Gaining Confidence

Editor and Publisher reports An internal committee at The New York Times has recommended (see the full report in HTML or PDF) steps to increase readers' confidence in the newspaper, including reducing errors, increasing coverage of religion, "rural areas" and "middle America," making reporters and editors more accessible, and possibly starting a blog.

Executive editor Bill Keller, who had asked the panel to study questions of journalistic credibility, endorsed the recommendations in Monday's editions, calling the report "a sound blueprint for the next stage of our campaign to secure our accuracy, fairness and accountability."

The committee proposed taking steps including encouraging high-ranking editors to write a regular column dealing with the internal workings of the Times -- this is in addition to the fairly new public editor's column. Other suggestions include using the Internet to provide documents used for stories and transcripts of interviews, and further curtailing the use of anonymous sources. It saw no point in boycotting background briefings.

Recommendation #4 reads: "Consider creating a Times blog that promotes interaction with readers."

They certainly have a long way to go to restore confidence. It will be interesting to see how far they go.