Sign of quality

A new report suggests that a 'digital kitemark' be used to differentiate quality journalism from 'the noise of the web', according to an item in pressgazette.co.uk.

What’s Happening to Our News, an independent report carried out for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, says such a visual signal could signal to users that `content offered on a website had been subjected to a rigorous series of checks, and further, had been created by a professional journalist employed to write in a specific field of coverage - as opposed to a blogger, writing for free and outside any formal editorial process or code of conduct.'

The report also recommends include tax breaks for newspapers, potentially through scrapping the VAT on digital advertising or reducing tax on digital income. The goal would be to 'mimimise the current disparity between the costs and revenue-generating potential of news websites,' the report says.

In addition, it calls for more easily accessible public information.

The report, to be launched at the Oxford Media Convention, is based on interviews with 70 editors, journalists, academics, MPs and regulators.