Since when did fact-checking become an obstacle to facts?

Matthew Ingram at Gigaom makes the extraordinary case in a post today that fact-checking should be done after the fact so that the reading public can see the mistakes and the subsequent corrections in a magazine story. His case seems to be that fact-checking would have removed or corrected the errors that Harvard historian Niall Ferguson is widely accused of in  a recent Newsweek cover story.

"If what we are after is more transparency when it comes to journalism, public fact-checking and debate is an integral part of that process...."

"My point is this," says Ingram: "Isn’t it better to have those criticisms and counterarguments out where readers can see them and inform themselves if they wish? And if Ferguson is the type of academic who plays fast and loose with the truth in order to make his argument, as Atlantic writer James Fallows seems to suggest he might be, isn’t it better that we know that by seeing his arguments in as clear a light as possible? If those errors or logical inconsistencies had been fixed by nameless fact-checkers at Newsweek, all we would really know is that the magazine has a good fact-checking department."

So let me get this straight. We allow the readers to be fed mistakes we could have caught so that, through comments, debate and coverage elsewhere (which those readers may or may not see) we can feel good about the integrity of the process?

Fact checking remains a priority, says Reader's Digest EIC Goyette

Reader's Digest, which this week laid off its entire staff of researchers and fact checkers (8 positions in all), remains committed to the fact checking rigour for which the publication has always been known, according to its editor in chief, Robert Goyette. 

"We remain as committed to fact checking as we ever were," he said in a phone conversation. "These are activities that bring value to the readers and we still value them highly." The difference now is that the magazine has made a business decision to save money by outsourcing fact checking and research to freelancers rather than having full-time staff doing it.

He said he was very sensitive to the uncertainties this would bring to the lives of those losing their jobs, but hoped to negotiate some degree of stability for some of them in terms of a guaranteed number of billable hours during a transition period. 

He also said that RD has recruited freelancers who are familiar with the magazine's standards and expectations and that the work would go on, regardless.

Reader's Digest magazine is effectively the last holdout in the broader company, where book publishing and other magazine titles such as Our Canada and Best Health already outsource fact checking and research.

A story about the layoffs on Mastheadonline quoted Goyette:

“We are shifting to a variable cost model,” he says. “With the old model we had permanent employees which had downtime after the issue closed and then were rushing to get it out in the last few days. Now it will allow us to better adjust the resources. It is based on a cost model which has been proven at other departments in the company, including Our Canada.”

This provoked a number of angry anonymous comments:

• "What every salaried professional longs to hear: 'Goyette says he hopes most of the affected staff will stay on with the company as freelancers.' "
• "I started my magazine career as a Reader's Digest fact checker and do not remember having much down time. In my experience, as magazine's staffs and budgets shrink, editorial staff do not have enough time, let alone down time. Why do management always keep their jobs while jettisoning the people who do increasingly more work with fewer resources?"
• "Variable-cost model?! Don't you mean the no-cost model? No cost for medical. No cost for dental. No cost for pension. No cost for long-term disability. No cost for life insurance. Aren't there laws against firing your staff then hiring them back on contract for less?"

Related posts:

• What fact checking means now
• Investing in fact-checking at Reader's Digest Canada

What fact-checking means now

Virginia Heffernan writes an interesting piece in the New York Times that compares and contrasts the fact checking of so-called "legacy media" and today's online competitors. She demonstrates the distance we've come from using red and no. 2 pencils and printed reference sources to what happens today.

"Only fact-checkers from legacy media probably miss the quaint old procedures. But if the Web has changed what qualifies as fact checking, has it also changed what qualifies as a fact? I suspect that facts on the Web are now more rhetorical devices than identifiable objects. But I can’t verify that."

Investing in fact-checking at Reader's Digest (Canada)

The editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest Canada, Robert Goyette uses his editor's letter in the May issue of the magazine [ not online] to inform his readers just how much hard work goes into fact checking every issue. In a time when many magazines are skimping on this vital function, RD invests in having five full time staff working on every issue. 

"In this issue, for example, they checked approximately 9,000 facts, consulting 458 sources (including experts and people quoted) and corrected 312 factual errors," [he said].  

Guide to magazine fact checking published

If you want something done, you've gotta do it yourself, sometimes. So it is with Cynthia Brouse, the reigning doyenne of fact-checking in Canada, who has now published a dandy little textbook on the subject called After the Fact: A Guide to Fact Checking for Magazines and Other Media. The book is available online through this link. Price is $16.95 for a paperback, $13.95 for a download of the book in pdf format.

[It] explains why magazines use fact-checkers when other media don't; how to put a fact-checking system in place; and how to go about checking the facts in an article. Fact-checking is a key entry-level or freelance position in the magazine business, a way for aspiring writers or editors to learn how a magazine works and how professional writers put together a story, and to develop relationships with editors that can lead to assignments or jobs. And the more writers know about what happens to their articles when they are fact-checked, the more prepared they’ll be to provide what editors want — and to protect their copy. These skills can be adapted to any medium.

Brouse will be using the book as the required text in her fact-checking course at Ryerson, but it has usefulness way beyond that. One of the things that distinguishes magazines from other media is this arcane, but incredibly useful process which -- a colleague said just yesterday -- "saved our bacon time and time again".

The award winning writer (gold for feature writing at the National Magazine Awards) and editor is the former managing editor of Saturday Night magazine in Toronto and was chief of copy editing and research for Toronto Life, as well as working for Maclean's and Canadian Business.

For five years she was on the English faculty at George Brown College in Toronto, and since 1987 has taught part-time in Ryerson University's School of Journalism and in its Magazine Publishing Certificate Program in the G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education.

Fair disclosure: I freely gave Brouse a blurb for her book. After a sneak preview, I called it a "gem", and I still think it is.

[Regular readers of this blog will recall the back and forth comments some time ago in response to a couple of postings on fact checking. The links are here and here.]