Our New Site Just Launched

We just launched a new version of the NewsTrust website to make it easier for you to find good journalism online.

We created this new site to provide a better user experience for new visitors and experienced members alike, through features like a new toolbar and simpler review form, more visual appeal and and a streamlined site layout.

What's New
Here are some of the new features in this 4.0 release:

New Look

• new site layout shows more variety, less clutter, colorful graphics, wider pages and larger text
• simpler navigation bar features subjects we cover most often, with a search tool to find more
• streamlined home page is more visual, with different sections for a wider range of stories  
• news comparisons show how different news sources are covering our featured topic
• top stories grid shows recent news and opinion, updated 24/7, as well as editor picks
• new story listings are organized by subject, with sections for opinion and today's feeds
• new site footer at the bottom of every page helps you find pages you need more quickly

New Tools

• new toolbar lets you review stories more quickly (replacing our old popup windows)
• short review form makes it easier for new members to review (only 3 questions)
• guest reviews let visitors rate stories without signing up first (like a free trial)
• 'post a story' tool lets you submit new stories faster (and auto-fills story info)
• smart feeds show recommendations from trusted sources and insightful thinkers online
• quick guide provides helpful tips on how to review a story and build news literacy skills
• activity streams list all your recent reviews and posts on your member profile
• edit tools let trusted members (with a level of 3 or more) edit story and source info

... and much, much more

Go check out all these new features on our new site and let us know what you think. Be sure to click on a story title and try our new toolbar and short review form, as well as post a story, to see all the bells and whistles. (UPDATE: see our visual guide on how to use the new toolbar)

We're particularly excited about our new 'Smart Feeds' service, which surfaces news stories recommended by some of the most insightful thinkers online - as well as our most trusted sources and social news sites (see earlier blog post). Together, these 'smart feeds' harness the collective intelligence of thousands of professionals and citizens -- who extend the NewsTrust community to create a filtered list of quality news and opinion, round the clock. Check out today's feeds on our new site.

We hope that these new services and enhanced user experience will help you get more informed, and attract more people to join our cause in coming months.

NewsTrust's new home page, with news comparisons and top stories grid.

Thanks to our Team
Many thanks to our worldclass web development team: Adam Florin, David Fox, Subramanya Sastry and Caleb Waldorf created a much improved user interface and web platform in just a few months. Many thanks as well to Market Publique designers Jonathan Berger and Polly Barden for their invaluable contributions to the new look of the site.

This core team was supported by our dedicated staff members, who worked beyond the call of duty to make this launch possible: Kaizar Campwala, Derek Hawkins and Joey Baker -- as well asEzra Fox and Bryan Purse. They've all done wonders to improve the quality of our service -- and we're very lucky to have them on our team. Thank you for your insights, your leadership and your commitment to our cause!

Thanks to our Community
Our new site was designed with the help of our community, through a variety of surveys, emails and phone conferences this year. We're very grateful to all our members, advisors, partners and friends who took the time to propose new ideas, check our early designs, test our site and share their invaluable feedback.

We've already received great responses about this new release. Here are just a few examples of what folks are telling us:

I love the look of the site--instantly! Very good, strong first impression. Colors well chosen ... This new website seems to me to be a great leap forward. - Robert W. Fuller

I like every aspect of what I have found. The reviewing system is much less cluttered and probably will be better served with the present simplicity. - Jerry Firman

The site is much improved and getting to be downright fun to use. The vast range of sources really makes NewsTrust a must-check place for researching news stories. - Evelyn Messinger

I LOVE! The review toolbar/overlay!!! Great job, very well designed. - Joe Kraynik

Wow -- the new site looks great. It has taken leaps forward in overall design and content. It is definitely more user-friendly in a visual and organizational sense. Bravo! - Kristin Gorski

I love the new look!  Good use of enhanced width. So much easier to read. I appreciate your simplifying the upper nav bar. - Roger Macdonald

We're very grateful for all this wonderful feedback from our community, and are glad we were able to address so many of your recommendations this week. What didn't make it in this release will definitely be considered for the next release.

Please share your comments and suggestions at the bottom of this page - or email us. What do you like most? what do you like least? how can we improve this new site? We love bugs! If you find any technical issues, please report them here.

Thanks again to all our supporters for your generous contributions to our cause. Together, we've created a compelling example of how citizens and journalists can join forces online to filter quality information through social news networks.

We hope our new site will make it easier for all of us to find and share good journalism together -- and make more informed decisions as citizens.

Enjoy!

