This chapter will take a deeper look into my own definition of credibility in online journalism. Taking the knowledge I’ve gained in the previous chapter, I will discuss credible practices and how they apply to the web. I will also draw from interviews with knowledgeable people specialized in the area, such as Jack McElroy, the head editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel and media managing editor Frank “Buzz” Trexler of The Daily Times.
In this chapter, I will be looking at the roles of objectivity and subjectivity in journalistic writing. I discuss a model of reporting, examples in which objectivity and subjectivity have come to the forefront, and how news sites approach the problem of speed versus veracity. Because credibility may be subjective to the reader or viewer, the practices I discuss will be general, pertaining to most sites rather than specific approaches tailored to specific sites. A review of journalistic web sites will follow in Chapter 3. I identify examples of credibility within established journalism web sites and blogs. For this section, I establish a grading system for journalistic web sites' credibility based on the good and bad examples that I showcase.
In the past, the news was charged with offering objective viewpoints in order to avoid bias. Opinion pieces are normally included in a different section of the newspaper. However, with journalists themselves creating blogs, and some bloggers writing for the front lines of the news, subjectivity is almost unavoidable. I believe a reader can use information from subjective pieces in order to draw his or her own conclusions about the article.