‘Quality mark’ suggested for news websites

A UK report into the news industry is expected to float the idea of a kitemark, or quality stamp, for news websites that meet certain criteria, according to Press Gazette.

This was an idea waiting to happen, albeit one fraught with difficulties.

Yes, it would be nice for people to have a simple way of determining at a glance whether the news website they’ve landed on has good journalism credentials and practices.

On the other hand, who would decide what those credentials were, how would they measure them, and how often?

And who says my work as “a blogger, writing for free and outside any formal editorial process or code of conduct” is any less valuable or reliable than the paid work I do for a news organisation?

Here’s a few paragraphs from the Press Gazette story. I haven’t gone looking for the report yet but I gather it’s being released during the Oxford Media Convention this week.

A ‘digital kitemark’ to differentiate quality journalism from ‘the noise of the web’ should be introduced, according to a new report published this week.

Other recommendations from What’s Happening to Our News, an independent report carried out for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, include tax breaks for newspapers, and more easily accessible public information.

The kitemark could be visual and electronic – for example, via embedded meta-data – according to the report, published tomorrow.

“A digital kitemark… would identify and differentiate professional journalism amidst the noise of the web,” the report says.

“Paired with a kitemark, an indicator of digital transparency could convey to the audience that the content offered on a website had been subjected to a rigorous series of checks, and further, had been created by a professional journalist employed to write in a specific field of coverage – as opposed to a blogger, writing for free and outside any formal editorial process or code of conduct.

“As we suggested earlier, this strategy might also serve to sharpen the general ‘brand’ of professional journalism.

“In our view, the transparent labelling of news content would convert the news media into a more visual and navigable form—on which citizens would be able to make more informed decisions about their social, economic and political lives.”