Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Spotting Spin now easier than ever

Just saw this on ReadWriteWeb: a Firefox plugin that allows users to spot media bias and mark it as spin.


SpinSpotter is also expected to add a feature that will let readers know if a story uses language that resembles that of a press release.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

which means that those who write releases need to be that much more creative and less formulaic... something that does tend to be done at better agencies.

The flip side, however, is that this points out a very different issue... that more and more journalists are simply 're-using' info from releases rather than writing their own pieces based on the release. Yet another sign of shrinking newsrooms?

corinnew said...

I'm not sure how exactly that feature will work; whether it will look for cliché words/phrases, or compare news stories to a database of press releases (kind of like TurnitIn.com).

Either way, if it catches on I think it will force both PR professionals and journalists to do better work.

Christine Pegg said...

Only 9% of journalists are concerned about their declining credibility? That's horrible. It's about time something like this were to come along. Definitely a plug-in I will be looking into.

Anonymous said...

Interesting find Corinne! Pretty cute little video they produced as well.

I'll be auditing your class from my office again this semester!

corinnew said...

Hi Sue! I guess that's a good place to audit it from :-)