Fabrice Florin
Executive Director, NewsTrust

Global Warming Results | A debate on Balance and Fairness

As the leaders of more than 180 countries convened in Poznan, Poland, for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, we turned our attention to Global Warming for last week's featured topic. Many of the week's stories centered on how the incoming Obama Administration could alter how the United States responds to climate change in the international arena. Others discussed ongoing efforts to address the issue on the local and state level. And among our top rated were several stories that examined how nations will continue to cut carbon emissions in the face of worldwide economic downturn.

Our friends at the Council on Foreign Relations partnered with us on this topic, and we kicked off our week with a feature of their Climate Change Crisis Guide, an extensive multimedia presentation published this fall on their website.

Top stories

Here's a list of last week's top news and opinion on global warming:

News

Ancient skills 'could reverse global warming' - The Independent
As more eat meat, a bid to cut emissions - New York Times
Carbon trading: environmental godsend or giant shell game? - Discover Magazine
James L. Jones' energy views worry some environmentalists - Los Angeles Times
Rain forests to headline at Poznon - Green Grok
Earth to Washington - Mother Jones

Opinion

The new greens like it big - Newsweek
Global warming: too close to home - Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The 23-billion-ton gorilla at the climate talks - Green Grok
The free markets will never tackle climate change effectively - The Guardian
Climate change from Poland to the poles - NPR

Balance and fairness: a debate

As is the case in many professional and academic circles, global warming proved a controversial issue for NewsTrust members as well. The topic helped spark a week-long debate within our Editors group over the difference between the journalistic principles of balance and fairness.

Our Editors group consists of 17 volunteer editors and advisors and three staff members who correspond to make some of the core decisions at NewsTrust -- their discussion of balance and fairness last week is critical in honing our review tools and represents a key aspect of how we rate the news. Several questions took center-stage: Are balance and fairness identical? Do they complement each other? Or can they work against one another? Can a piece be fair but not balanced, or balanced but not fair? How does sourcing come into play? We culled some thoughtful perspectives on this issue.

Dan Kennedy, a Northeastern journalism professor and media critic, argued the two principles come into conflict. "I'm someone who believes that balance often works *against* fairness," he said. "The idea that balance equals fairness has turned more than one so-called objective journalist into a stenographer of disingenuous spin and worse." In Dan's view, balance and fairness require negotiation in a piece of journalism. For example, if a reporter quotes all sides of a story in the name of "balance," irrespective of the facts involved, it is probably "unfair."

Kaizar Campwala, NewsTrust Associate Editor, held the opposite was often true -- that a story may not be fair if it's not balanced. "By only using sources critical of the verdict (balance)," he said, referencing this trial analysis from the Christian Science Monitor, "the author appears to be taking sides in the story (fairness)."

Walter Cox, a NewsTrust host and expert on Soviet Studies, differed with both Kaizar and Dan, and used what he found to be one-sidedness in the global warming debate to illustrate his point. "What I have observed is that 'fair' in the current media context often amounts to a virtual blackballing of legitimate dissenting opinion," he said, crying foul on the lack of global warming skeptics featured in news coverage. Global warming coverage, he argued, lacked balance and was only "fair" in that it captured the prevailing viewpoint on the issue.

Wrapping up the discussion Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, maintained that fairness and balance are two distinct concepts that often enhance each other in quality journalism. He offered this explanation:

Balance does means gathering sufficient facts to understand a news topic as objectively as possible ... Imagine a puzzle with each piece a fact. The more facts, the more likely our deduction will be correct, concerning what the mosaic means or depicts, with the proviso that some of the puzzle pieces will be held from view so that we cannot apply inductive reasoning. ... Fairness is deciding what facts from that balanced picture should be omitted from a report because they do not help complete the picture or somehow detract from it.

Without a doubt, other experts and practitioners of journalism butt heads on the definitions of balance and fairness in the same manner as our editors. But a survey of several professional codes of ethics shows some consensus among news organizations on how to separate the two. Fairness, as explained by Journalism.org, Society of Professional Journalists, Center for Citizen Media and others, is as much a method of good journalism as it is a principle. Fairness begins with a reporter's approach to an issue and translates into his or her construction of the story. Balance is more concrete, dealing with the extent to which the author cited key parties and sought diverse viewpoints to support the information in a story. We try to capture these ideas in our Reviewer FAQ (read how we define balance and fairness on our site).

We extend a special thanks to all our editors for initiating and weighing in on this fascinating debate. Your thoughtful comments and professional input are invaluable as we continue with this experiment in journalism.

This week: India

This week's featured topic is India and the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. What are their repercussions on Indian politics? How will this affect India's relations with its nuclear rival Pakistan? Help us find journalism that explores the complexities of India's own sprawling population, as well as the issues that are threatening peace in South Asia. Please review our recommended news and opinion on this issue -- and submit new stories -- on our India topic page.

