801 Third Street South St. Petersburg, FL 33701(727) 821-9494 www.poynter.org | www.newsu.org

Online Journalism Credibility SeriesSix WebinarS TO heLP yOu TaCkLe diFFiCuLT OnLine neWS CredibiLiTy iSSueS. (brOughT TO yOu by APME and PoyntEr’s nEws UnivErsity)

Learn what the editors at six newspapers discovered in projects targeted at specific issues of online journalism credibility. You’ll gain fresh insights and explore new approaches to strengthening your credibility with online audiences.

these webinars will cover:

Managing Comments on your news Web SiteWith the knoxville news Sentinel and knoxnews.com

Maintaining Credibility While Pursuing new revenueWith the Seattle Times and Seattletimes.com

Credible user-generated and newsroom-generated ContentWith The Victoria (Texas) advocate and Victoriaadvocate.com

breaking news Without breaking TrustWith The Sioux City (iowa) Journal and Siouxcityjournal.com

building Twitter and Facebook audiences From the ground upWith the Salem (Mass.) news and Salemnews.com.

Creating Fairness guidelinesfor “Unpublishing” Archived ContentWith the Toronto Star and thestar.com

each hourlong Webinar costs

$27.95aPMe and Cna members can sign up at a special rate of

$9.95 per Webinar

The Online Journalism Credibility Series is developed in partnership with associated Press Managing Editors (APME) and Poynter’s news university.

The Webinars are the outcomes of projects by six newsrooms as part of APME’s Online Credibility Project and funded by grants from the ethics and excellence in Journalism Foundation and aPMe Foundation. The series is also developed with the support of the Canadian News-paper association (Cna).

the webinar series kicks off on nov. 5, with “Managing Comments on your news site.” • Learn more at • www.newsu.org/webComments09

801 Third Street South St. Petersburg, FL 33701(727) 821-9494 www.poynter.org | www.newsu.org

nov. 5, 2009

Managing Commentson your news Site

JAnUAry 2010

Maintaining Credibility While Pursuing new revenue

Jack Lail, director of news innovation Knoxville News Sentinel knoxnews.com

Can you briefly describe your APME Online 1. Journalism Credibility Project? We held a roundtable about online comments on our stories.

Why did you choose this issue?2. Comments had been a troubling issue but became a high-profile focus of community attention when attorneys representing two defendants in brutal carjacking, kidnapping, rape and murder case said their clients couldn’t receive a fair trial because of anonymous comments on local media Web sites. The attorneys asked a judge to either require real names on comments or order news sites to not post comments on stories about the trial.

How did you approach the issue?3. We held a roundtable at a neutral site with a diverse panel and explored many of the troubling issues swirling around comment areas of news sites. We videotaped the session and produced two videos and several blog posts about it. The participants seemed to come away with a greater understanding of the different viewpoints on comments, and the newspaper came away with some suggestions.

What actions did your news organization take 4. (or does it plan to take)? We implemented several policy and technology changes on how we manage comments. We have become less lenient with abusive commenters.

tease us a little. what’s something that a participant 5. will learn from your Webinar? We hope to spark some self-examination of comment areas, with the idea of shifting comment management away from merely being a burden on the newsroom and instead toward the husbandry of healthy (and robust) community debate.

Kathy Best, managing editorfor digital news and innovationSeattle Timesseattletimes.com

Can you briefly describe your APME Online 1. Journalism Credibility Project? using extensive reader surveys and focus groups, we tried to determine what effect contextual advertising, in varying forms, either was having or might have on the credibility of news or ads on our Web site.

Why did you choose this issue? 2. With revenue in free fall at many news organizations, pressure to experiment with new ad forms – particularly contextual advertising – has been growing. We wanted hard data that would give the newsroom and online advertising a shared understanding so that we could make wiser choices about how to boost revenue without eroding credibility.

How did you approach the issue?3. The newsroom, our design and usability experts and our corporate marketing research team collaborated to create a quantitative survey that asked participants to look at 17 different examples of contextual ads on both story pages and index pages. We also tested reaction to contextual ads placed near hard news and feature content. Then we followed up the quantitative surveys with two focus groups, which allowed us to probe reader reactions more deeply.

What actions did your news organization take (or 4. does it plan to take)? We plan to share the results with the entire company with the goal of breaking down barriers and creating more constructive conversations around the use of contextual advertising online.

tease us a little. what’s something that a participant 5. will learn from your Webinar? There are some definite credibility land mines out there, but not all of them are where you’d think!

801 Third Street South St. Petersburg, FL 33701(727) 821-9494 www.poynter.org | www.newsu.org

FEBrUAry 2010

Creating Credible user-generated and newsroom-generated Content

MArCh 2010

breaking news Without breaking Trust

Chris Cobler, editorThe Victoria (Texas) Advocate victoriaadvocate.com

Can you briefly describe your APME Online 1. Journalism Credibility Project? We initiated a market research project to measure the trustworthiness of many different content elements on victoriaadvocate.com. The study asked users and non-users how much they trust articles, multimedia content, user-submitted content and many other specific online elements.

