Are you plagiarizing?

Just because you're not copying someone else's work exactly as written, doesn't mean that you're not guilty of plagiarism. As writers who often rely on other sources for facts pertinent to our own news reporting, we must have an accurate understanding of exactly what is and what isn't plagiarism. Rather than relying on my own interpretation of the term plagiarism, let's look at a couple of independent sources.

The Instrument of Judicial Governance from the University of North Carolina defines plagiarism as "deliberate or reckless representation of another's words, thoughts, or ideas as one's own without attribution..." I added the bold for emphasis.

USLegal.com defines the term as follows:
"The intentional or unintentional use of another's words or ideas without acknowledging this use consitutes plagiarism..." Simply enough, right? As long as you, at some point in your article say what you've 'borrowed,' you're covered, right? Wrong.

USlegal.com goes on to say: "There are four common forms of plagiarism:

• Duplication of another author's words without quotation marks and accurate references or footnotes.
• The duplication of another author's words or phrases with footnotes or accurate references, but without quotation marks.
• The use of another author's ideas in paraphrase without accurate references or footnotes.
• Submitting a paper in which exact words are merely rearranged even though footnoted."

Again the bold is mine for emphasis of certain points. Let's go over these four forms of plagiarism, one by one. Then, I'll give four examples of published news articles reporting the same event to help understand how to follow these points in practice.

The first of these four, I think, is pretty clearly understood. Copying another person's work without crediting them is wrong and constitutes plagiarism. Few would have issue with that.

The second may be less widely known. Most might say, ok, I forgot quotation marks (or didn't know I needed them), but I correctly credited the source of the material I used, so it isn't plagiarism. Not quite, the purpose of the quotation marks is to set aside the borrowed material, so that readers know exactly what was borrowed from your cited source and what is your own creation. In the age of Internet, it may be permissible to use other forms to delineate exactly what was taken.

An indented bit of text, with a different background color, font, or size that is intentionally made to appear as though it were cut and pasted from another source, could, arguably substitute for quotation marks, so long as the source is properly attributed, for example.

The exact beginning and end of the quoted text should, however, be made unambiguously clear to the reader. Without quotation marks, the reader cannot tell what part of your writing is yours and what, exactly, is someone else's creation.

The third bullet point is where I, unfortunately, see either much ignorance, confusion or disregard for the definition of plagiarism. It is plagiarism to read an article written by someone else, and rewrite it in your own words, without fully, specifically, and properly citing that source, according to the USLegal.com definition. Reading a New York Times report that says:
"Among the more than 80 people that activist groups reported killed by rockets and bombs through the day, two were Western journalists, the veteran American war correspondent Marie Colvin, who had been working for The Sunday Times of London, and a young French photographer, Rémi Ochlik." Does not give you liberty to write in your article: "A French photographer and a Sunday Times of London reporter were killed during fighting in Syria," without directly citing the source of that specific piece of information. Furthermore, citing the NYT article once at the beginning of your piece does not give you leave to paraphrase the entire article or major sections of it, or to paraphrase it in multiple places throughout your article without further attribution. For example, on the first page of the above-referenced NYT piece, you'll find three specific references to information that the authors gleaned from one or more Reuters reports, as well as other citations for other facts and statements that they used.

Lastly, the fourth bullet of the USLegal.com definition tells us that we can't shirk our responibility to use quotation marks and specific attribution, just by rearraging the words. If some wrote "The police apprehended the suspect at 4:30 pm, on Saturday." You can't simply write "On Saturday, at 4:30 pm, police apprehended the suspect," without quotation marks and accurate references or footnotes. That still represents the original author's idea and words, not yours.

Here are examples of the same event reported by four separate sources.
1) WMUR report of a harp seal on a Hampton, New Hampshire beach published at 2:33 pm on February 19th
2) A report of the same event published at Patch.com published on February 20th
3) My own report of the event at Examiner.com published late in the day on February 19th 
4) A report from Foster's Daily Democrat published on February 21st

(Note: Go read them, but don't leave nasty comments accusing anyone of anything, please. My purpose in writing this isn't to call anybody out, but to educate based on some convenient examples that I had on hand.)

Of these four, the WMUR report was the first published. I was at the scene and have first-hand knowledge that residents attending the event contacted WMUR. From the wording of the WMUR report, it also appears that the author also contacted The New England Aquarium for additional information although they did not specify that source by name.

