January 29, 2004

Let the Readers Do It

A writer for The Village Voice says Big Media needs an online "Department of Corrections." The writer examined how major online news sites such as Slate, The Washington Post, and The New York Times handle corrections of errors and suggests Big Journalism adopt some consensus standards for online corrections. The the writer also suggests the web needs a single universal corrections web site - suggested name: AllCorrections.com - that offers "one-stop shopping for researchers, a complete inventory of all corrections, all the time" and would "link daily to every media outlet's internally generated corrections, with separate pages for editors' notes, ombud blogs, and independent criticism." Ideally, it should be a non-profit.

Yeah. The web should be used to fact-check Big Media, highlight errors, make corrections, provide proper context, add depth, and such. Oh. Wait. Right. The blogosphere is already doing that.