The fol­low­ing memo was issued to edi­tors and reporters of the Wall Street Jour­nal on May 14, 2009:

Online Activ­i­ties

The use of social and busi­ness net­work­ing sites by reporters and edi­tors of the Jour­nal, Newswires and Mar­ket­Watch is becom­ing more com­mon­place. These ground rules should guide all news employ­ees’ actions online, whether on Dow Jones sites or in social-networking, e-mail, per­sonal blogs, or other sites out­side Dow Jones.

• Never mis­rep­re­sent your­self using a false name when you’re act­ing on behalf of your Dow Jones pub­li­ca­tion or ser­vice. When solic­it­ing infor­ma­tion from read­ers and inter­view sub­jects you must iden­tify your­self as a reporter for the Jour­nal, Newswires or Mar­ket­Watch and be tonally neu­tral in your questions.

• Base all com­ments posted in your role as a Dow Jones employee in the facts, draw­ing from and cit­ing your report­ing when appro­pri­ate. Shar­ing your per­sonal opin­ions, as well as express­ing par­ti­san polit­i­cal views, whether on Dow Jones sites or on the larger Web, could open us to crit­i­cism that we have biases and could make a reporter inel­i­gi­ble to cover top­ics in the future for Dow Jones.

• Don’t recruit friends or fam­ily to pro­mote or defend your work.

• Con­sult your edi­tor before “con­nect­ing” to or “friend­ing” any report­ing con­tacts who may need to be treated as con­fi­den­tial sources. Openly “friend­ing” sources is akin to pub­licly pub­lish­ing your Rolodex.

• Let our cov­er­age speak for itself, and don’t detail how an arti­cle was reported, writ­ten or edited.

• Don’t dis­cuss arti­cles that haven’t been pub­lished, meet­ings you’ve attended or plan to attend with staff or sources, or inter­views that you’ve conducted.

• Don’t dis­par­age the work of col­leagues or com­peti­tors or aggres­sively pro­mote your coverage.

• Don’t engage in any impo­lite dia­logue with those who may chal­lenge your work — no mat­ter how rude or provoca­tive they may seem.

• Avoid giv­ing highly-tailored, spe­cific advice to any indi­vid­ual on Dow Jones sites. Phrases such as “Travel agents are say­ing the best deals are X and Y…” are accept­able while coun­sel­ing a reader “You should choose X…” is not. Giv­ing gen­er­al­ized advice is the best approach.

• All post­ings on Dow Jones sites that may be con­tro­ver­sial or that deal with sen­si­tive sub­jects need to be cleared with your edi­tor before posting.

• Busi­ness and plea­sure should not be mixed on ser­vices like Twit­ter. Com­mon sense should pre­vail, but if you are in doubt about the appro­pri­ate­ness of a Tweet or post­ing, dis­cuss it with your edi­tor before sending.

Related

• Social media poli­cies at cor­po­ra­tions, news orga­ni­za­tions and non­prof­its

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