The second example needs a bit more scrutiny. The first paragraph, appears fine from a palgiarism perspective. There's a sentence containing two factual statements and a proper attribution to the WMUR article that I used as example #1. Note, however, that the Patch.com article says the seal "washed up" on the beach, which is a factually inaccurate assumption by the author based on the WMUR report that  the seal "was out of the water."

The first sentence of the next paragraph at Patch.com violates the second bullet point of the USLegal.com definition of plagiarism. It is a word for word copy of the statement made by WMUR without quotation marks, but properly referenced. This gives the impression that the Patch.com author created more of that sentence's wording than "the television station said." The rest of the Patch.com article's second paragraph is a combination of direct quotes and paraphrasing of the WMUR article's third paragraph. The Patch.com author has done nothing original here except to change one perfectly good WMUR sentence into a fragment, and change the source of the pronouncement of a healthy diagnosis that WMUR attributed to The New England Aquarium, to the volunteer (from the Blue Ocean Society) who never, in fact, spoke to WMUR before the WMUR article was initially published.

The first sentence of the third paragraph of the Patch.com article is lifted directly from the WMUR article's second paragraph although the Patch.com "author" changed the word "common" from WMUR's report to "not unusual" in his. He also dropped the words "when they want sleep or" from the WMUR report, otherwise copying their sentence verbatim. There is no attribution at all for the ideas or the copied words in the third paragraph of the Patch.com article. The next Patch.com "sentence," (I use the term lightly, since it is actually a sentence fragment) is another assumption by the author guessing at the emotional state of the onlookers that WMUR said were present. The remainining sentence and a half of the Patch.com article are original, linking two earlier articles by the same author on related topics (although I can't vouch for the originality of those two linked articles).

Plagiarism? According to the USLegal definition, unequivocably. Was the author aware that he was plagiarizing? Given the grammatical errors in the article, one could argue that he was unaware of his crime, which, given USLegal's "intentional or unintentional" verbiage, would make no difference in court, by the way.

The third example is one that I wrote published after the WMUR report. It however, contains much information not contained in the WMUR report, based on my personal knowledge and first-hand reporting, as I personally witnessed the events and spoke directly to the volunteer from the Blue Ocean Society who was alerted to the seal's presence by the New England Aquarium. There are no phrases or ideas lifted from the WMUR report. Paraphrased information from The New England Aquarium is properly cited. The facts in the final paragraph were written from my own knowledge, but since they may not be common knowledge to a majority of readers, in retrospect, they should have been cited from some independent source, to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

The fourth article, from Foster's Daily Democrat, was written by someone who was clearly not present at the location. It is quite possible that the author of this article was alerted to the situation by reading one of the previously published articles, but they contacted original sources, spoke to a named individual at The New England Aquarium extensively as well as the Blue Ocean Society volunteer. Although this article uses sources common to other articles, the New England Aquarium and Patty Adell, it is clearly original. The Foster's reporter may (or may not) have gotten the idea for the story from another published source, but he did his own reporting and did not simply rehash any existing articles that he may have read. 

You Don't Have to be On the Scene to Write About It

These examples consist two articles created by people involved directly at the time the reported event was occurring (one at the scene, one by telephone), and two created by people who apparently learned of the event afterward. You don't have to be at the scene to write about an event, but you do have to do more than repeat what someone else has already written, whether or not you paraphrase their exact words - even if you cite your source.

If you create even a properly attributed article based on other published sources and every sentence refers to another source, then, quite aside from issues of palgiarism, you should ask yourself exactly what you are bringing to the table. What are you offering the reader?

It might be a unique analysis of the events, a comparison of the event's coverage by several different sources, additional information not contained in previous reports, a more complete report than is found elsewhere by amalgamating information from a variety of sources, or anything else that makes your article uniquely your own and of unique value to the reader rather than a simple rewrite of someone else's work. Even if your editor allows simple rewrites to slide by, it's not your work and you have no business publishing it to steal traffic from the original source.

Yahoo.com Front Page Feature

Recently, I had an article of mine featured for several days on the front page of Yahoo.com. It was included in "Editor's Picks" and "Today on Yahoo!" The first appears at the bottom of every news page or article on Yahoo! and the second appears in multiple places including the top, featured position at the home page of Yahoo.com.

I get two questions most frequently from other writers about it. 1) How did you get featured? 2) How many views did it receive?

First, let me say that I've had editors from the Yahoo! Contributor Network (Y!CN) pitch articles of mine for the front page before. At least one made it there previously, but had a shorter run of just a few hours.

