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Columbia Journalism Review today released a major report about magazine websites. (Disclosure: I write a weekly column for CJR, but had no involvement in this report.) You can read a brief intro and download the full PDF here. The report includes some interesting information about fact checking, copy editing and corrections. The results are mixed, if not altogether negative in these areas.
Here’s a notable section (emphasis theirs):
Is online content, with its rapid turnaround requirement, held to the same standards as material that appears in print? In general, the answer is no. Over half (51%) of original content that appears on Web sites is either not copy-edited at all, or is copy-edited less rigorously than in print. Moreover, just under half (43%) of respondents say that there is either a lower standard for fact-checking online (35%) or no fact-checking at all (8%).
Web sites are more likely to have lower standards in these areas as their traffic rises, and when content decisions are made by independent Web editors.
These bullet points are also of note:
• Fact checking (excluding blogs) is less rigorous online than in print.
• Web sites with more than 50,000 visitors a month fact-check less rigorously than sites with less traffic.
• Fact-checking is more likely to be lax when independent Web editors are in charge of online content decisions.
• Many magazines Web sites correct errors without acknowledging the mistakes.
• Error correction rises with Web traffic and profitability, but methods of doing so are inconsistent.
• Error corrections rise when independent Web editors make content decisions, but independent Web editors are more likely than print counterparts or publishers to correct with no notice.
The report has some additional detail (below), but those are the headlines. Some thoughts:
- Scrubbing is rampant. The vast majority of magazine websites are not publishing corrections for “typos or misspellings.” Also note that the report refers to these as “minor errors.” Well, not all typos and misspellings are equal. Yes, a typo that doesn’t change the meaning or reader’s understanding of a sentence (or introduce a factual error) can be fixed without requiring a correction. But what if a typo results in you reporting that Queen Elizabeth “lays up to 2,000 eggs per day”? Would they scrub that, too? We don’t really know. But once you are in the habit of scrubbing, it’s easy to start disappearing factual errors, which is unethical.
- Fact checking is seen as a “nice to have” for online magazine content. It’s been relegated to luxury status. Within magazines, print and online are seen very differently, with print viewed as the place to invest in fact checking and copy editing.
- One thing the report doesn’t make clear is what it means by fact checking. People who fact check for a living often say there’s no such thing as partial or “less rigorous” fact checking. Either check all of the facts, or don’t call it fact checking. So it would be useful to know how these respondents defined fact checking. Are professional fact checkers reviewing the online content? Or is an editor told to, for example, check the names and numbers before publication? It’s possible what respondents refer to as fact checking is, in fact, not in any way related to what traditional magazine fact checking looks like.
More fact checking data from the report:
Fact-checking (excluding blogs) is less rigorous online than in print for 35%
of respondents (Fig. 19).
• 8% do not fact-check print or online content.
• 8% do not fact-check online-only content.
• 27% say online-only content is fact-checked, but less rigorously than print
content.
• 57% use the same fact-checking process for online-only and print content.
In total, 84% of magazines surveyed do at least some fact-checking of their online-
only content and 92% fact-check their print content.
Figure 19: Fact-checking
Which best describes how online-only content is fact-checked?
More about corrections:
Many magazines Web sites correct errors without acknowledging the
mistakes (Fig. 23).
• 87% correct minor errors, such as typos or misspellings, with no indication to readers.
• 45% correct factual errors with no indication to readers.
• 37% correct factual errors and append an editor’s note detailing the nature of the error to the content where the mistake appeared.
• 6% leave major factual errors in as they originally appeared in the content, but add an editor’s note at the point of the error.
• 1% note all errors in a special section of the Web site.
