Trusting News, a project intended to empower journalists to earn consumers’ trust, is adding research and training support through a partnership with the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
“Trust is the single most important issue facing journalism today—we must work in concert to help our colleagues in the industry or risk losing our institution entirely to the forces of disinformation and cynical manipulation of the news,” says Charles Davis, dean of Grady College.
The Trusting News project has worked with more than 50 news outlets since 2016 to find out what news consumers trust and to design strategies intended to build trust. Faculty members will recruit newsrooms in the Southeast to participate and train reporters and editors to implement Trusting News strategies, Davis says. The college will also help test those strategies, with the goal of producing at least one research study a year.The project, founded at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, is also supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Democracy Fund.
This brief appeared in the spring 2019 issue of Research Magazine. The original story is available at https://news.uga.edu/trusting-news-project-grady-college/.