Getting featured can depend on luck to some extent. If you have just written about a topic that suddenly becomes very newsworthy and your article is relevant, editors may drop it in to take advantage of the timeliness of  the issue. Then there's always the other breaking news factor. If aliens land on the lawn of the White House, then your article about the National Collegiate Cheerleading Championships might get pushed aside for front page feature consideration.

In any case, it generally takes a body of high quality work that demonstrates your ability to write accurate, interesting and original material. In two of the four cases where my work was pitched to the front page, an editor at Y!CN contacted me in advance and offered a topic that he thought might be a good fit for the front page. For another, I had just submitted an article and it just happened to coincide with a planned press conference by President Obama on the same topic. Another was suggested to me for front page consideration, but missed because the angle I took was a bit too controversial.

Once, an article was suggested, but in doing the research, I found that the suggested premise, though widely accepted by media outlets and various web secondary sources, was inaccurate. I wrote it up as something of a myth-busting article which provided better sources for that real information. It wasn't the fun, human interest piece for which the front page decision makers were hoping.

In short, I don't know of any sure-fire way to get a piece featured on the front page at Yahoo.com except to write well consistently, attract the attention of editors with the quality of your work (and/or by becoming a Featured Contributor), and to be willing to accept difficult assignments that may or may not pan out despite an investment of research time and effort. Also be prepared for one or more title changes and additional editorial scrutiny of any article that is being considered for the front page. I think Editor's Picks, Today on Yahoo! and the text news listing all used different titles for my recent feature, none of which were passed by me before publication (which is fine by me).

As for the second question, my most recent featured article received about 1 million views in the first 24 hours, and about another million over the next 48 hours and during a repeat feature the following weekend. Those who write for Y!CN know the page view bonus rate for Y! News and can calculate that the earnings from that single article went into the thousands of dollars.

In addition to the 2 million page views, it was posted to Facebook by over 13,000 users, Tweeted over 1500 times resulting in more than 45,000 page views via Twitter, and shared by 245 people on Linked In. The article itself was also mentioned and linked by The Huffington Post, Forbes online, and a host of other sites. CNN did a feature piece on the same topic 3-4 days after mine appeared on Yahoo! all of which is helping the article gain about 1000 readers per day long after it passed out of the main stream's attention span.

I'll also note that it was copied in its entirety and otherwise plagiarized by more websites and blogs than I care to mention. That comes with the territory, so learn how to enforce your rights under the DMCA.

I've heard of other Yahoo! feature pieces from Y!CN freelancers getting even more page views than mine by a wide margin. I've also heard of others not doing as well.

Finally, I know some writers don't like to say which of their articles do very well for fear of copycats going after their topics, but I've always felt that the Internet is a very big place. It also helps that I tend to write current events type issues that have high, but fleeting popularity rather than evergreen material. At any rate, here's the article that received the front page feature position for a number of days at Yahoo.com. Feel free to share a link to the original on Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, your blog, or anywhere else. I get paid by the page view and every one counts. ...and don't forget to follow this blog using one of the following option in the margins.

Good Journalistic Advice from the Howard 100 News Team

For those with satellite radio subscriptions who listen to the Howard Stern Show, the Howard 100 News team actually gives a solid piece of journalistic advice, albeit in a humorous fashion. The tag line they use in one of their promos is "If you mother says she loves you, check her sources."

While I take it on faith that my mother loves me, after all she is giving first hand testimony to that fact, when it comes to news-worthy leads, I check everything. Recently, for example, It was suggested that I write a news story about October 5th being the most popular birthday in the USA by the News Director of the Yahoo! Contributor Network. He generally provides me with pretty solid leads, sometimes offering me contact info. for specific news-worthy leads and suggesting article topics that he'd like to pitch to the Yahoo! News front page folks.

Sometimes they pan out and sometimes they don't (and sometimes they require extraordinary effort on my part: "If you can find someone who was present at 'X' event 60 years ago, we'd like to publish an interview with them."). That's great, I am thankful and lucky to have such a good relationship with the person who decides whether to pay me for an article. I pursue the leads offered to the best of my ability whether I think they are likely to be profitable to me or not, often investing many hours in research before I really know whether there is a story there or not.

The October 5th birthday story was no different. I accepted the challenge and went to work, assuming that the premise was true. Indeed, at first it seemed that every web reference agreed. October 5th is the most popular date for birthdays in the USA because it coincides with a New Year's Eve conception, they said. Hmmm. I was born on October 2nd, which is certainly within the big part of the bell curve for those babies conceived on the same date as those born on October 5th. So I asked my mother, "Is it likely that I was conceived on New Year's Eve?"