NewsTrust Tutorial Video

One goal we've had at NewsTrust is to identify ways to explain our services visually. Below is our first crack at a NewsTrust tutorial video. If you were brand new to the site - this might be an easier introduction into what NewsTrust is about and how it works. In the future a video like this will be integrated into the about section - for now, if you ever wanted to explain to someone what NewsTrust is about but didn't want to type out a long explanation, perhaps this video will help.

To learn more about reviewing stories on NewsTrust, check out our Quick Review Tips.

Transparency (and Privacy) on NewsTrust

At NewsTrust, we put a high value on transparency -- both from the news media and from our own reviewers. Using your real name on the NewsTrust site encourages a more civil, thoughtful level of discourse -- and we think transparency is generally preferable to hiding in the shadows of anonymity. But using your real name is just the first step in fostering more honest, constructive conversations about good journalism online. Consider telling us more about yourself, and increasing your member level on NewsTrust.

Update Your Member Profile

We all read and process the news media through our own particular filters. Rather than anonymizing these filters, the NewsTrust review system works best when our expertise and viewpoints are laid on the table for other reviewers to see. The more information you present to other NewsTrust reviewers about yourself, the better they can understand where you're coming from. Listing your expertise and occupation, for example, can give credibility to your review of a story on a related topic. At a practical level, your member level on NewsTrust is partially calculated based on how much of your member profile you've filled out. So the more information you present about yourself, the greater your review counts in determining the story's overall rating.

Inspired to fill out your member profile? You can do so by logging into the site, and then clicking the 'My Account' link at the top right corner of any NewsTrust window.

Manage Your Privacy

If you're concerned about privacy, consider the following tip. While you're editing your profile, you'll see a 'Show My Profile' option under the Other Membership Settings, as shown in the screen shot below.

You can uncheck this option if you'd like to prevent non-NewsTrust members from viewing your profile. Unchecking this option will also put your profile out of reach of search engines such as Google.

See you online!

Technorati Tags: privacy, transparency

Checking our ideology at the door

Many of us hold strong opinions on certain issues that come up daily in our news reading.  In fact, we often seek out stories and publications that will support our viewpoints and contentions.   And sometimes in the process of reviewing stories for NewsTrust, we also like to assert the righteousness of those views and opinions.

We might absolutely agree --or completely disagree -- with the viewpoint or overall ideology expressed in an article.  We might believe that, on a particular issue, one publication's got it right while another's got it totally wrong.  Or we might even feel that we know far more than the reporter or anyone else who’s reviewed the story knows about the subject matter.

But when these opinions end up in our reviews, are we really rating the journalistic integrity of the article?  Or are we instead merely expressing our own ideological viewpoints, as reflected through the very high (five star) or mighty low (one star) ratings we give in our NewsTrust review?

Some of you might answer "absolutely!  If the article is presenting an issue in a way that I feel isn't right, then its journalistic integrity is compromised!" 

Now, please roll your chair away from the computer for *just* a moment and hold that thought. Is it that you feel the story isn't right because of its political slant, or do you believe it's not right because you know of other stories or sources of information that could counter its main thesis?  Do you know for certain that the reporter in question is continually biased on certain matters.  Or is it just that this publication leans more toward or away from your own political ideology?

The political position of a publication or ideology of a reporter may not necessarily reflect on the integrity of the journalism. A story may be well-crafted, balanced, supported and meticulously edited — and you still may not like it, simply because it leans one way or another, because it doesn't depict your candidate nicely, or doesn't support your personal viewpoint

Rating the journalistic merit of a story on its political slant isn't the mission nor purpose NewsTrust. Helping people to find and share quality journalism is what we strive to achieve. So, grading a story's value on the political slant of its publication isnt' what we had in mind at NewsTrust,  Rather, we are hoping that you, like us, will find that journalistic merit (balance fairness, context, sourcing) are more helpful for understanding the journalistic merit of a news story.
 

Further reading: Check our Quick Review Tips to find out more about how we evaluate stories for fairness, context, evidence and other core principles of journalism

Finding 'News You Can Trust'

Hi, Rory O’Connor here, NewsTrust Editorial Director, with the first in a series of posts intended to jumpstart a dialogue about how our community can best find and share quality news and opinions, based on core principles of journalism – the very underpinnings of what makes the NewsTrust experience so important and meaningful...

