New app will track variety and placement of sources in stories
An app that will allow newsrooms to monitor who journalists go to for quotes in stories is being developed by two journalism professors at Ryerson University.
By Ilina Ghosh, for the Ryerson Journalism Research Centre
An app that will allow newsrooms to monitor who journalists go to for quotes in stories is being developed by two journalism professors at Ryerson University.
Gavin Adamson and Asmaa Malik, assistant professors at the Ryerson School of Journalism, say the goal of their project is to help newsrooms produce more balanced content. The pair recently received a $10,000 grant under the Faculty of Communication and Design Creative Innovative Fund to build the prototype of JERI: Journalism Representation Index.
JERI, a software application, will extract and categorize the types of sources quoted in news stories. By delivering a score on the type and placement of sources used, it will offer newsrooms and watchdogs a rare view of how journalists fare in representing stakeholders in each story.
JERI’s significance is in its potential to help journalists produce better and more balanced content, Malik said.
“It’s important because as journalists, we don’t have progress reports… [JERI] is a tool that can be used by newsrooms to look at their own coverage of [a] particular issue and to see where there’s room for more perspective.”
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H.G. Watson was J-Source's managing editor from 2015 to 2018. She is a journalist based in Toronto. You can learn more about her at hgwatson.com.