"Yes," she replied that she was almost certain of that.

I noticed, however, that one source was cited by most of the websites and news stations which were reporting October 5th as the most popular birthday. Those that didn't cite a specific source had specific language or numbers that were too similar to those cited by that same, singular source to be coincidental.

Furthermore, the data upon which that original source based its claim was unavailable. It would have been easy to cite the same source used by such news outlets as NBC4-TV out of Washington, D.C., and all the others, but one source without the backing evidence just doesn't pass my standard of reliability even though that was the storyline requested by the News Director. So I asked myself, who might have actual birth record data and statistics? The government, for one. So I did a search restricted to .gov  sites and came up with the CDC data contained in my report which was inconclusive but tended to cast further doubt on the October 5th meme.

Looking further, I found a 2006 study by a Harvard professor who listed all 366 days of the year (including leap year's February 29th) in order of popularity, based on a study of many years of birth records. His data was more in line with the CDC data and was quite different than the source used by almost every website that talked about the most popular birthday in the U.S. I could have, and should have, gone one step further and called the Harvard professor who did the study and asked to see his data for a solid answer to the question, but by this time, my deadline was fast approaching and it didn't seem possible to make the contact and review the details of the study in time to publish the story at all.

With three sources in hand, but without the raw data to confirm their findings, I cannot say definitively upon which date the most popular birthday falls. I can say, however, that the October 5th date is pretty doubtful, and that's the story I went with. You can read it in its entirety at Yahoo! News by clicking the link below.

• Is October 5th Really the most Popular Birthday in the United States?

Libel revisited

First, let me say for the record, that I am not a lawyer or legal expert, and this is not intended as legal advice, but as an example of and commentary on best (and worst) practices.

I wrote about jumping to conclusions when reporting about the actions of specific persons or companies. I said that you can report what someone else said about the person as long as you say that that person said it and don't do anything to validate the statement. I didn't mention, and I should have, an important exception to that rule. If you know or have reason to believe that the statement is false, but print it anyway without acknowledging that you know or suspect it to be false, then you can still be held responsible for any damage to a person's reputation (or business) resulting from the publication of those statements.

Here's a case where the NY Post is being sued for just such an action. In this case, the NY Post cited unnamed sources "close to the defense" who made very damaging statements about the woman who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault. The NY Post apparently accepted the word of people with every reason to lie in order to discredit the woman. If they did additional research to verify the claims, there was no  mention of that in their report.

Without any attempt to verify or qualify the statements, it could be argued that the NY Post is validating their credibility. In fact, as CNN points out in the linked story above, the NY Post article specifically said the woman was "doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests, The Post has learned." That statement in particular shows that the NY Post believes the accusations and strongly implies that they have investigated to back them up. It adds validity to the allegations backed by the reputation of the NY Post.

Anyone can go out and find someone to make stuff up about someone else for the sake of getting a sensational headline. That doesn't absolve a reporter or a publisher of their responsiblity if there's good reason to doubt the veracity of the statements. In this case, the allegations made involved a number of third parties, who presumably could have been tracked down and questioned by the NY Post, but apparently weren't.

A paper can be wrong, but they need to show that they undertook reasonable precautions to make sure what they were printing was true. If you actually go a step farther and treat third party allegations as facts that you have verified, you'd better make very sure that you did verify them. Perhaps, the NY Post did that in this case and will be vindicated, who knows. Better reporting could have prevented the situation in the first place.

Why use original interviews as source material?

As a journalist, non-fiction writer in a niche topic, or a generalist, your work can benefit greatly by interviewing others and using their knowledge and quotes in your articles. By asking questions and listening to the answers, you as a writer are acquiring original source information that is absolutely unique no matter how many other writers are working on the same topic. By going directly to the source, your article benefits from increased credibility.

A thousand people can write about the latest study linking the excessive eating of ice cream and unprecendented gains in longevity by using the original published research paper as a primary source. All one thousand of those writers will have access to the same facts, the same researcher comments, and will all see that original source material worded exactly the same way. Many of their reports, even those found at major outlets like Reuters, AP, and Yahoo! will be very, very similar in content and tone. By talking to the lead researcher directly, however, you can follow any angle of questioning that you think is interesting. You'll get original quotes that are different from those that appear in every other published report on the subject and you'll almost certainly get facts and insights to which no other writer has access.

