Online Editors Rate Web News Quality Criteria

George Albert Gladney, journalism professor at University of Wyoming, Ivor Shapiro, associate journalism professor at Ryerson University, and Joseph Castaldo, research assistant at Ryerson, present the results of a survey of online news people rating the quality of online news. In 2005 the trio invited 723 editors of online news sites, in the United States and Canada, to complete an online survey rating the importance of 38 criteria, divided into the following categories: content, interactivity, look and feel, navigation, functionality and community relevance. The answers of the 143 respondents reveal that many traditional journalism values cross over to the online news community, with credibility and utility ranking at the top.

[Gladney, George Albert; Shapiro, Ivor; Castaldo, Joseph:  2006, “Online News People’s Ratings of 38 Criteria of Quality of News Web Sites.” Newspaper Research Journal 28/1 (Winter 2007).]

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