Transparency at All Things Digital

Michele McLellan of the Knight Digital Media Center writes about the excellent ethics disclosure at All Things Digital, the tech site run by The Wall Street Journal.

McLellan writes, “Each AllThingsD writer (plus a few other staffers) has penned his or her own ethics statement. There, they attempt to clarify issues that people might raise regarding their personal ethics or biases. AllThingsD makes these statements easy to find, via each contributor’s section of the site, or via their respective “about” pages.

“What I like about these statements is that they aren’t cookie-cutter corpspeak or legalese. They’re human — and even humorous — revelations. Each writer gets to decide which topics she or he wants to cover, and how. This can get pretty personal, and that’s a good thing.

“For example, check out the ethics statements of the site’s co-executive editor Kara Swisher. Like many of the site’s ethics statements, it begins with this preamble: ‘Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.’

“Swiftly, this statement veers into controversial personal territory.”

Read more here.