In other words, you'll be able to turn out a better article than anyone who relied only on material that is presented in identical fashion to everyone. That's not to say good, or even great articles can't be written without original interview material. They are every day. It is ultimately a question of the writer's imagination, creativity, skill with words, discipline and experience that dictate the quality of any article. Starting out with higher quality, more unique source material such as an original interview, however, gives the artist a bigger pallette from which to fill the empty canvas.

As if that weren't enough of a reward, you may find yourself earning higher upfront payments for these highly original articles as well.

For some, finding the right people to interview can be difficult, though. On one of my other blogs (Interviews with Experts), I am launching into a series of posts about identifying, contacting  and securing interviews with original sources from many different walks of life from the everyday person, to the knowedgeable expert, to the celebrity.

Reporting on 'hints and allegations'

Ideally, every news reporter would adopt a Joe Friday approach, "All we know are the facts, ma'am." There's a place for commentary and opinion, but news reporting isn't that place. A well-written news article should present the facts and let the reader form their own opinions. Unfortunately, in my opinion, that doesn't happen much anymore.

Separating fact from opinion in news reports

There are certain instances where a writer must be especially careful about blurring facts and opinions, whether the opinions belong to her or to someone else. Generally, those instances involve cases where what is said could be damaging to someone's (or some company's) reputation. We can write about allegations, accusations, convictions and indictments as facts, but not the underlying actions unless we were personally witness to them and would be willing to testify to them under oath in a court of law. For example, "When I arrived on the scene, the fight was still in progress and Joe Smith was alternately shoving and being shoved by Sam Jones." I saw it, I would attest to it under oath, I can write it.
However, if, when I arrived, Joe and Sam were in handcuffs, all five people I asked said they saw the two shoving each other and described the altercation in detail, a police officer told me they were being arrested for disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and assault, and I heard Jones yell out, "Ness time I'll do more 'n jess shove you ta th' groun'," just before he vomitted onto the side of the police cruiser. I can not write a factual news article stating that Smith and Jones were shoving each other, that they were drunk, or anything about their specific actions (other than saying that Jones yelled out whatever I heard him yell).
I can write something like the following:

On Friday evening at approximately 11:45 p.m., the Rutland City Police arrested Joe Smith and Sam Jones outside of Notorious Nightclub on Main Street. The arresting officer, Detective Joe Friday, said the pair were being arrested for disorderly conduct, public drunkeness and assault.

Mike Jones, who said he was the brother of one of the accused, said "Sam wasn't doing nothing. Joe just walked up and hit him over the head with a beer bottle. Sam just turned around and pushed him away, you know, acting in self-defense." Four other bystanders, however, claimed to have seen Jones spit in Smith's face immediately prior to the altercation.

Bartenders could not say how many drinks were served to the pair prior to the trouble in the parking lot. Officers at the scene would not comment on the results of a breathalyzer test administered to Smith and Jones. 

John Baptiste, who was behind the bar at the time said that Jones had been asked to leave the premises on several previous occasions, but could not say why.

In this example, I am not reporting as fact anything I didn't see. Instead I am reporting that an officer told me this, four bystanders (whose names and phone numbers I jotted down for my file) told me that, and Mike Jones told me something else. In this case, I could testify that these people told me those things, but I can't say for certain whether any of what they said is actually true or not. I did not personally, in my article, accuse anyone of anything or make assumptions about anyne's guilt or innocence.

It would be entirely wrong to write: On Friday evening at approximately 11:45 p.m., Joe Smith and Sam Jones were carted away in handcuffs after brawling in the parking lot of Notorious Nightclub on Main Street. Jones, a known trouble-maker, started the fight by spitting in Smith's face. Smith retaliated by hitting the larger man in the head with a beer bottle, but was shoved to the ground and could have been in for much worse if police had not arrived to break up the fight. While the majority of onlookers provided consistent descriptions of the fight, Jones' brother Mike seemed to leave out key pieces of the story to protect his big brother. Both men were drunk when they left the club and even the bartenders lost track of how much alcohol the men had been served that evening. Notorious Nightclub lives up to its name as events like those of last night seem to happen on a regular basis there. Perhaps, if the hired help were trained well enough to recognize when someone has had enough to drink, they could keep their patrons out of jail.

