What is it about?
What is "good" journalism and how can it be recognized? When does "good" journalism become "excellent" journalism? Conversely, what make "bad" journalism?
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Why is it important?
Many people might be happy to say, "I can't explain what good journalism is, but I know it when I see it." But editors need to do better that that when explaining what they expect. So do teachers of journalism. Young journalists and old journalists can benefit from this simple list of parameters of what are widely accepted as attributes of quality in news work.
Perspectives
When I started out as a teacher of journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto, I found there were no readily available rubrics (or none that I liked) for assessing students' work. The subjectivity of trying to decide what "good" work looked like made me wonder if there might be some standards or guidelines for recognizing it. I started with a small research project interviewing judges in awards programs. (Shapiro, Ivor; Patrizia Albanese, and Leigh Doyle, 2006: “What makes journalism ‘excellent’? Criteria identified by judges in two leading awards programs.” Canadian Journal of Communication 31/2.) One thing led to another, and in the end I had an evaluation framework that I wanted to share, in this paper--and in time, it made compiling marking rubrics so very much easier!
Prof Ivor Shapiro
Ryerson University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: EVALUATING JOURNALISM, Journalism Practice, April 2010, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/17512780903306571.
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