The response to my idea in January that newsrooms borrow a page from the open-source playbook and adopt bug-tracking systems wasn’t exactly thunderous (not that I had any reason to expect anything else!). But I was pleasantly surprised — while reading the New York Times’ recent internal report recommending a variety of smart moves the paper should take to combat the erosion of readers’ trust — to see that the flagship paper of American journalism is talking about taking a step in this direction. The Times committee proposes that the paper begin to use a database to track errors:
Last year we published almost 3,200 corrections. We can do better. Our goal should be to eliminate error, beyond acknowledging it and correcting it. The proposed database would track the types and causes of errors that lead to corrections. The data would come from a mandatory form filled out by the individual(s) responsible for an error. It would include a draft of the proposed correction, with an explanation of how the mistake happened and how it could have been avoided. |
This is OK, as far as it goes, but notice that the responsibility for entering the error falls on the party least motivated to do so — the “individual responsible for an error.” The resulting system may help the Times notice patterns of errors that it can try to remedy. But it won’t fundamentally improve the feedback loop between the paper and the world it is trying to cover — unless and until the database goes public. Why not open it up and let readers file “bugs” against stories? As I wrote in a follow-up post in January, “I think this approach would pay off best for a newsroom that is having difficulty convincing readers that the publication is actually listening to them. If you showed the public that you were recording and responding to the issues they raised — whether you end up publishing a correction or simply saying, ‘We don’t think that needs correcting, and here’s why’ — I think you’d start to bank some confidence and trust pretty quickly.”
The difference between a private database and a public bug-tracker is the difference between a management tool and an open channel of communication. The former isn’t a bad thing, but the latter is what you want if you really intend to restore public trust.
The report seems overly worried that tying names of journalists to numbers of errors would be unfair to individuals (“Only masthead editors, department heads and the editor in charge of overseeing the error-tracking system should have access to names in the database”). Certainly, the paper’s managers are being enlightened to say that they’re not going to judge reporters based on “raw counts of an individual’s errors,” which “can be simplistic and misleading.” Well and good. But the idea that these numbers need to be kept private seems both overprotective and naive.
The readers who know a subject well enough to know that an error has been made in coverage of that subject also know very well exactly which reporter(s) were responsible for the goof. Bylines are public. Journalism is public. Errors are public. If a particular reporter ends up embarrassed because of an unduly large number of errors associated with his name, he should be. A well-designed public error-tracker for a newspaper could help make sure that those reporters who have real problems getting their facts straight either improve or are eventually retired or moved to less sensitive jobs. Meanwhile, if readers complain repeatedly about a particular reporter’s errors and the paper feels they’re not errors at all, then at least its response and defense of that reporter would be on the record.
The Internet ensures that criticism of journalists and complaints of their mistakes will be public and will name names. Newspapers can’t reverse that. But if they handle things right, they can provide an orderly and reliable record of complaints lodged against them, of actions taken to correct errors or to demonstrate that charges of error are simply mistaken. If they do so, they will help bolster public trust in their work. If they don’t do it on their own terms, the distributed intelligence of the Net will continue to do it on terms that editors will find less and less hospitable.
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