In the latter example, I have personally accused two men, Smith and Jones, of specific criminal actions. I have make actionable statements against the management and staff of Notorious Nightclub, accused Mike Jones of lying, and personally accused Smith and Jones of being drunk. Both I and my publisher could be sued over each of these statements, since they are all based on hearsay or unsubstantiated assumptions and damaging to someone's reputation. I don't know if the two men were drunk, if Mike Jones was lying, or if the four other bystanders were cousins of Smith and were lying on his behalf. Any of them might have been mistaken. I have one bartender's assertion that Jones had been removed from Notorious on previous occasions, but have personally interpreted that by calling Jones a known trouble-maker, another potentially actionable allegation on my part. While I might be able to successfully defend against civil suits against some of these claims, if the results of the breathalyzer tests were admitted and showed the men over the legal limit, for example, my allegation of them being drunk might get dismissed, but some are indefensible - was Mike Jones lying or simply mistaken?

Let's assume several weeks go by. Jones died from a subdural hematoma the next day, Smith is going on trial for murder. I can say that Smith has been arraigned for murder, he is being tried for murder, he has been accused of murder by the prosecutor, but I cannot call him a murderer, or say that he killed Jones. I can say that the coroner stated that the autopsy revealed the cause of death was a blow to the head consistent with being struck by a beer bottle, as Smith was alleged to have done two days prior to the Jones' death.

If Smith is convicted of murder, I still cannot call him a murderer with absolute impunity. I can say he has been convicted of murder, found guilty of murder, or is serving a life sentence for murder, but if the conviction were overturned later, my calling him a murderer outright would be proven to be incorrect.

In short, a factual news article can report allegations or statements made by others who are cited in the text, but should never make claims, accusations, or assumptions about events to which the writer was not personally a witness.

Although personal allegations against individuals are the most common instances where this comes into play, it also applies in other areas. I can't say for sure, for example whether cell phones cause brain tumors or not. I can say that 17 independent studies have found no evidence that cell phones cause brain tumors or that Mike Jones, brother of Sam Jones who was  originally thought to have died of a subdural hematoma after being struck with a beer bottle, now claims that his brother's death was caused by a tumor triggered by his cellphone. "He never had no tumor before he got a cell phone," Jones shouted from the courthouse steps over the protests of his attorney.

The writer should let the reader know the source of every bit of information in the article that isn't widely known public knowledge. I don't need to provide a source for information like, "the President of the United States was born in Hawaii." If I wrote, however, "Hawaii remains the President's favorite vaction spot," I'd need to cite a source such as "he told Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Show last night."

Related blog post: Interviews

I just wanted to drop a quick note here that I have another blog called "Interviews with Experts." It is mainly dedicated to collecting all the interviews I have done with experts on various topics, but it also includes posts which discuss issues that have come up in the course of conducting interviews and my experiences around the interviews themselves. Since interviews are a key news data gathering tool, I am mentioning it here for those that are interested, but I'm generally not going to cross-post every entry from there to here.

Establishing credibility part II: Commentary

Even commentary pieces must be built on a firm foundation of unassailable facts. To convince a reader that your opinion has merit, you must have a higher amount of stored credibility because you are risking drawing down on it with every subjective or opinionated statement you make. Your credibility is taxed in direct proportion to the degree of outlandishness that each such statement contains.

For example, each of the following statements puts more of a strain on the author's credibility because of the increasing deviation from mainstream opinion. 1) We should subject anyone coming into the United States from a country of special concern to a more thorough search when boarding an airplane. 2) We should apply a more thorough search to anyone who fits the physical and behavioral profile of previously identified members of a terrorist group. 3) We should subject anyone of Arabian descent to an extended search. 4) We should deny U.S. entry to all foreigners. 5) We should nuke 'em all.

Each of those statements requires the writer to make a much stronger case built on a foundation of facts strong enough to support the authors' opinion, until you get to a statement like the fifth one that is entirely unsupportable and transforms the commentary article into a rant regardless of how much credibility the author has banked with the rest of the article. Carl Sagan may have said it best when he said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." That applies not only to scientific endeavors, but also to news commentary.

Readers understand that news commentary contains subjective statements based on the author's opinion. Good commentary leads a reader down a logical path. At first, the path should seem like familiar territory to the reader. They should feel as if they are walking on a firm grounding of familiar facts. The author can place plausible opinions in among the facts, like a will-o-wisp drawing the unwary reader deeper and deeper into the writer's forest of logic. The best commentary will take a reader to an unfamiliar destination, sympathizing with the commentary writer's opinion, without them ever realizing they left their old familiar path.

