An Update on the Flower Mound News Project, and a big question for some of you

We're up to a half-dozen volunteers -- people who've e-mailed me to say their interested in helping us start the Flower Mound News Project (More below in this column.) So far I've gotten very supportive e-mails from several others in our community, including some of our top leaders.

One question has come up a couple of times, and it bears discussion here.

If anyone can be a reporter on the site, how can we know someone isn't posting news that isn't true?

There are several sites that are already functioning with a community-journalism model, and most have in place a system where anyone can post a story, but that story doesn't appear on the site until it's been approved by one of the site's volunteer editors. If the news being posted was about a community event, or something non-controversial, then the editor would likely need only check for spelling and grammar. If the news being posted was more serious or more controversial, then the editor would need to do some fact-checking, or perhaps take a closer look to make sure the story was journalistically sound, and fair and balanced in tone and perspective. It's not a perfect system, but it does weed out most of the crackpot posts we're likely to see. We may get people trying to post fake stories on the site, but we'll build a system of checks and balances to make sure our viewers never see those fakes.