It’s the AEJMC annual conference in Chicago, where dozens of papers in journalism and communication are presented. The range and variety is diverse, from startling findings to news of the obvious.
A session on the challenges facing online newspapers first thing in the morning unfortunately offered little that was startling.
One of the studies into online credibility by Chung Joo Chun, and Yoonjae Nam at the State University of New York in Buffalo promised much but the study itself fell short. It compared three types of online newspapers – mainstream, independent and aggregator – choosing as its samples USA Today, the Drudge Report and Google News.
Unsurprisingly, USA Today was the most credible as trust in the print edition translated to the web. The Drudge Report was the least credible and Google News was somewhere in the middle.
This research could have been interesting, but choosing Drudge Report as the example of independent media undermines the study itself. But there was one nugget in the research. It found that the use of links and related news on Google News boosted its credibility, perhaps because users felt they were able to compare and contrast news stories.
Another study presented during the same session by John Russial at Oregon University also found what many know anecdotally – many online news stories are not edited. The main reason for this was a lack of staffing and a desire not to delay the posting of a story online. In other words, speed is prioritised over copy editing.
In particular, only 25% of captions on slideshows were copy edited and around two-thirds of blogs were not deliberately not edited.
There was one interesting result which may surprise some, with no relationship between newspaper size and copy editing. Historically larger US newspapers tended to do more editing, but this does not seem the case online.
As Russial put it, copy editors are being left out of the digital revolution, though he suggested that this may be changing.
(Thanks to Elizabeth at the Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile in Chicago for sorting out the wifi in the meeting rooms)
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