Establishing credibility Part I

I remember when the evening television news anchor was the most trusted man in America. When Walter Cronkite said "...and that's the way it is," we knew that that was indeed, the way it is. It wasn't his opinion. It wasn't his spin, or his interpretation of the a situation. It was the News with a capital N and that meant facts, just the facts, and nothing but the facts.

Cronkite had that trust because he had developed a reputation and his credibility was beyond reproach. Honestly, that's the way I prefer my news. Give me the facts, and let me decide what I feel about the situation on my own. I don't need a triumvirate of morning show hosts to shake their heads and pass judgment on the news as if their opinion is more valid than that of anyone else.

Unfortunately, though, as Walter might have said that's the way it is these days. Commentary, opinion and facts are all ingredients in today's news recipe. Some recipes may call for more of one ingredient than the others. The net result, however, is that hardly any of us would volunteer the name of a modern day news anchor as the most trusted person in America these days.

As news writers, however, it is our jobs to present the news in a credible fashion. If the reader doesn't believe what we write, then we are wasting their time with our words. Simply saying something that's true doesn't always automatically translate into believability. As professional writers it is our jobs to choose words carefully. We can choose words for their emotional connotations, and that's fine, as long as we are also careful to use words and write with a credible voice, using solid logic applied to verifiable facts.

If I write that the most popular car color is red, I need to support and qualify that statement. Without that support it is not a credible statement and it detracts from any point I want to make in whatever I'm writing. After all, if I am caught in an error one time, the reader can only assume that the rest of my article is questionable as well.

To support the fact that the most popular car color is red, for example, There are several ways to go. I can remove my credibility from the equation altogether by attributing the statement to someone else. If I say "Joe Smith, the owner of Joe Smith's Fine Used Cars in Hoboken, New Jersey, told me that the most popular car color is red," then the reader can make a judgement about the validity of the information based upon their opinion of Joe Smith's credibility and his qualifications to make such as judgement.

Whatever the reader decides about Joe Smith, I, as the author, cannot be judged on the relative merit of that statement unless, in the rest of my article I assign it some credibility that differs from the reader's assumption. If I say "therefore, my recommendation for car companies to save money is to only make red cars because it is the most popular color," then I have added my reputation and credibility on top of Joe Smith's by personally validating his statement. Now again, my credibility is on the line with the reader.

Every fact or statement in a news piece either builds on the writer's credibility because it is explicitly sourced, or it relies on the credibility capital the writer has already built with the reader. A news writer's credibility balance sheet cannot go into negative territory or readers (and editors) will decide that your article has no real worth to them.

The Title as a Promise to the Reader

Whether in fiction or non-fiction, the title is a promise
to the reader that must be compelling enough to make the
reader choose your book off the shelf or click your article
from a search engine results page.
Photo by Brad Sylvester.

Titles of web news articles serve many purposes. They help increase search engine rankings, entice potential readers to click on them, and a host of other functions. At it's most fundamental level, however, a title is a promise, it is a personal commitment from the author to the reader (and to search engine algorithms) about the content of the full article.

As with any time that one person makes a promise to another, the author's reputation depends on whether or not that promise is kept. At a higher level, the website's reputation or rank with search engines also depends on whether that promise is kept.

Let me explain. Let's use a fictional title: "Killer Hiding Out at Bronx Zoo." That's an eye-catching title that might cause someone who sees the title to click on it to read more. Why will they want to read more or to ask another way, what has the author promised them with that title?

By clicking on the title and reading the full article, the reader expects to learn who or what the killer is, why the killer is at the Bronx Zoo, whether the killer is still there, if there is any ongoing danger, and the reader expects to be entertained by it all.

Entertained? Really? Yes. If the author were promising only straight information without entertainment, the title would be less... let's say, mysterious and playful. It might read "Deadly Egyptian Cobra Missing from Bronx Zoo." By using the word killer, which normally implies a person in this context, the author is saying "let's have some fun."

The facts can be delivered very quickly and succinctly, almost police blotter style and that's exactly what CNN has done with the above-lined title. In about 100 words they have delivered the facts, exactly as promised in their title. They tell you where the cobra is, how deadly it is, whether the public is at risk, and what steps are being taken by zoo staff to locate the snake. Furthermore, the CNN report even explains why it's called an Egyptian Cobra as the inclusion of that information might be inferred by a typical reader from their title. The CNN article delivers on the promise of the title and upon CNN's reputation.

With our title "Killer Hiding at Bronx Zoo," we've made a different promise which includes entertainment on top of the facts. Our title reads more like a murder mystery, and so should our article. "Officials on Sunday released a statement advising the public that a dangerous prisoner has escaped and is still at large. The escapee remains highly dangerous despite the fact that it is unarmed, and indeed, unlegged as well."

