“Everyone wants to
play”
Craig Silverman
Meet Timothy
Timothy, Meet the Crowd
“Saying the news cycle moves at an ever-increasing
pace doesn’t even qualify as a cliché anymore.
But this felt like a new record. Reporting in one
minute, writing in one hour, a whole career
undone in one day. Reading the comments piling
up on the original post was a surreal experience,
as one reader after another checked in with
evidence, with links. It was journalism as hive
mind. ‘Everyone wants to play now,’ someone
wrote after posting a link.” -- Nancy Nall
"The largest increase in human
expressability ..."
"Group action just got easier."
--Clay Shirkey
“Fact checking ... is becoming
one of the great American
pastimes of the Internet age.”
Began in Opposition
to Press
“We can fact-check your
ass.” -- Ken Layne (2001)
Emerging Within
Press
Seeds of Participation
Lessons
• Desire to participate -- be specific, be
flexible
• Desire to criticize -- be ready, be
responsive
• Overall desire for fact-checking
What’s Next
• Open fact-checking systems that
embrace pro-am model
• Continued erosion of traditional,
closed model
• Continued weaponization of facts
and fact checking
Corrections: A Place
for Participation
Corrections
• 1548 -- “I shall never admit for any
affection towards countree or Kyn, to be
so partial, as wil wittingly either bolster
the falsehood or bery the truthe.”
• 1690 -- “...nothing shall be entered, but
what we have reason to believe is true...
and when there appears any material
mistake in anything that is collected, it
shall be corrected in the next.” -Benjamin Harris
• 1972 -- New York Times
Conversation
Tools
Editz.com
MediaBugs
Missing
• Ways to push out corrections
• Strategies for encouraging people to
report errors (credit, points, awards...)
• Process for tracking errors to improve
prevention, accountability
facebook.com/silvermancraig
twitter.com/craigsilverman
[email protected]
RegretTheError.com