Author Archive

Articles by Craig Silverman | Email the Author

 

1. Behind the News

   A Fact Check Box on Every Page

   October 25, 2010 03:20 PM

   The Register Citizen is an 8,000-circulation paper serving Litchfield County, Conn. It’s owned by the Journal Register Company, which is engaged in a rather radical process of transformation with the goal of turning it into a digital-first news organization... Continue reading

2. Behind the News

   TBD and the Accuracy Boast

   October 15, 2010 11:54 AM

   It's a rare and wonderful thing to see a news organization criticized for making too big of a deal about an error and correction made by one of its writers. The issue is usually the opposite--a call for transparency, rather... Continue reading

3. Behind the News

   I Can Haz Media Fails?

   October 8, 2010 11:09 AM

   Earlier this week I directed my web browser to ProbablyBadNews.com, the website launched by the Cheezburger Network, those able purveyors of lolcats and related memery, last year to highlight different categories of journalistic error. I was shocked to see... Continue reading

4. Behind the News

   Gawker Ranks the Rumor Mills

   October 1, 2010 01:05 PM

   Contrary to what you may have read, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are still together. John Mayer and Jennifer Anniston are not. Neither are Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, however, are still together, though they... Continue reading

5. Behind the News

   Slate Shuts the Window

   September 24, 2010 10:59 AM

   Not long after Slate launched in 1996, editor Michael Kinsley was faced with the challenge of figuring out how to correct an online article. He decided to tackle the challenge in part by detailing the issue in an article:... Continue reading

6. Behind the News

   How to Lose Your Gut

   September 17, 2010 09:04 AM

   Dean Miller has spent years getting journalists to lose their gut. “Your gut is the most dangerous thing you have,” says Miller, the director of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism, and a... Continue reading

7. Behind the News

   The Worldwide Leader in Corrections Policy

   September 10, 2010 11:37 AM

   Guess which media company this person works for: We have six domestic networks, a major magazine, a heavily trafficked website and some of most trafficked and downloaded mobile apps, and a national radio network with hundreds of affiliates. Still... Continue reading

8. The News Frontier

   Wise Up

   September 3, 2010 11:18 AM

   Mike Wise wasn’t. Earlier this week, the Washington Post sports columnist decided to tweet a fabricated claim that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger would be given a five game suspension by the NFL. Wise later said the erroneous tweet... Continue reading

9. Behind the News

   The Challenge of Verifying Crowdsourced Information

   August 27, 2010 11:14 AM

   Shortly after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in January, a small team of workers with Ushahidi, a project that enables people to crowdsource and map crisis information, started sifting through information online and mapping reports of damage, security... Continue reading

10. Behind the News

    Lights, Camera, Fact Check!

    August 20, 2010 11:18 AM

    In the 1950s, NBC aired a show called the Adventures of Hiram Holliday. The titular hero was a geeky, Coke-bottle glasses-wearing newspaper proofreader. I’m not kidding. Holliday’s adventures kick off when he’s sent on a trip to see the... Continue reading

11. Behind the News

    The Great Typo Hunt

    August 13, 2010 11:29 AM

    It’s undoubtedly a small subset of people who could be described as “grammar vigilantes,” and it’s an even smaller slice of the population who would find themselves called into court to answer for related crimes. Such was the situation that... Continue reading

12. The Observatory

    Retraction Action

    August 9, 2010 06:00 AM

    Late last month, the editors of The Lancet Oncology published an “expression of concern” regarding a paper published in 2007. This term, which appears to be unique to scientific publishing, was helpfully defined as “A statement issued by the editor... Continue reading

13. Campaign Desk

    How WikiLeaks Outsourced the Burden of Verification

    July 30, 2010 12:15 PM

    Julian Assange is upset with The New York Times for talking with the White House about WikiLeaks’s trove of Afghanistan documents prior to publication. Really, though, he should bite his tongue. The Times’s decision to check with the... Continue reading

14. Behind the News

    A Front-and-Center Corrections Policy

    July 23, 2010 11:15 AM

    Prior to publishing the first and, as it would turn out, only edition of his 1690 newspaper, Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick, Benjamin Harris wrote a prospectus to outline exactly what his publication would bring to the community. His... Continue reading

15. Behind the News

    Canadian Media in Crisis

    July 16, 2010 11:33 AM

    Though it seemed to register barely a ripple outside of the host country, the G20 Summit held three weeks ago in Toronto has likely left scars that will long exist in the minds of local citizens, journalists, politicians, and the... Continue reading

16. Behind the News

    Regret the Error’s Summer Reading List

    July 9, 2010 11:27 AM

    This is the time of year when people and publications offer their picks of the best books for summer reading. As you might guess, I’m a non-fiction type of guy. Sure, The Lost Symbol or The Girl Who Kicked The... Continue reading

17. Behind the News

    Radical Transparency at Daily Kos

    July 2, 2010 10:53 AM

    In 2007, Wired published an issue that focused on the emergence of “radical transparency” in business. “Get Naked and Rule the World,” it declared. The subhead for one of its major features declared, “Fire the publicist.... Continue reading

18. Behind the News

    A Conversation with Andrew Alexander

    June 25, 2010 11:23 AM

    Sooner or later, any news ombudsman or public editor will end up addressing the issues of accuracy, errors, and corrections. In fact, it sometimes feels as though there’s a template for an ombud column about accuracy: Detail a recent mistake,... Continue reading

19. Behind the News

    And That’s Not the Way It Is

    June 18, 2010 02:22 PM

    Journalism is a profession built on storytelling, so it’s no surprise that its history is filled with some remarkable tales. Think Woodward and Bernstein bringing down a president. Or Walter Cronkite’s 1968 CBS News special about Vietnam that caused President... Continue reading

20. Behind the News

    Report the Error

    June 11, 2010 10:50 AM

    Many of the corrections that appear in the press are notable thanks to the significance or amusing nature of the mistake, or because they speak to a larger truth about journalism. But often the most important corrections are the ones... Continue reading

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