Community Voices ⎸ Fact-checks catch mistakes — every single time
"It takes time, but I know it's made me a stronger reporter," writes Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten, managing editor of Project Optimist.
I have a confession to make.
We fix an error in my work during nearly every fact-checking session.
I was surprised, too. I've been a reporter for more than a decade. I've been an editor for half that time. I've read more stories than I could ever count.
So it's fair to think my copy would be clean with limited mistakes, and most of the time, it is.
But our fact-checking process at Project Optimist is intense. Executive Director Nora Hertel goes through my work line by line. She asks how I know there were 12 kids at Harvest Hope Farm's camp the day I visited in June. I counted each child participating in camp that day and wrote the number down in my notes. We looked in the notes to be sure.
See what Project Optimist's fact-checking process looks like with Managing Editor Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten. (Erica Dischino and Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten for Project Optimist)
And wait — what day in June did I visit? June 12. We reviewed my Google calendar to verify that one.
We repeated that process with the entire story on Harvest Hope Farm, and every story I've ever reported for Project Optimist.
It's a process Nora learned during her time at Wisconsin Watch, and she wanted Project Optimist to adopt something similar.
But why? Don't journalists regularly participate in fact-checking sessions?
The short answer is no. There's not enough time for reporters and editors at daily news organizations to do the kind of intense fact-checking we do here (at least not the news organizations where Nora and I previously worked).
Of course they do some. As part of my editing duties before I joined Project Optimist, I always read a story once for content, then a second time to check name spellings, photo captions, figures, etc. Big stories or stories that we felt were particularly important got reads from as many editors as possible before publication.
But I didn't have the time to verify every single quote in every story.
My prior experience is why I'm thankful Project Optimist has such a strong fact-checking process. It takes time, but I know it's made me a stronger reporter.
Help support Project Optimist by contributing today — your gift will help us keep rigorously fact-checking our work.
P.S. If you get interviewed by a reporter and they get something wrong — your name spelling, a quote, whatever — TELL THEM. I don't know a single reporter who intentionally makes mistakes. You have to let us know we got it wrong so we can fix it.
P.S.S. If you spot an error in our reporting, email me at jen@projectoptimist.news.
And thank you for being here!