Forbes’ Everson on the importance of disclosing sources

Zach Kahn interviewed Forbes reporter Zach Everson on his use of public records to uncover the net worth of President Donald Trump.

Here is an excerpt:

“I think [media outlets] should have been quicker to realize that their role as information gatekeepers is gone. I think we need to do a much better job of disclosing our sources. Often, I use a lot of documents. I use a lot of public stuff. I like working like that because I can show my work. You can recreate what I’ve done.

There are some issues with that, in that it just doesn’t work well with HTML to be able to have everything. Like my draft, everything is fact-checked or is fact-checked with a footnote. Every single thing except for maybe a segue or if I do some words that aren’t, maybe a little bit more towards editorializing, some more analysis, but everything is footnoted. I would love to publish that if that were possible. The web’s just not really set up for that. And my understanding of SEO is if you cram too many links into something, Google’s going to think your article is crap…I think you need to show them how you did your research and let people recreate it.

We’re so siloed. I think that’s something that would help if you found people from other outlets talking. I have a couple of meetings regularly with other Forbes colleagues that are incredibly helpful. The best part is probably the once or twice a year when I go up there and meet these people face to face. Being able to have these conversations with people in person is incredibly helpful. I think it’s something that media overall would gain if you saw more outlets talking to each other like that.”

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