They’re watching your edits

Posted on November 3, 2006 by Danny Sanchez

I caught this on Cyberjournalist: Some folks have set up a site called NewsSniffer to monitor the editing of comments and stories on the BBCNews site.

The site “aims to monitor corporate news organisations to uncover bias.” I’d count on this interesting idea spreading to other news sites if I were you.

The site also tracks story revisions and highlights them. If you made a dumb typo, NewsSniffer will call you out on it.

The online producers who work at the BBC may need to re-evaluate their procedures for moderating comments now that they’re under the microscope. How are comments moderated at your news organization? Is there a thought-out set of policies, or does it rely on the judgment of the moderator at the time? Is it done by a staff member or a third party?

If sites like NewsSniffer pop up everywhere, will it have a positive or negative effect on news site message boards?

About Danny Sanchez

Danny Sanchez is the Audience Development Manager at Tribune's Sun-Sentinel.com and OrlandoSentinel.com. Danny has been with Tribune since 2005 in a variety of editorial, digital and product development roles in Hartford, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. He has also previously worked in the newsrooms of the Tampa Bay Times and The Miami Herald.
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2 Responses to "They’re watching your edits"

  • By Journalistopia » They’re watching your edits (Part II) November 29, 2006 - 9:23 am

    […] Add to that, the NewsSniffer site, which tracks all of the changes made to BBC articles, such as corrections, style changes, added paragraphs and anything else (SEE: ‘They’re watching your edits’). […]

  • By Journalistopia » SofaTube: A different way of looking at content January 31, 2007 - 6:24 am

    […] But picture this: How long will it be before someone starts remixing your news site’s headlines or other content into something more user friendly? Or, as I’ve said before, a site like News Sniffer may come along to monitor all your edits and republish all the filthy comments that are moderated. Either way, I get the feeling that Google News is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this sort of thing. Should such operations be embraced for the attention and interest they generate? Or will they eventually go too far with using the five-finger discount for content? […]