Editors of publications regulated by IMPRESS had the opportunity to join different panels at the inaugural Trust in Journalism Conference 2018.
Vanessa Baird, Co-editor of New Internationalist, participated in the first panel of the day which addressed the question ‘Can journalism be partisan and high-quality?’. In reply to the key question, she said:
“I think you can do it. You don’t let your opinions influence you when you come up against the facts and speak truth to power. Part of that truth is recognizing our own biases. The journalistic convention is to go for the killer fact. It would be more respectful to our readership to show the range of facts”.
The panel on innovation in the independent news sector featured three other IMPRESS members:
Daniel Ionescu, Editor of The Lincolnite, spoke about focusing on organic growth on social media, particularly facebook, as a key to their success:
"How did we get to half a million readers? We try to be there for the people, where news is happening (…) We tried to become a sustainable digital newsroom".
Alistair Tibbitt, co-founding board member of The Ferret, discussed being a membership based news organisation and their connection to main stream media:
"We see ourselves as partners of the MSM (...) All our subscribers become reader members automatically. As a membership organisation, we also have an ethical advertising policy, for example, supported by our members".
Editor-in-chief of Star & Crescent, Sarah Cheverton focused on her title’s citizen journalism model:
"We don't take advertising on the website. (…) When we started, we were really frustrated by the state of local news. We knew there were a lot of opposition voices locally. So our aim was to plug in gaps. We got funding on the basis of what we were doing on the ground. We too see ourselves as complimentary to MSM".
Other IMPRESS-regulated publications present at the conference were: DeSmog UK, Asian Lite, Brixton Blog, RightsInfo, Waltham Forest Echo, Cooltura Magazine, 5Pillars and OnTheWight.
The inaugural Trust in Journalism Conference featured incredibly illuminating discussion about the future of independent journalism and the role of trust in that future. The 2018 TIJ Conference was a great success, roll on this year’s event!