Are corrections part of your transparency policy?

Your organization's online presence is visionary. Accessible. Multilingual. Frequently updated. Well-organized. Optimized for search engines.  Transparency is your middle name.

Now: Is all that true when you need to correct something?

You may think of corrections as the province of journalists (although making corrections prominent is a relatively recent phenomenon even in that field).  But if you're issuing news and information on the web, corrections should be a part of your transparency strategy.  How are you issuing them? How will your readers and viewers find them--especially if they don't go back to the post or article that's been corrected?  How will new viewers or readers find them?

To think through this imperfect science, listen to this public radio segment on corrections, featuring NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard and Craig Silverman, managing editor of PBS MediaShift Idea Lab, and co-author, with Jeff Jarvis, of a book on the topic: Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech.  One smart solution discussed in this show:  Publishing a specific RSS feed for corrections.  Depending on your audiences, you may need a different corrections feed for each topic or user type.  And the most major corrections will need prominent play of their own.

How are you handling corrections? Share your ideas and experiences in the comments.

Related posts:  How to correct a moving record on Twitter

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