a new byline. While numerous organizations fact-check presidential candidates in real-time, many people just accurately report what the candidate said.
And the piece I assigned him had to do with facts.
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