Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Scienceifying Journalism

Here's a simple, stupid idea:

  • All journalists must now explicitly and thoroughly incorporate citations into every piece they write
  • This means every point they make where evidence, a number, a percentage, a quote, an "economists say X", an "according to current research" must be followed by a citation
  • For all interviews the date, time, duration, location, medium and interviewer should be cited
  • Where an interview is on the record, a recording and/or transcript will be made publicly available, linked from the reference section (regardless of whether the interview resulted in a quote within the piece or was just background)
  • For all citations, paragraph and line information (or timestamp information for audio/visual data) should be given so that the reader can find the exact place in the source document that the author is referring to in the piece
  • All citations and reference section will be visible by toggle only - readers can choose to read the article in a "normal" state or click a button to see the citations included

Seems common sense to me - and not that hard to implement given that we're supposed to be in the digital age now.