Building trust in news through transparency

Ipsita Agarwal, writing back in the summer:

There is perhaps a concept to be experimented with where a news publisher builds a news literacy project containing explainers of how some of its best reporting was done — how was the information collected, verified, and presented; who did it; and just how meticulous was their process? Perhaps bringing transparency to the process of journalism would show a publishing institution as a group of trustworthy individuals.

This was one of the ideas we were experimenting with in the mid-2000s, as we used blogs to maintain a more consistent dialogue with our readers, including giving them regular behind the scenes looks at how stories were created.

And then the news business gave it all up for Facebook “engagement” by the 2010s.

This is a way of working we need to revisit much more seriously.

(Yes, I’ve had some tabs open too long.)