Poynter.org is acknowledging “incomplete attribution” shortcomings with media news aggregator Jim Romenesko’s widely-read blog and in a post by Julie Moos this morning says changes are on the way. Nothing sinister, but a policy change to make sure verbiage lifted and attributed to other sources is encased in quotes, rather than merely related and attributed. An excerpt:
Thanks to the sharp eye of Erika Fry, an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review, I now know that Jim Romenesko’s posts exhibit a pattern of incomplete attribution.
Though information sources have always been displayed prominently in Jim’s posts and are always linked at least once (often multiple times), too many of those posts also included the original author’s verbatim language without containing his or her words in quotation marks, as they should have.
Noted: Romenesko announced a few weeks ago he’s downscaling his involvement with the blog, long a centerpiece of the Poynter website.
Image: Mediaite
