Poynter's NewsU and APME to Kick Off Online Credibility Webinar Series: New Approaches to Dealing With Difficult Online News Issues

St. Petersburg, FL (PRWEB) September 23, 2009

The Poynter Institute's News University (NewsU) today announced the launch of a new series of Webinars, presented in partnership with Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) and Canadian Newspaper Association (CNA), that introduces new approaches to difficult online news credibility issues. The Online Credibility Webinar Series begins on November 5, 2009, and runs through May 2010.

"One of our missions at APME is to be on the front line in helping newsrooms set ethical and journalistic standards," said Bobbie Jo Buel, APME board president. "These Webinars will help journalists tackle the very real and very hard credibility and values issues that editors everywhere are wrestling with."

"It's an important discussion at an important time," said Howard Finberg, director of interactive learning at Poynter and its e-learning project, News University. "Poynter is excited to partner with APME and CNA in this effort to strengthen the credibility and quality of online news. What will make this Webinar series special is the additional material participants will be able to access."

The Webinars are the outcomes of projects undertaken by six newsrooms as part of APME's Online Credibility Project and funded by grants from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and APME Foundation. Each newsroom explored a specific credibility issue through research of current practices and targeted interactions with the public and online users. The six issues covered by the project and to be featured in the Webinar series include:

• Taking the "mean" out of story comments - Jack Lail, director of news innovation at the Knoxville News Sentinel, discusses the role a community roundtable played in helping the newsroom implement new guidelines on story comments.
• Maintaining credibility while pursuing new revenue - Kathy Best, managing editor for digital news and innovation for seattletimes.com, talks about how the advertising and marketing departments of the Seattle Times collaborated to discover what impact contextual advertising has on news credibility - and vice versa.
• Creating the most credible user-generated and newsroom-generated content - The Victoria (Texas) Advocate conducted a market research study designed to assess the credibility of user-generated content with the help of Ken Fleming, director of the Center for Advanced Social Research at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Editor Chris Cobler talks about how this study will influence the decisions the newsroom makes regarding this content.
• Breaking news without breaking trust - The Sioux City Journal newsroom researched how best to handle breaking news in an online environment. Editor Mitch Pugh discusses the impact this research had on issues such as naming persons of interest, correcting information in real time and when to report "what we do not yet know."
• Building Twitter and Facebook audiences from the ground up - Salemnews.com editor David Olson talks about new standards and practices at Salem News for putting its news on Facebook and Twitter.
• Creating fairness guidelines for archived content - Public Editor Kathy English of the Toronto Star reports on how newsrooms around North America are dealing with the issue of archived content, including requests to "unpublish" it.

Each Webinar will explain what was learned through the project, detail new policies or practices adopted as a result and provide the opportunity for Q&A. The cost is $27.95 for each Webinar with discounted tuition of $9.95 available to APME and CNA members. A key feature of Poynter's NewsU Webinars is its interactive elements, including presentation, video and audio. Participants will be able to see the presentation and ask questions of the presenter.

About Poynter and News University
The Poynter Institute is dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and media leaders. It promotes excellence and integrity in the practice of craft and in the practical leadership of successful businesses. It stands for a journalism that informs citizens and enlightens public discourse. It carries forward Nelson Poynter's belief in the value of independent journalism. For more, visit http://www.poynter.org.

Begun in 2005 with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Poynter's News University currently has more than 120,000 registered users, including 15 percent from outside North America. It is committed to providing interactive, inexpensive courses that appeal to journalists at all levels of experience and in all types of media. For more, visit http://www.newsu.org.

About Associated Press Managing Editors (APME)
APME is an association of editors at newspapers in the United States and Canada. It works closely with The Associated Press to foster journalism excellence and to support a national network for the training and development of editors who will run multimedia newsrooms in the 21st Century. The association has held a multi-day conference every year since 1933 in various cities around the U.S. and Canada. Our elected officers serve as national leaders in speaking out on journalism issues. APME also provides feedback to the worldwide cooperative directly and through the Sounding Board. APME is a nonprofit, tax-exempt association under Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code. Any person who is the editor, executive editor or managing editor, or holds any other title that provides for senior responsibilities for the news, online or editorial staffs of a member newspaper, is eligible for membership. APME is on the front line in setting ethical and journalistic standards for newspapers and in the battle for freedom of information and the First Amendment.

###