Introducing source reviews on NewsTrust

Today we're pleased to announce a new NewsTrust feature: You can now rate or review news sources on our site, in much the same way as you review individual stories. If reviewing a story is comparable to rating individual dishes at a restaurant, then source reviews are like rating the restaurant itself -- like you might do on Google, Yahoo or Yelp.

Source reviews combine a quick trust rating with a thoughtful note about the source's journalistic strengths, weaknesses and areas of expertise.

We've already begun using valuable information our users have added to calculate these trust ratings, and we encourage you to refine your ratings of news sources whose work you're familiar with.

This feature has two key applications: source reviews and rating your sources.

 

Source reviews 

To review a source, click on its name anywhere on the site to go to that source's profile page. Then fill in the "Review this source" form in the middle of that page.

The source review form has three parts:

• Rate it: Do you trust this publication? (Rate it on a scale from 1 to 5.)
• Add a note: What are this source's strengths and weaknesses?(Write an open-ended comment.)
• Expertise: Which topics is this source an expert on? (Click all that apply -- or add more topics in the box below.) 

To review a source, click on its name anywhere on the site to go to that source's profile page. Then fill in the "Review this source" form in the middle of that page. Once you've saved your review, you can go back and edit it anytime. 

You will also see reviews from other members on source pages:

For more detailed information on source reviews, check out our FAQ. 

 

Rate your sources

On our "rate your sources" page, you can rate our most popular news sources all in one place. Each source has a quick-rating area, where you can rate a news outlet on a scale of 1 to 5. You may see that some are already filled out; that's feedback you've already given us. If your ratings have changed as you've read more news, please update them and add more!

 

Thanks to our team

We'd like to thank Engineering Manager Subbu Sastry and Designer Caleb Waldorf for their hard work on these applications. Executive Director Fabrice Florin and Managing Editor Jon Mitchell also played key roles in development, and the NewsTrust team is excited about the rollout of these features.

We welcome your feedback on these changes -- feel free to leave a comment below or send an email to feedback at newstrust dot net.

To jump to rating your sources, click on the badge below.

 

Thanks for your participation!

Reinventing the news at Northeastern

Earlier this month, Northeastern University professor Dan Kennedy, a longtime NewsTrust reviewer and advisor, invited his journalism students to review stories on NewsTrust as part of his Reinventing the News class, as he had done in previous years.

Prof. Kennedy prepared his students for this exercise with the help of Mike LaBonte, another veteran reviewer, host and advocate of NewsTrust. Since last year's partnership, we've developed a range of new educational tools to help students tell apart fact from fiction in the news.

Here's Prof. Kennedy's report about this year's project, republished here from his blog.

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Social-networking the news with NewsTrust

Reinventing the News students. For more photos, click on image.

As has become a ritual in Reinventing the News, last Friday, April 1, Mike LaBonte, an editor with NewsTrust, visited our class and helped run a demonstration. NewsTrust is a social network aimed at identifying and rating news stories on criteria such as accuracy, thoroughness and fairness.

This time, we took advantage of advancements in the NewsTrust software to try something new. Jon Mitchell of NewsTrust set up a group page for us, so all student reviews can easily be found there. Earlier today, students finished their NewsTrust reviews for the week and posted their thoughts about the experience on their blogs. Here are the direct links to their NewsTrust posts:

Anna Marden Brianna Tulp Chelsea DeCesare Erin Kelly Gail Waterhouse Jake Sutera Laura Nelson

Lindsey O’Connor Lucas Schoeppner Michele Richinick Pat Tarantino Robert Bumsted Sarah Moffitt Taylor Dobbs

- by Dan Kennedy

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As always, we were very impressed with the quality of reviews from Reinventing the News students, and we loved their blog posts about their experience. Here are a few of our favorite reflections from students:

"I enjoyed my rating exercise, because I’m much more knowledgeable with the site and now I can hopefully use it as a resource for my blog posts. I enjoy how users can rate journalists and weed out poor journalism."
- Brianna Tulp

"News Trust depends on many levels to function and ensure quality; from the thousands of people who rate articles to the editors to the admins. The basic concept behind News Trust is great, people can choose articles and be able to trust them before they even begin to read based on others comments. This is also its flaw though. Everyone should read articles critically and not rely on someone elses rating of the article as whether or not it is valuable"
- Sarah Moffitt

"Though NewsTrust isn’t generating the traffic I feel it needs to effectively serve its intended purpose, I plan to keep reviewing and posting stories to the site. I really like the interface and the concept put forth here, and I hope to see the community grow and the traffic grow until NewsTrust can properly filter the day’s stories."
- Taylor Dobbs

Prof. Kennedy offered these remarks after the conclusion of the exercise:

In my experience, NewsTrust helps students think critically about journalism -- what's good, what's bad and how a story could be made fairer or more thorough. Because I teach journalism, my hope is that NewsTrust will lead students to become not just better educated consumers of news, but more thoughtful practitioners of their craft as well.

 

We're very grateful to Dan and his students for participating on NewsTrust and sharing their good insights with us. A big thanks as well to veteran NewsTrust host Mike LaBonte for presenting our work to this year's class.

To learn more out educational partnerships with NewsTrust, check out our 2010 Education Report.

- by Jon Mitchell