Sophie's Christmas Wish List*

Photo by: raketen_tim

I must admit that after reading "We Stand Corrected: When Good Journalists Make Stupid Mistakes" I suddenly found myself rather intimidated.

Yes, I understand that mistakes in print journalism can be devastating for the reputation of a large newspaper or news corporation, but what about the reputation of citizen journalists?

Moreover, as citizen journalists we already find ourselves competing with large reputable news sources everyday...so what kind of impact does an error have when its an error by an independent citizen journalist?

I am going to assume it's a large one. Scanlan mentions in the article that each time a news source publishes an error; the reader considers that source to be less credible:

"Each misspelled word, bad apostrophe, garbled grammatical construction, weird cutline and mislabeled map erodes public confidence in a newspaper's ability to get anything right"

However, when it is The Chicago Daily Tribune or The New York Times, I would argue that they still have years of reputable reporting on their side to defend themselves with. After all, a couple of mistakes found in newspapers that have been in print for over a hundred years can't be of much significance. People will keep reading. People won't cancel their subscription.

It is almost as though the public actually forgive them.

Yet, if a citizen journalist with a relatively small blog publishes an error online, they risk losing their already minimal audience completely. After all, why bother with an "inexperienced, unqualified, freelance writer" when large media conglomerates have provided years of "trusted reporting?"

Therefore, I would argue that Silverman's points about fact checking, and "fessing up" to error reporting is even more pertinent for us as citizen journalists. I would say we are gambling with much more when we think of posting "slips" and "errors". The loyalty and attention spans of online readers are much shorter than that of those in print journalism.

So, the question I pose is: Do the same actions that Silverman suggests for print sources and other news media work for the average citizen journalist when it comes to saving their credibility?

*Sophie would like to report the error found in the title of this post. It should read "Apology Accepted?", rather than, "Sophie's Christmas Wish List". She apologises for any inconvienience this has caused the reader.