Accuracy and Fairness Tips
In a world where speed rules, what do online reporting and editing staffers need to do in order to insure accuracy and fairness? Check out these ten tips from Andrea Panciera, editor of Projo.com, the Web site of The Providence Journal.

War and Olympics Coverage E-mail Lists
The Poynter Institute has launched two new e-mail lists on hot topics, one to discuss war coverage and another for discussion Olympics coverage. It's too early to tell how active or useful they will be, but they're probably worth checking out for anyone covering those topics or simply interested in them. 

Paper-Thin Video Screens
Dutch researchers say they've figured out a way to cram enough plastic transistors into a flexible surface to produce video -- which could help pave the way for electronic paper. A number of other companies are working on similar technology, but this is the first one to discover a way to make the "e-ink" refresh fast enough to create moving images. This could be the future of "newspapers" -- electronic editions on flexible e-paper that automatically update themselves (with journalists help of course!) as the news changes.

Freedom of Speech Online
A federal appeals court has upheld a lower-court decision that prohibited Web sites from posting DVD-encryption programs or even linking to Web sites that post such programs. A number of news organizations -- including the Online News Association, the Newspaper Association of America, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Wired News -- filed friend of the court briefs in the case. The case could have a profound impact on online journalism by restricting what original source materials news sites can link to. Read more about it on the ONA's Web site.

Online News Style
Several debates are raging on various online journalism e-mail lists right now about what style guidelines Internet news sites should use. Some argue that the Associated Press Stylebook remains the standard, while others say it's outdated and should change terms like "Web site" to "website" and "e-mail" to "email." But the debates are largely missing the point: The actual style you choose is less important than consistency across your publication. Many sites, for example, run both AP and Reuters stories without changing styles, which not only looks unprofessional, but can be very confusing to the reader. A good example is the different spellings of Arab names littering sites' news stories on the Afghanistan war coverage. CyberJournalist.net recommends starting with AP style, creating your own amendments to it that suit your site's mission and audience -- and remaining consistent. 

The Importance of E-mail Newsletters
When belt-tightening comes, should e-mail newsletters be cut? E-Media Tidbits has an interesting back-and-forth on the question between Steve Outing and Vin Crosbie. Outing criticizes Red Herring for dumping its e-mail newsletters to save money, arguing that they are "great at driving traffic to Web sites and "are most important to future Internet success when the economy rebounds." Crosbie, who runs an e-mail publishing company, makes a good point that Web sites are foolish to just send out e-mails with links to stories on their sites, and should instead send out complete HTML pages. Doing so, he argues, would take less work and offer more to the reader. "Imagine if a newspaper company daily delivered to your home not a newsprint edition, but a sheet of paper, a 'newsletter' that listed just the day's headlines and invited you to retrieve a newsprint edition from a newsstand or vending machine. Ridiculous? Yes, but that's exactly what many newspaper Web sites are doing when they deliver e-mail 'newsletters.'" Well said.

Photographer's Journal
The New York Times has produced another powerful narrated photographer's journal from Afghanistan, this time from staff photographer James Hill. It's good to see Times sticking with this format after the first one, featuring Vincent Laforet's words and images, proved so effective. The Times has found a great formula for adding context and emotion to its photographers' already-compelling images. It's a model other news organizations should emulate.

Bye Bye Yogi
The Wall Street Journal Online is killing the WSJ Yogi as of Dec. 1. The Yogi, powered by Stratify, is a free software application that acts as a personal assistant, suggesting supposedly relevant content to you as you browse the Web. Theoretically, it learns what you like from the articles you read and suggest others of interest to you. But mostly what it does is take up a quarter of your screen with mostly useless links to press releases and stories you could easily find on your own, have already read or have no interest in reading. It was a valient attempt at creating an intelligent news agent, though it remains to be seen whether people really want one, even one that works well.

Telling Stories Online
CyberJournalist's popular list of online storytelling forms and examples has been updated -- and now includes games, Web logs, wordless stories and more. Check it out and send in your suggestions of other forms and examples worth noting. 

Online News Summary Tool
Columbia University's Computer Science Department has developed an experimental tool called the Columbia Newsblaster that automatically tracks news events. Using "natural-language processing" technology, it summarizes reports from twelve news sources daily, including Reuters, ABCNews.com, CBSNews.com, CNN.com, FOXNews.com, WashingtonPost.com and USATODAY.com -- and conveniently offers links to each site's stories. Yahoo's Full Coverage still seems more useful, but it's an intriguing concept and it will be interesting to see how the project develops. Check it out. Is this the future of online news?

