By Paul Greeley
817-578-6324, Paul@NewsBlues.com

NOTE: This is from Stacey Woelfel’s Substack column, The Last Editor by Stacey Woelfel.

Stacey Woelfel spent 35 years on the faculty of the Missouri School of Journalism.

And for 24 years, he was the news director for KOMU, the University of Missouri-owned NBC affiliate for central Missouri.

News Blues does accept submissions for Guest Commentaries, but we reserve the right to publish or edit them. Send your commentary to Paul@NewsBlues.com

It’s Time to Shine our Beacons as Journalists

I was in getting a wisdom tooth removed yesterday (I know, most of you got your wisdom teeth out when you were in your 20s, and here I am getting one extracted at age 66—go figure). As I was waiting to speak with the oral surgeon before the procedure, I was looking around his office. Aside from the typical tools of the trade, he also had his diplomas, board certifications and other trainings posted in frames on the wall. That got me thinking about how valuable it is to show people what you know before you tackle something for which they must give you their absolute trust. And while we as journalists aren’t yanking teeth or doing other medical procedures on the people we encounter, we can be performing a pretty invasive task for which we want them to trust us.

Trust in us—journalists–has been in shorter supply as each year passes for the past couple of generations.

Sometimes it’s because we do a sloppy job with a story (as in the de Blasio debacle I wrote about last week). But mostly it’s due to unfair and downright manufactured accusations of bias in what we do. I’ve mentioned it here before, but it became clear to politicians in the post-Nixon era that if your policies are generally unpopular with the public, you can’t stop journalists from reporting on them. But you can get the public to stop believing journalists. And we’ve seen remarkable progress in that approach, getting our audiences to believe we are biased, untrustworthy and don’t tell the truth. It’s gone so far that last week a parent was telling me a child—nine or ten years old—dressed as a reporter came trick-or treating on Halloween. As the girl got her candy and walked back down the sidewalk, a number of ADULTS where jeering and yelling “fake news!” at her.

Maybe it’s time we start displaying our credentials in the same way medical professionals do.

We should be showing not only our education and certifications, but also what we accomplish on a regular basis doing our jobs. Now, you might say we do this already, with reporters typically having a bio on the station or newspaper web site.

But these tend more toward short personality blurbs with passages such as this (I don’t want to pick on a single person, so name changed): “Jane Reporter loves to work out, read, listen to music and hang out with her cat.  You will probably find her in a local record or bookstore.”

I don’t need those details from my oral surgeon, so why give them as a reporter? This same reporter has a somewhat more relevant sentence, but it just goes to show how little we’re making good use of these bios: “She enjoys all types of reporting, but is passionate about political stories and stories that can make a real difference.” Why say you like doing political stories that make a difference when it would be so much better to actually show those stories as a past accomplishment?

Instead of a casually written bio meant to make us look like fun people, here’s the template I’m suggesting we use for journalist “Meet the Team” pages, regardless of medium. I’m calling it a cresset, taken from a somewhat archaic word meaning an iron vessel that holds fuel for a beacon (you’ll see a modern take on why I chose this word in a moment).

Each cresset would reside on a web page for the journalism outlet and should have the following information about the journalist presented in it:

• · Name (of course)
• · Photo (we usually think of this for on-air people, but any journalists who will be contacting potential sources should include a photo to help verify they are who they say they are)
• · Contact information (email and phone number)
• · Social media links (LinkedIn plus any other accounts and platforms used for professional posting)
• · Areas of reporting expertise and experience (this should not only be official titles like “political reporter” but should also include beats covered as a general assignment reporter, e.g. education, health, etc.)
• · Impact created by stories (this would be a short list of impact, government investigations and changes as a result of the journalist’s reporting)
• · Links to significant and impactful stories the journalist has done (This should be a lengthy section and grow over time)
• · Professional experience (this should be a listing of the newsrooms at which the journalist is working or has worked, including how long at each)
• · Internships (relevant to journalism, of course)
• · Certifications and trainings (the journalist should list any professional certifications, like an FAA Part 107 drone certification, or any specific journalism training received post-college, as one would get at the Carole Kneeland Project, Poynter or other journalism training organizations)
• · Education (this should include not only the institution, but the area(s) of study, e.g. “Bachelor of Journalism in Broadcast News from the Missouri School of Journalism”)
• Now, as this is solely meant to show off a journalist’s professional credentials and expertise, here are a few things not to include in the cresset:
• · Hobbies
• · Family details
• · Favorite sports teams
• · Pets

Once the web page is up and running, we’re good, right?

Wrong. We don’t want to passively wait around for people to perhaps find it. We should put it forward in all our interactions with sources and the public. First and most obviously, we should include a link to the cresset in our emails with potential sources—and draw attention to it.

If can be part of the email signature, sure, but should also be noted at the top of any email going out cold to someone in the public.

I would favor a line right at the top in each email that says, “I’m an experienced and effective journalist with credentials to back up my ability to report stories fairly, accurately and without bias. I invite you to view those credentials here,” putting a link to the cresset right there for the email’s receiver to check out before reading any further.

There’s one last way to spread your cresset, and that’s via QR code.

Here’s where I call it a “QResset” (see what I did there). Create a QR code—there are a lot of free ways to do that—that sends people to the web page form of your cresset. Then, if you’re a TV reporter, have the station put that QR code in your on-air super that appears when you’re on camera (people who reporting for print or online should put a link to the cresset right with their bylines or head shots). Beyond that, put the QResset on your phone so that anyone you meet in person can quickly shoot the code and go right to your credentials. There are a number of sites that do a good job of doing this already, so even if you don’t have your own QR code set up yet, you can use an app like QR Me (the one I use) to quickly set up the link to your web page.

My oral surgeon is proud to show off his years of training and experience to put my mind at ease that he’s the right professional for the job. Let’s do the same and let people know we have the training and experience for them to trust us to keep them informed. Create your own personal cresset/QResset to be a beacon for your good work.

If I Knew Then, What I Know Now: A TV Journalist Reflects on Getting a ‘Do-Over’

https://newsblues.com/2025/11/11/if-i-knew-then-what-i-know-now-a-tv-journalist-reflects-on-getting-a-do-over/