Credibility, terrorism, inclusiveness are themes at 2nd ONA conference
This column appeared Nov. 1, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site.
The Online News Association’s second annual conference in Berkeley, Calif., last weekend showed an organization with the talent and pluck to tackle the considerable challenges facing the online news industry, though growing pains were still very much in evidence.
The ONA folks unveiled the preliminary findings of its wide-ranging Digital Journalism Credibility Project, based on nationwide surveys of the online public and media professionals conducted in July. Time will tell if the events of Sept. 11 made those results moot.
The report’s key finding, the study’s authors suggest, was that online consumers have not yet made up their minds about the credibility of online news. But an even more telling finding, in my view, was this: The public has a higher opinion of online news sites’ credibility than our Old Media colleagues do.
That’s criminal. But hardly surprising. [Read more…] about Online news on a tightrope