Internet Language Watch
Poynter's Steve Outing points out that the widespread use of 9/11/01 to refer to the attacks on the World Trade Center can be confusing to some people outside of American, because in other parts of the world dates are written 11/9/01 or 01/9/11. He says Web sites should only use 9/11, 9/11/01, and 911 in stories if they know that your audience is exclusively American. But the point, though, doesn't just apply to 9/11. No matter what the date being referred to, it's best to write them out: Sept. 11. Online editors should always keep in mind the global nature of the Web audience in using any terms.

Pay for What?
News sites considering charging for content should pay heed: a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project reinforces beliefs that few people are willing to pay for access to Web sites. About 17 percent of Internet users surveyed have been asked to pay to access Web sites they used to see for free, but of those, only 12 percent agreed to pay for access.  Salon hasn't done even that well. Norbert Specker reports in E-Media Tidbits that Salon has convinced only 23,000 of his 4.5 million monthly users to open their wallets -- less than one percent. However, those 23,000 will be responsible for 35 percent of Salon's budget this year -- not bad really.

E-mail News Alerts
Anick Jesdanun of the Associated Press reviewed the breaking news e-mail alerts from Yahoo!, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, The Washington Post and The New York Times and found, "The services vary in reliability and usefulness, and have their share of annoyances. But overall, they're a good way to follow big news as it occurs without traditional broadcast media." His advice? Use Yahoo! If you want lots of alerts, or any of the others if you want just a few; and subscribe to several, since each site has different news judgment.

American Airlines-Sponsored Crash Coverage?
Shortly after the American Airlines Flight Some readers may have noticed that ABCNews.com ran an ad on its cover for the airline -- right next to the crash coverage. This embarrassing faux pas ought to serve as a good reminder that random ad generation has its flaws, and sites need systems in place to prevent things like this from happening.

Air Crash Tests News Sites
A slew of publications weighed in on the burst of traffic on Nov. 12 after the plane crash in New York: AP, Reuters, @NY, Lost Remote and Internet Week. Most said the same thing: That sites have learned their lessons after being caught off guard on Sept. 11 by the unexpected traffic, rending many of the sites inaccessible. This time they were better prepared. Some sites stripped advertising and graphics. Others moved high-trafficked stories to special servers. Accessibility was much better than Sept. 11, but it still performance to most sites slowed in the morning. This is a problem that won't go away -- indeed, will get worse as more people come online -- and that news sites must address to be successful.

Quote of the Moment
Rich Jaroslovsky, Wall Street Journal senior editor, on online coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks: "The event showed how the Net fits people's information needs: more timely than newspaper, more in-depth than broadcast, more context than any other medium. The Net should not try to be TV or print, but fill the large space between the two." He made the comments at the Interactive Publishing Content Summit in Zurich -- you'll find summaries of other speakers here.

Ad-Funded Online News?
The BBC is planning a new international online news service that it hopes one day will be funded entirely by advertising. The site, to be run by a new new global news division that includes the commercial news channel BBC World and the government-funded World Service, hopes to turn to the ad-driven model once it can develop technology to target advertisements only at overseas viewers. The new site is expected to be announced in the next few weeks to take advantage of the increased demand for international news in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Instant History
Thanks to the Internet, the first book has been published about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, called "09/11 8:48 a.m.: Documenting America's Greatest Tragedy." Steve Outing writes on Poynter.org that the book represents a new form of journalism "made possible by the speed and ease with which the Internet allows communication and collaboration between editor and writers, and on-demand digital book publishing." He interviews the editors of the book, Ethan Casey and Jay Rosen. "There's plenty of journalism on the Internet," Rosen says. "Very little of it is of the Internet. We don't know yet what the Net makes possible because we're still asking how the journalism we've known and loved translates to the new medium -- or doesn't. This is a book, recognizable as a book, that couldn't have happened without a series of prior interactions born on the Internet." 

Online Journalism Credibility
The Online News Association have revealed preliminary findings from its Digital Journalism Credibility Project, based on nationwide surveys of the public and the media. The authors say the report's key finding is that online readers have yet to make up their minds about the credibility of online news. But J.D. Lasica writes in the Online Journalism Review about what he thinks is the most interesting finding: "The public has a higher opinion of online news sites' credibility than our Old Media colleagues do." Says ONA President Rich Jaroslovsky, "It's confirmation of what I've observed — the group of people who aren't as fully convinced of the bona fides of online journalists are other journalists. Print and broadcast news organizations see us and maybe feel a bit threatened or unsure of where we fit in. The public is more sure about the chops of online news than our colleagues are."

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