Measuring and increasing accuracy in journalism. Jonathan Stray outlines one approach. I think we need to throw more computing power at it.
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Measuring and increasing accuracy in journalism. Jonathan Stray outlines one approach. I think we need to throw more computing power at it.
6 Comments
Oh? What would you do with all this computing power, with respect to the accuracy of journalism?
Generate data much faster than relying on a couple people fact checking the stories.
But how would you have any if the data being generated is correct?
At this point in time, I still think you need humans involved in some way. You’re correct in that regard. It won’t scale if it’s the reporters who have to do the work though. Here’s one idea:
The CMS supports marking up information from sources, quotes or otherwise. Those annotations can be associated with profiles in the user database/CRM. Anytime an article is published, the link is sent to the source with a feedback mechanism if they feel part of their story is missing, etc. Editor receives corrections in a queue and makes them as necessary.
In this scenario, producing accurate journalism is a part of the workflow. Enough data can be generated from the process to produce the graphs as a byproduct. This is one of the reasons I’m fascinated by structured feedback mechanisms other than the standard commenting fare (which strikes me as unimaginative).
Are you saying mail every story to the sources automatically for correction? Hmm…. very interesting. You don’t want to give the sources the idea that they will get special treatment, though.
Storify does it. I think it’s a trend worth paying attention to.