To be first or to be accurate?

Be first.

It was just this week I was reminded of the importance of that factor when it comes to reporting news. The Missourian would not run a story on the front page because our competition, the Columbia Daily Tribune had printed the story the previous day and we were late. We were last, which isn't where you want to be journalistically. The news is old - no one will want to read it.

Technology now provides journalists with an easy way to be first - to break a story - and in consequence to be deemed the best because of it. And as technology improves and grows, we're always looking for a better way to get news to people even quicker.

Getting your news by a text message on your cell phone is a common occurrence in today's technologically-savvy world. With most people carrying their cell phones with them everywhere they go, you're guaranteed an easy way to get the news to your audience before that person may even see the story on the Web.

Jason Leopold wrote about his desire to be the first to break news and how it literally became an addicition for him. But in the process he often got important things wrong in his story. In the talk we had with him in class he talked about how he had learned from those mistakes and how he now views accuracy in his stories to be more important than to get his byline on a breaking news story.

I do most of my work at the paper as a designer and copy editor. My job is to prevent inaccuracies from getting into the newspaper. The editing desk takes on the responsibility as the last line of defense for a publication's credibility. When it comes to online content, those levels of prevention are often thrown out the window in an attempt to post first.

An example of this also presented itself at the Missourian this past week. We had a story about how Columbia-based First National Bank & Trust had announced some major shifts in upper management with its increasing growth. We posted the story online immediately and then one of our student teaching assistants printed it off to edit it.

In an article on poynter.org about online ethics, it says, "In its highest form, journalism is the dissemination of accurate information...that puts service to the reader and the common good above any special interest or economic, political or philosophical agenda...such credibility will likely give journalism its enduring value in society." The article is all about guidelines for online journalists that were developed at a conference the Institute held last year to address issues and dilemmas special to the world of technology and journalism.

One of the topics was when to edit and when to get rid of gatekeepers for a story that needs immediacy. Just like the story for ColumbiaMissourian.com on the bank management, it was important to get it up on the Web as soon as possible, but the paper also took a big risk with its credibility by not editing the story before posting it. It's not necessarily a risk that should never be taken - TV stations take those risks often with live broadcasts.

Those at the Poynter conference discussed lots of topics, but one was about how to deal with corrections to news stories. There obviously is no easy way to track who is reading your content and find out at what exact time they might have read it. So if you post a breaking news story it is more than likely that the reader will take a quick glance at it and not think of it again, because they'll feel like they got what they needed out of the story. But if there is something wrong in the story and you go back later to make the correction there is no way to make sure that those who have already read the news get the correction they need.

You're providing a disservice to your audience anytime you blindly go into breaking news with technology. They might have inaccurate information and not even realize it, or if they do find out later that it's wrong, they'll lose that all important respect for your publication's credibility.

While I've identified a lot of the harms that technology can present to sticking to journalistic ethics, there are times that it can be beneficial to other ethical matters, such as being transparent. Online journalism provides the opportunity to show a lot of layers of journalism.

One instance is a series of articles that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran last month. Their online content was much more thorough than what was in the print version though and they used technology to their advantage by providing multimedia slide shows, blog entries, personal points of view from the reporter and readers, and links to sources they used. An important ethical issue that could have been lost had the newspaper not done it correctly, is labeling and explaining how each of those sections differ from traditional journalism. It was very transparent and it provided a forum for thought that a print version could not have provided.

Poynter's conference identified a set of principles and values that journalists should follow and that they "believe these ethical principles apply to all content, regardless of whether it's text, photos, audio, video, etc., and whether it's on the web, on a blog, in print, on broadcast, or delivered via email, podcasts or beyond."

Rules for journalists using technology are very fluid as of now, but as more awareness is being raised with things like Poynter's conference, we can only hope more online journalists will take those basic journalistic ethical principles into account before using technology for a different agenda than serving their readers with accurate, important and useful news.