12 newsrooms work on 3 new APME social media credibility projects

Twelve newsrooms are working on three new social media credibility projects sponsored by the Associated Press Media Editors, and the results will be offered in Webinars at Poynter's News University in 2012.

The new projects will build on six online credibility projects completed in 2010. The full reports are available at https://webmail-ctc.ap.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.apme.com.

Funding for all of the projects has been provided through grants from the Ethics and Excellence Journalism Foundation and the APME Foundation.

They also have been supported by the Center for Advanced Social Research at the Reynolds Institute at the University of Missouri, and NewsU, the e-learning project of the Poynter Institute.

The goal of the social media credibility projects has been to help newsrooms create standards and new and better policies and practices in the expanding world of gathering news, publishing news and information, and managing the accuracy and credibility of our journalism.

New social media projects and participating newspapers are:

-- Individual and newsroom rights and responsibilities -- The Sioux City (Iowa) Journal; The Statesman Journal, Salem, Ore.; The Avalanche-Journal, Lubbock, Texas, and The World, Tulsa, Okla.

-- Credibility regarding verifications -- The Victoria (Texas) Advocate; The Seattle Times; The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.; Carroll County Times, Maryland; and The Brownsville (Texas) Herald.

-- Credibility when publishing material from social media -- The Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel and The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.

"We'll all gain from this new round of online credibility projects, which will be delivered in 2012," said incoming APME president Bob Heisse, executive editor of the Centre Daily Times of State College, Pa. "APME thanks these newsrooms for leading the way."

Webinars of the previous six sessions are available at https://webmail-ctc.ap.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.newsu.org/online-credibility-package for $74 for the remainder of the year.