Right now information about how news has been produced - who wrote it, when it was first published etc. - is not captured consistently or transparently. If it was it could be of enormous benefit to the journalist, to news organisations and, most importantly, to the public. News Credit is a way of capturing this information consistently and transparently.

The purpose of News Credit is to make basic information about the authorship and edit history of an online news article distinct and consistent such that:

• A journalist, or someone producing journalism, can be sure their work is accurately identified on the web
• A journalist, or someone producing journalism, can be transparent about the authorship and edit history of their work
• A member of the public has more information with which to assess an article’s authority and credibility when they are looking at it
• A member of the public can search the web using the transparent news information to focus their search
• News organisations, third party aggregators, and members of the public can use the transparent news metadata to create new ways in which to access and navigate news

There are at least four ways in which adding news credit can be valuable:

• Intelligent searching - using transparent news criteria (see here)
• Clear labelling - explaining where news articles have come from (like this)
• Opening up news data - so it can be aggregated, distributed and mashed up (e.g. Journalisted)
• Connecting news stories - enabling people to create connections and narratives