STL Social Media Guy

Newspaper editors don’t much like anonymous reader comments. Readers “don’t agree with us — but they don’t agree with each other either,” said J. “Bart” Bartosek, editor of The Palm Beach Post and chair of APME’s credibility committee.

Those conclusions come from a survey just out today by the Associated Press Managing Editors group and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. Bartosek presented the survey results in a webinar hosted by the Poynter Institute’s News University.

The survey was a wide-ranging review comparing and contrasting editors’ and readers’ views about what constitutes “credible” journalism. And a lot of the discussion centered on the use of readers’ comments on stories, blogs, forums and other forms of social media.

One question asked whether “it is a good idea or a bad idea that a web site does not require names” on readers’ comments. Sixty-four percent of the editors thought it was a bad idea, and 24 percent a good idea. Meanwhile, 40 percent of readers thought it was a bad idea, and 45 percent a good idea (within the margin of error).

Another related question: “How harmful or beneficial to good journalism online is inviting users to participate without using their real identities?” On that, again about 60 percent of editors said it was harmful. And again, readers were evenly divided on that question, about 40 percent each.

Unfortunately, the sample size wasn’t large enough to break down differences by age, gender, etc. I suspect generational differences might have been telling. Bartosek and moderator Howard Finberg acknowledged as much, saying the survey raised a lot of room for additional research.

Another question: How likely is it that you’d post comments on a site if your real name were required? Readers were evenly split on that, too: 47 percent said “likely,” an equal number said “unlikely.”

The study was a telephone survey of 500 readers (5-point margin of error) and 1,270 editors (3-point margin of error). About 40 percent of the editors were responsible for online-only sites; about 40 percent were responsible for both print and online.

It is worth noting, by the way, that readers and editors agree fundamentally about what constitutes credible journalism — getting the facts right, correcting errors, carefully labeling content (news, commentary, advertising, etc.).

And, finally, nearly 80 percent of readers said they find our news sites to be trustworthy. “That is a good base from which to build,” Bartosek said. “The credibility we have established with our newspapers has carried over somewhat to our web sites.”

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