To keep our particular promise, we'll deliver all the facts, but describe the situation in the terminology and style of a crime drama. We might ask members of the public to report any sightings to the Bronx Zoo, giving out real contact information. We'll use original sources like statements from the Bronx Zoo, but we'll also use other sources that help us differentiate ourselves from the traditional news outlets. We might use the social media pages of the Bronx Zoo for updates and public comments so we can include original content like "While some Bronx Zoo Facebook fans like Nikola Marijana Bankovic expressed fear and vowed "We'll be staying away from the zoo until the snake is located,' others viewed the situation more humorously, 'Cobras eat rats,' noted New York resident Julie Charles, 'maybe it's headed to 85 Wall [Street].'" We might include a pencil drawing of the cobra mimicking the work of a police department's forensic sketch artist, or a wanted poster. [Note: check the TOS of the specific social media site to see if using other people's statements is allowed. A really good case could be made posts made to the fan pages of public entities (like the Bronx Zoo) have no expectation of privacy and are de facto public statements, but I'm not a lawyer so check into what's allowed for yourself. Ask the help desk of the particular social media site if you have a question and save the response.]
We are not going to outcompete traditional outlets like CNN or Reuters with simple restatements of facts, and that's not what Yahoo! News wants us to do. They have access to wire services and their own in-house news crews for that. Instead, they are looking for Y!CN writers to offer unique viewpoints, deeper background information, and original presentations on popular news topics.
That's not to say that we should always take a humorous approach. Serious topics demand a serious tone, but whatever promise we make with our title, it should be different than the promises made by every other news service. By making and keeping promise with every single piece of content we write, we'll not only build our own reputation with readers while developing our own style and voice, but we'll also be preserving our search engine rankings and news feeds.

What does localization mean?

Some web news publishers, like Examiner.com and some assignments at the Yahoo! Contributor Network ask news writers to contribute localized news stories. If news happens in your home town, that's easy, but if you happen to live in a little backwater town where the biggest news is that the only gas station in town ran out of premium gasoline for three hours on Thursday, then it can be a challenge for those unfamiliar with other ways to localize news content.

Localization simply means to make the story particularly meaningful to readers in your community. Depending upon the assignment or Examiner title you have, that may be your city, county, state or even multi-state region. There are a myriad of ways to accomplish this task for almost any major national or international news story.

A simple way to add a local angle to a national news story is to ask yourself a series of questions:

Could it happen here? Why or why not?

How does it affect my community? This one is terribly broad - thinking just about the tsunami in Japan, it could include such topics as: Will any radiation reach us here? Is imported Japanese food safe to eat? Has business at a local Japanese restaurant dropped? Will it take longer to get the new iPad (due to lack of Japanese made semiconductors)? Will the local Nissan dealer/factory face supply issues?

Are any individuals in my community particularly affected? People with family in the affected area, exchange students from the area, local volunteers going to help, someone just returned a day before the event and avoided near disaster, someone who had been planning a future visit

Is there a local expert who can help my readers understand the issue? Professors at a local college with particular expertise about the event or local rescue workers/firemen/ police/ doctors talking about the nature of rescue efforts in the affected area, for example

Have local officials made any statements about the event? Are we prepared? Does this affect the future of nuclear power in our state? Are steps being taken to address potential safety issues? Did the local congressman express condolences?

Do I have any relevant personal experience related to this event? Has anything from your past given you special insight into the event? For example, "Running a small family farm in Biloxi, Miss., we have experienced any number of weather-related or other events that have hurt my yield, but the thought of our spinach, cows, or the very ground itself being contaminated with radiation from a nuclear plant dozens of miles away..."

Even localized sstories about national or global news events require good research on the original event. You should include early on in the article all the relevant facts about the event (from properly cited original sources as I mentioned yesterday) since this is the foundation upon which you'll build the local part of the story. In addition, you'll likely have research at the local level, finding and interviewing someone, local news broadcasts, or newspapers. Even off-line sources need to be cited.

The plus side of writing localized content is that it is much more likely to be a unique take on an event about which many, many articles have already been written. The down side is that it may not appeal to an audience as broad as a national news item without localization. This is not always the case, however. Sometimes, particularly compelling local stories can find a national audience.

In any case, always pay attention to the guidelines, ground rules, and other guidance provided by the publisher for whom the work is intended with regard to localization.