Magazine Training International is pleased to announce that trainer Dr. Michael Ray Smith has published a new book.

Fake News, Truth-Telling and Charles M. Sheldon’s Model of Accuracy: How a Clergyman Insisted on Accuracy as Job One discusses how audiences are daily subjected to a blizzard of information, some of which is deliberately incorrect. The best news organizations in the world are marshaling fact-checking teams to determine the accuracy of the news content. Computer wonks are working with the news industry to create computer programs that trace the information back to the source to determine the credibility of the information. Fact-checking is fashionable these days, but a little-known truth is that a clergyman-turned-journalist pioneered the passion for getting information right when he took over a general-circulation, mainstream newspaper in 1900 and tried to apply the adage, “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy” to every news article and advertisement in the periodical. He used his faith-based sensibilities to edit the newspaper and his work came to be called “The Jesus Newspaper.” Circulation soared with the experiment lasting only one week, yet it provoked the newspaper complex to reconsider some of its practices that are part of the fact-checking mania at work today.

Smith is an award-winning writer, photojournalist, academic, and conference speaker. He is a professor at Lee University. During a decade as a reporter and editor he penned more than 3,000 articles for leading newspapers. Smith taught at and/or directed journalism programs at colleges in Florida, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Virginia. He is the head of the Small Programs Interest Group of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. He holds a doctorate in communications from Regent University. Smith taught a writing course with Magazine Training International in Manila and has served as a live workshop speaker for MTI.