[Air-L] post-editing of news stories in online environments

[Philippa Smith]

Thank you to all of those people who responded to my request below about post-editing of news in online environments.  I have reproduced responses to share with the rest of AOIR as well as an addition of my own that I found from AJR.  But if anyone has any further recommendations I would still be very pleased to receive them.

Kind regards

Philippa


*         Secko, D. M. et al., 2011. The unfinished science story: Journalist-audience interactions from the Globe and Mail's online health and science sections. Journalism, 12 (7)(DOI: 10.1177/1464884911412704), pp. 814-831.




*         This research asked U.S. newspaper reporters about their attitudes toward online reader comments: http://www.academia.edu/6528209/Online_Readers_Comments_Represent_New_Opinion_Pipeline



*         This is not a scientific study but an interesting interview from NPR's On the media about how news outlets handle corrections: http://www.onthemedia.org/story/riding-rumor/

According to the, the New York Times is an exception in employing a senior editor to "just" handle reader/user comments for correcting stories.



*         And from American Journalism Review - an interesting piece:



http://ajr.org/2014/05/13/copy-editors-digital-media/



Philippa K. Smith, PhD
Senior lecturer and Research Manager
Institute of Culture, Discourse and Communication
Auckland University of Technology
Auckland
NEW ZEALAND



From: Philippa Smith
Sent: Tuesday, 14 October 2014 12:25 p.m.
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: post-editing of news stories in online environments

Hi Everyone,

I'm interested in finding any published research about  how online news organisations respond to readers comments to the extent that they will change words in a published story or a headline. This may follow criticism that certain words used in a story are inaccurate, racist or simply have the potential to be interpreted differently to what the journalist intended. Online platforms enable news organisations to alter a story immediately, but does the pressure to respond with speed also mean that alterations might occur to simply pacify one reader when others might not view the same words in the same way? Is there a safety net at work here for news organizations - just how common is it to change material? and what does this mean for journalistic practice in the digital age when reader criticism can be so immediate and  visible? Any links to academic research in the area of the post-editing of  news stories already published online would be appreciated.

Kind regards

Philippa Smith

Institute of Culture, Discourse and Communication
Auckland University of Technology
Auckland
NEW ZEALAND