Tips on how to become more skeptical

AIM THIS PAGE

(Produced by Jonathan Krim, Washington Post, for the December 1998 API seminar, Compelling Storytelling: Writing and Editing for Readers. Krim worked at the San Jose Mercury News at the time.)

Says Krim: “We have not yet explored the outer limits of making our work fair.”

Other tips

• Get calculators to the reporters and copy editors
• Develop cheat sheets on how to figure out percentages and simple math
• Challenge your editors
• Move deadlines back on major stories
• Do thorough post-mortems
• Use third parties to question authenticity of information
• Develop a checklist to review complicated stories (match, use of quotes etc.)
• Watch for advocacy and zealot-like behavior and point of view (the “environmental mafia”)
• Watch it when stats are at the basic of a story
• Be tough on the little mistakes; they may be a signal of larger ones to come
• Develop a good policy on use of sources
• Ditto on off-the-record conversations
• Empower desks to stop stories, make necessary changes
• Question reporters, grill them
• Admit mistakes
• Watch the wires for things you wouldn’t let by
• Develop a peer review system
• Develop accuracy check sheets and checklists
• Try doing more “How I Reported The Story” sessions
• Appoint a fact-checker
• Ease deadline pressures
• Develop and use expertise in specialty areas
• Do own reporting
• Pair up students on school papers
• Do role plays on complicated, touchy stories
• Have classmates defend in depth their stories and ideas before others
• Look for diversity in views and stories
• Check the background of sources
• Edit for what’s not in the story