My new column at CJR is an interview with Politifact founder Bill Adair, who is leaving the site and the Tampa Bay Times (where he serves as White House bureau chief) for a position at Duke University. Here's an excerpt:
BN: Now seems like a good time to look back at what you’ve accomplished at PolitiFact, which has become the most influential factchecker in the business, including winning a Pulitzer Prize. What are you most proud of about your work there? And what you think the next steps are for the factchecking movement in general and specifically for PolitiFact?
BA: I’m really proud of the way we were able to expand to the states. We have 10 state PolitiFact sites in key places such as Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, and Virginia, where reporters for our partner news organizations do Truth-O-Meter fact-checks.
Letting someone else use our prize-winning brand was a risk. But we applied lessons from the fast food industry (conduct lots of training, provide good manuals, and do quality control checks) —and it’s worked well. Last year, the factchecking by our partners at the Cleveland Plain Dealer was really important in the U.S. Senate race.
I think PolitiFact’s next step is to keep expanding. We want to find partners in the remaining states and see if we can expand internationally. We are partnering with a respected Australian journalist to launch PolitiFact Australia later this spring. If that goes well, we’ll consider other countries.
For more, read the whole thing.
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