The Columbia Journalism Review undertook the first survey of the relationship between magazines and their websites last year. About half of the respondents said that copy-editing standards for their websites were looser than for their print editions. An additional 11% said that online content wasn't copy-edited at all. The numbers for fact checking were even more troubling: 40% said that web standards were looser than print, and 17% said that they did no fact checking whatsoever online. And a little more than half of the respondents said they correct factual errors on their websites without notifying readers of the errors.
This raises the question: Is online content held to the same standards as its print equivalents? Given the prevailing business model, in which advertising is the principal revenue source for the vast majority of magazine websites, our answer is no.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.
