Editing tips for beginners: Determine website reliability
Read below for two tips to help you decipher how reliable information found on the internet really is.
Welcome back to this week’s edition of “Becoming a Better Editor”! To serve as a memory refresher, last week we discussed how to edit articles more effectively. My top three tips were to read for flow and content, then for grammar and AP style and finally, reading the article out loud. These tips will come in handy for this week’s newsletter as we discuss the importance of verifying online information presented in articles. If you ask any media communications professional to sum up the fundamentals of their job, it is almost guaranteed they will mention accuracy.
Checking the information you come across while writing or editing articles is an essential part of being an editor. The hard part about learning to verify is that there are no set rules for it. A lot of the verification aspect of checking information accuracy comes in the reporting process done on the writer’s part. So, editors put a lot of trust in the individual reporters’ verification process. However, one aspect many writers use while reporting is utilizing different websites and sources of information found on the internet. Because of this, editors can go to the websites provided in articles they edit to determine how reliable the website and its information is.
Before we get into this week’s discussion on the top two tips I’ve found to be useful for determining website reliability, first, I’d like to introduce the idea of information overload.
Information Overload
In today’s world, we are surrounded by technology. This makes accessing information extremely easy for virtually anyone. It takes less than a minute to open up an internet browser on a phone, tablet or computer, and find an answer to any question. And there are so many websites and outlets out there that it is easy to get overloaded with information found on the internet. Now, the problem lies in sifting through the websites to find which ones are offering credible sources of knowledge and which ones are misinforming.
As an editor, there have been many cases where I have been reading one of my writer’s articles and come across a website being used to source information. A lot of the time, the websites my writers use are credible; however, there have been a few times I have had to take out parts of an article or not publish it at all due to the website not being credible. While using websites as a source is an acceptable practice, issues arise when the believability, trustworthiness and accuracy of the information in the sites become questionable.
According to the article “Fact Checking: How to think like a journalist” by Janet Raloff — an editor for the website Science News for Students — figuring out what websites are trustworthy and which ones are not “takes work”. Raloff continued by stating, “In fact, it’s what every good journalist does daily. And students and other non-journalists can learn from the methods reporters use to determine the truth of what they read and hear.”
Essentially, just because you read or hear something on the internet, does not mean you should believe it without investigating it first. Also, there are ways to learn how to easily find out which websites are okay to source, and which ones should be disregarded. There are many, many tips to help decipher between good, reliable websites and bad sites; however, these are my top two.
Tip 1: Look for established institutions
The internet is full of bogus websites. When websites or other information found online is used as a source, look to see if the presented “fact” or information is associated with trusted institutions that have been around for a while. What are some examples of established institutions? Well, according to an article published by ThoughtCo., “Such sites may include those run by government agencies, nonprofit organizations, foundations, or colleges and universities.” Using these types of websites aids an article with some sense of accountability and accuracy since these sites have a “proven track” record for integrity and reliability (for the most part).
Below is an example of some government agency seals that may be used as a part of the individual agency’s website or found on other websites to show the credibility of information.
Below is my university logo. Oftentimes, if you use articles within a college or university’s website as a source, the information presented has been fact-checked by several editors before being published. I would advise reaching out to the author of the original article or the media relations professional of the college or university to check how recent the information is and ask if there are any updates. As a general rule though, college and university websites are trustworthy sources of information.
Tip 2: Use websites with expertise
Tony Rogers with ThoughtCo. explained finding a website with expertise perfectly, “You wouldn't go to an auto mechanic if you broke your leg, and you wouldn't go to the hospital to have your car repaired.” He did admit while this point is obnoxious — it remains true. When editing articles and looking into the websites sourced by your writers, see if the websites they used offer any kind of expertise in the content of the article.
For example, if you are editing an article about the moon, you may expect the author to use NASA as a source. NASA is an established institution that has been around for a long time and has a proven track record of accuracy. However, if you see the author used a blog post to report about the moon, you may question the accuracy of the information provided.
Using blogs as sources
As an author of a blog, I do not want to say that all blogs are not credible or trustworthy. However, there are some aspects of a blog that need to be examined if it is used as a source for reporting information. Aspects of the blog that need to be examined include checking to see if the author is using credible, established websites in their blog posts. The next aspect that should be checked out is seeing if the author has some sort of expertise in the topic of what their blog or newsletter is about.
As another example, I am a student majoring in journalism as well as an editor for a school newspaper that is run entirely by students. Because I have these experiences, I have some expertise in the area of editing. This means that this blog, “Becoming a Better Editor”, could be used as a trustworthy source for showing young editors some editing tips. These are my opinions of what I find helpful; however, I use credible and established websites to back up and explain why my tips are useful.
So, let’s go back to the NASA example I left you with earlier. If you are editing an article about the moon, and the author used NASA as a source, you know that is a trustworthy website. However, if the author used a blog, this means you should probably check out the blog website to see if the author is an expert on the topic and if they are using credible sources within their blog. If the author of the blog shows obvious bias or is presenting ridiculous, unsupported claims as fact, then the credibility of the blog being used as a source should be reevaluated.
Below is a two-minute YouTube video to help sum up this week’s discussion tips on deciphering website reliability as well as additional helpful tips I did not cover this week but find equally helpful.
Final takeaways:
Being able to decipher information found on the internet is a skill and needs to be practiced often to be perfected. This week, we talked about the overwhelming amount of information available on the internet and how to sift through the overload to find the “good sources”. My top two tips to help aid in this “sifting” process included: using websites that are established and making sure the authors of the websites or articles have some expertise in the content presented. We also discussed checking blogs for author credibility and expertise.
I hope you all find this week’s newsletter on my editing tips helpful. Let me know what you think in the comments! As always, have a great week and I will be back next Monday with your top editing tips to help you in your journey to Becoming a Better Editor.
I use the Media Education Lab as a resource. It is designed for educators, but your readers might find this interesting as well. https://mediaeducationlab.com/
Great article! This is a great article for many communication majors or any student looking how to write effectively. Great job on this one!!