Information that can’t be trusted is not less valuable; it’s worthless.
Those words were written by Orlando Sentinel public editor Manning Pynn in an important column published on Sunday. (Romenesko spotted it.)
Pynn was moved to write the column after noticing a spike in the number of corrections over recent months. “In the past three months, the newspaper has corrected more than a third more errors of its own making on average than it did during the relatively placid prior five months,” writes Pynn.
Even more alarmingly, those same three months “have accounted, thus far, for significantly more corrections of internally generated errors than the newspaper averaged in that three-month period during the prior five years. I’d have waited until the end of the month to raise this frightening issue, but with several days left before Halloween, and several more corrections awaiting publication, the total for October already has surpassed that of September — which was worse than August.”
Something is causing errors, and therefore corrections, to spike at the Sentinel. Pynn points to recent job cuts at the paper:
When the Sentinel tightened its financial belt back in June, it lost a wealth of seasoned veterans, many of them editors. Those journalists not only wrote headlines and captions. They also scrutinized the work of reporters — correcting spelling, straightening out syntax, double-checking facts — before publication.
With fewer people to do that now, less of that important work gets done, and the result is more published errors.
It has been widely, obsessively reported that the newspaper industry is in a time of evolution and turmoil. Many of the changes taking place are fascinating and exciting, but change is coming at a price. It usually does. As newsrooms shift resources to online reporting and other areas of growth and innovation, many organizations are either laying off or buying out staff.
Head counts are going down; yet there is at the same time a need for even more reporting to be produced for more areas: writing for the web, video and audio for the web, writing for the paper… As the economic picture becomes more clear, it’s likely that staff levels will once again rise. We are already seeing ads for remarkably new kinds of jobs in journalism.
But there is an urgent issue in the present: how can an organization ensure the quality of its reporting with less people in the newsroom? In the case of the Sentinel, it appears that the paper is struggling to maintain quality after recent staff losses. As Pynn points out, many of those who left the paper were skilled veterans responsible for quality. It’s not the only paper in this situation. Hopefully, Pynn’s column will help the paper realize the danger of degraded quality and work to ensure accuracy in the midst of challenges.
It can be done, and this issue is as much about the future as it is the present. If a newsroom loses a wealth of error-spotters, checkers and other quality hounds, it needs to begin training everyone — not just a select few — in the ways of accuracy. Reporters should be trained to self-check their work. They need to learn their weaknesses and be given a quick, easy procedure to go through before submitting any story. (Some publications use checklists.)
Editors should be armed with information about common errors so they can check for them within every story. All employees should be taught the value of error prevention, and the ethic of correction. Technology should be used to help check for plagiarism, and to track errors.
Everyone at every level in every section is responsible for accuracy. We have to move away from a culture and organizational structure where only some carry the quality mantle on a daily basis. It’s everyone’s job. We need to train people and give them the necessary tools and support. And it has to be done on a consistent basis. Words and slogans are not enough.
“Every business’ success depends on the reliability of its products or services,” writes Pynn. “If their reliability declines, people are less likely to buy them. Newspapers are particularly susceptible to that phenomenon.”
Other industries have taken the concept of quality to new heights. They obsess about the quality of their products and innovate ways to ensure it.
The current period of transition in the news industry is the perfect time to start a quality revolution in reporting.
