the background of the reporter or their presence in a place.

Every country has news consumers—and news avoiders—who are media illiterate. My job on Bluesky is to make them media literate. Please follow me. #Newsmedialiteracy (9/9)

Datelines are important because add credibility and show the news consumer that they're getting value for money. These days commercial news organizations depend mainly on subscribers, not advertisers, and (discerning) subscribers want journalism that is expert in some way, either through (8/9)

However, editors have to explain how the information was gathered. A dateline looks something like this: 𝗚𝗢𝗠𝗔, 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗼 — After the em-dash, the story begins. (7/9)

When a bylined story has a dateline, it means that the reporter/journalist has been to the dateline location to gather most of the information. If a reporter has not been where the story is happening, the story shouldn't/doesn't carry a dateline. (6/9)

Newspapers/news organizations have stylebooks/styleguides (I'll talk about these in future posts) that explain bylines and datelines—and the policies around them. And what are datelines? (5/9)

Each of the 15 reporters will get a byline.You can clearly see why 𝗣𝗣𝗝, or professionally produced journalism, can't be fabricated news/fake news/misinformation/disinformation. People who are out to misinform sometimes don't care about bylines. (4/9)

In this case, a newspaper writes a tagline at the bottom of the news story stating that so-and-so contributed to the story. Some news stories, especially stories about major events, can be reported by more than 15 reporters. The New York Times does this quite often. (3/9)

journalist reporting a news story. It's something like this: 𝗕𝘆 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗮𝘇𝗶 𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗶
The journalist reporting the story is recognized for their reporting and gets credit in the form of a byline. Sometimes there may be one or more journalists contributing reporting. (2/9)

It is sometimes widely believed mainly because of news media illiteracy.

Every country has news consumers—and news avoiders—who are media illiterate. My job on Bluesky is to make them media literate.

Please follow me on Bluesky. #Newsmedialiteracy (6/6)

So, when politicians such as Donald Trump call news organizations "fake news", they're pandering to political supporters who are media illiterate news consumers.
Fake news doesn't come from proper news organizations that do 𝗣𝗣𝗝. It comes from people pretending to be journalists. (5/6)

They have vastly experienced editors that rigorously factcheck their work. Names of places, names of sources have to be spelt and pronounced (in case of broadcasters) right. (4/6)

Jayson Blair, for example, did it for The New York Times. But the newspaper did apologize and has since instituted measures that make it hard for its journalists to report fake news.
In a proper newsroom, journalists have to adhere to a code of ethics. (3/6)

Journalists at world-class, well-established, news organizations report stories deeply and verify them obsessively. Consequently, it is hard (though not impossible) to fabricate news. Of course, some rogue reporters have managed to fabricate news. (2/6)

Do you help freelance journalists?