Many people may have forgotten about Jayson Blair, the young journalist whose fictitious news stories caused a public relations nightmare for his employer, The New York Times. When the Times finally uncovered Blair’s long trail of deceit in 2003, it reported: “Mr. Blair was just one of about 375 reporters at The Times; his tenure was brief. But the damage he has done to the newspaper and its employees will not completely fade with next week's editions, or next month's, or next year's.”
There’s a lesson to be learned here for marketers. If you’re promoting or distributing content that contains errors or lacks quality, your company’s reputation could suffer. So even when clients demand you distribute their content as-is, you have a duty to review their work – and make changes, if necessary – before you promote it.
Blair was an outstanding writer who could describe a scene in such a way that the reader could visualize it. The problem was, that many of the scenes Blair described were loosely based on reality, and not anything he observed. The Times found that Blair had pulled facts from other news organizations – sometimes lifting entire paragraphs from someone else’s work, with no attribution. So how do you know if the content you’re reading is genuine, error-free, and reliable? You can start with a few of these strategies:
Misquoting someone is a surefire way to draw negative attention. So if you’re promoting content that contains quotes, review them with scrutiny. Listen to how someone talks, and you’ll notice very few people speak in neat, quotable sentences. Often, people will speak in stops and starts, switching topics, adding asides, and pausing for dramatic effect. So when you’re looking at a quote, if it seems perfectly eloquent, it may be incorrect. Some corporate communications, including press releases, might contain “canned quotes” – or, pithy remarks some PR person drafted on behalf of a company bigwig. If that’s the case, just ask if the person who allegedly uttered the quote has seen it and approved of it.
Always proofread content. Read it once, then read it again, starting with the last sentence and working backward to the beginning. Even if you don’t find errors, you may see an opportunity to strengthen the article. The Times recovered from Blair’s phony stories, but because he was able to deceive everyone for so long, the newspaper lost some of its credibility. Readers had no way to discern whether any story in the paper was accurate. In content marketing, you earn credibility by offering flawless content, so tell your clients that reviewing their work is essential to what you’re trying to accomplish for them.