Why did you choose this issue? 2. Our newspaper, the second-oldest daily in Texas, has a 164-year-old tradition of being the most trusted source for local news, information and advertising in our region. As we build our brand on Victoriaadvocate.com, we want to know what we can do to build that same relationship with our digital audience.

How did you approach the issue?3. Our main effort was to conduct the market study, which we created in collaboration with Macarena Hernandez, director of Latino Initiatives at the University of Houston-Victoria, and Ken Fleming, director of the Center for Advanced Social research at the reynolds Journalism institute. Two journalism students from UHV and researchers at the reynolds institute conducted the study. With 400 completed surveys, our study had an accuracy of +/- 5 percentage points.

What did you and your news organization learn?4. We’re still digesting the results, but we think we understand from the study that readers value straight news and information a lot more than they value contents with opinion.

tease us a little. what’s something that a participant 5. will learn from your Webinar? Our Webinar will explore the premise that the public feels online journalism is more credible when the public is involved.

Mitch Pugh, editor.The Sioux City Journal siouxcityjournal.com

Can you briefly describe your APME Online 1. Journalism Credibility Project? The goal of the project is to help guide newspapers as they develop policies related to gathering and reporting news online. in order to do so, the project aims to bring readers into the conversation to help us improve our standards and accuracy, control bias and better serve our diverse communities. Our discussions focused on the credibility and ethical dilemmas presented by gathering and reporting breaking news online.

Why did you choose this issue? 2. as our newsrooms are transforming into 24-7 information operations, we are facing unique ethical and credibility issues. While many of the questions – at their root – are not new, the time we have to make those decisions and the manner and which we execute those decisions has changed dramatically.

How did you approach the issue? 3. We held a series of community roundtables in which we walked participants through a common breaking news scenario to gauge their opinions on how and when to report information. We also did independent research and conducted a survey of APME members to gather more information.

What did you learn? 4. We expected many of our readers to be conservative in their approach, wary of new technology and unsure of how the media should adapt to the rapidly changing world around it. We were wrong.

tease us a little. what’s something that a participant 5. will learn from your webinar? Participants will learn more about the options available to them as they report breaking news, the pitfalls and opportunities that come with making decisions quickly, the way the public views how we report breaking news and methods for developing policies related to online breaking news.

801 Third Street South St. Petersburg, FL 33701(727) 821-9494 www.poynter.org | www.newsu.org

APriL 2010

building Twitter and Facebook Audiences from the Ground Up

MAy 2010

Creating Fairness guidelinesfor “Unpublishing” Archived Content

David Olson, editorThe Salem Newssalemnews.com

Can you briefly describe your APME Online 1. Journalism Credibility Project? We are interested in learning how a paper’s involvement with and use of social networking sites affects its credibility, both online and in print. We’re emphasizing credibility as we build our sites from the ground up.

Why did you choose this issue? 2. We all want tons of Tweets and Facebook friends. The question is how to get them – and hold their interest – without playing to the lowest common demoninator (The world does not need more Lolcat posts).

How did you approach the issue?3. With the help of APME, we’ve canvassed our fellow news leaders to see how they handle their Facebook and Twitter accounts. also, we are reaching out to readers through Facebook, Twitter and our traditional print and Web editions to gather community input. We hope to enlist specific groups of Facebook and Twitter users to serve as a sort of “social media advisory board” to get real-time feedback on what we choose to post or how we develop our pages.

What did you and your news organization learn?4. Too early to tell, in truth. Twitter users seem to be more engaged than Facebook users, which brings its own set of challenges.

tease us a little. what’s something that a participant 5. will learn from your Webinar? Facebook now accounts for one-fourth of all Internet page views. About a fifth of all people on the Web user Twitter or one of its competitors. How can a news organization tap into that growing audience without losing its credibility? We’ll talk about successful approaches that respect journalism standards but don’t bore people who get their news someplace other than print.

Kathy English, Public editor The Toronto Star

thestar.com

Can you briefly describe your APME Online 1. Journalism Credibility Project? Content archived by newspapers is more easily accessible to more people than ever before through search engines, and lives virtually forever. This has led to increasing requests from those named in articles to remove content from Web sites – to “unpublish.” This project examined how North American news organizations are handling and responding to requests to have content unpublished.

Why did you choose this issue? 2. As public editor of Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper, rarely a month goes by that I am not faced with requests from readers to remove content from the Star’s Web site. I was interested in how news organizations respond to such requests in a manner consistent with journalistic principles of accuracy, accountability, fairness and transparency.

How did you approach the issue? 3. More than 100 North American news organizations responded to my survey on this issue through aPMe update and SurveyMonkey. i also queried ombudsmen and public editors through the Organization of Newspaper Ombudsmen and interviewed media lawyers. i visited three news organizations in the U.S. Midwest to talk with news executives about how they handle this matter.

What did you and your news organization learn? 4. i learned that there is an overall strong reluctance to remove published content from news Web sites. Although about half of the industry leaders surveyed have evolved policies and practices for handling unpublishing requests, no overall industry best practices have yet emerged.

tease us a little. what’s something that a participant 5. will learn in your Webinar? Participants will explore some suggested best practices and also will come away with some “talking points” for communicating with readers who seek to have content unpublished, and a list of questions to help guide their newsrooms through decision-making.