I’d like to start the conversation by discussing the issues of trust and credibility in the daily news. We live in a media-saturated era, one in which news and information from a wide range of sources is readily available to common people for the first time in history. This unparalleled information access, although clearly empowering, is also quite disruptive and presents its own unique set of issues and challenges, both to journalists and to society as a whole. Faced with this virtual tsunami of unfiltered information -- powered by a technological revolution that has democratized tools of media production and distribution, delivered by an unprecedented amalgam of beleaguered professional journalists and newly inspired amateur ‘citizen reporters,’ and distributed at the speed of light via a wide variety of both new and legacy media -- how can any of us be sure that the news we see and hear is true? Are there any journals and journalists that we can really trust and rely on? If so, how can we possibly find them amidst the clangor and the clutter of TMI –- too much information?

Increasingly, sloppy and gossipy journalism is treated as legitimate news, opinions are presented as facts, and misinformation spreads throughout both our mainstream and alternative news media --threatening the very foundation of our democracy. Numerous factors, including (but not limited to) the digital information revolution and its explosion of sometimes spurious online outlets, the consolidation of mainstream media by huge multinational entertainment conglomerates, and the concomitant spread of cable television's highly partisan and factually challenged opinions-as-news formats, contribute to this mistrust. What’s worse is that many no longer feel they can even trust the news media itself to deliver the information we need as citizens.

How then can we find credible news and information? Enter NewsTrust. By filtering content from online sources, establishing common metrics for evaluation, and accessing the "wisdom of the crowds" through social networking and “intelligent aggregation,” our free service offers one possible solution to the "News You Can Trust" conundrum. Anyone can submit stories and news sources for community consideration. Each is then researched and rated by panels of reviewers for factual evidence, fairness, sourcing, context and other basic journalistic principles. To read more about the principles we collectively evaluate at NewsTrust, check our Quick Review Tips:
http://www.newstrust.net/help/faq_quick_review.htm

Some reviewers are practicing journalists, others students -- but most are simply "ordinary citizens" seeking trustworthy information. An important part of our mission is to help citizens grow their news literacy skills, and make more informed decisions about democracy, across party lines. The results so far are encouraging. Our research suggests that "amateur'" citizen reviewers using the site's unique review tools are able to evaluate news quality reliably, as shown in this report:
http://www.newstrust.net/survey/report.htm

But we don't claim to have all the answers, and look forward to improving our review process with your help. We encourage you to weigh in here with comments, criticisms, observations, and recommendations. Remember – if you don’t trust the news; rate some of your own!

How to Participate in the NewsTrust Community

NewsTrust is not just a news review site, but also a social news site. True, we don’t have loads of contentious cross-talk, nor do we have loads of just general online comparing-notes type conversation, little blogs and messages all over the place for one another.

So, how can NewsTrust ("NT") be “social” without open conversation? How can members get to know others if they’re not yakking?

Overall, NewsTrust’s community is mostly interested in what members think about journalism. What you know more than who you know, so to say.

Still, you can help strengthen the NT community by letting us know something about you. Member profile pages allow you to tell us as little or as much about you as you’d like other members to know. Lots of members start out telling very little. And for some, this is a prudent decision—some simply need time to get more acquainted with the community before revealing too much about themselves.

A good way to get more acquainted with the NT community is to start reviewing stories! Once you submit your first review, your member role will change to Reviewer. The depth of your review depends on your preferences (or even mood of the day, for that matter.) When you click "Review It" to open our NT review form, you can see that there are a number of different sections. The first section lets you rate the story by answering questions about the story's journalistic quality and adding a comment, in order to create a basic review. For a short overview on how to rate a story, check our Quick Review Tips .

Further down the review form, you can open other sections that let you go deeper, tag the story, research it, and even add links to material that might add more perspective. The Reviewers FAQ details what all those different sections are about and how to use them.

By reviewing stories on our site, you are leaving a bread-crumb trail about your own worldview, which helps others find out more about you. Now, how might you get to know everyone who’s already here? When you go to a story reviews page (click 'See Reviews' anywhere on our site), you will see the names of other people who have reviewed that story. Click on their names, and check out who they are. You can even rate some of their reviews, based on how well they evaluate the journalistic quality of that story.

It’s completely up to you how far to delve into reviewing a story. Many members submit quick reviews for a variety of stories, only answering a few rating questions -- while submitting detailed reviews on stories that are of particular interest or that they know more about. For instance, I might give an in-depth review of a technology story, and a quick review of a political story, while other reviewers might really get into a political story or something on the economy.

How you review will also help you raise your member level. Member levels are average scores based on your activity, overall experience, transparency, ratings from other members and profile validation (determined by staff.) These levels are displayed on the right-side of every member profile—that’s what all those yellow dots are about. You can read more about member level on the Members’ FAQ

Like most community sites, what you can get out of NewsTrust depends on how much you want to put into it through your reviews, and how curious you are about our community. And if you’re content to lurk on the sidelines, you can do that too, by simply using NewsTrust as your starting point for finding quality news stories. Any way you choose to be part of our community is fine with us!