Toe touch

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A toe touch is an unethical journalistic practice by which a journalist makes a short, often momentary trip to a city in order to justify a dateline being added to a news story. The bulk of the reporting may be done via phone or Internet, or by a separate researcher who does not actually write the article. The dateline then misleadingly implies that the writer did the reporting on-site.

The practice came to national attention following the Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times. Blair alleged that the practice, while technically against the rules, was condoned and often required by editors, and specifically by then-editor-in-chief Howell Raines, who liked the practice because it enhanced the Times' aura of omnipresent, worldwide news coverage.

Times writer Rick Bragg eventually lost his job in the aftermath of the Blair scandal, when it was discovered that he had used a dateline toe-touch for a story, relying on the research of an uncredited freelancer when he could have easily done the reporting himself.