Our hunt for the best articles on new media has come to a close. We'd like to thank our partner on this search, Arizona State University's journalism students and their professor (and NewsTrust advisor) Dan Gillmor, director of a new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Check out some really great feedback from Tim McGuire, former editor of the Star Tribune, and the Frank Russell Chair for the business of journalism at ASU -- as well as kind accolades from ASU student Kahley Emerson and her peers.
Journalism is in a state of flux. That's what makes the new media topic so interesting. There is an earnest fear that quality content can't be highlighted by social news sites and that the internet only exploits free labor from people without giving anything back.
Well, we disagree. We hope that people who participate in our site learn something new every time they engage with our news literacy tool, to help themselves figure out if what they are reading is factual information or mere opinion.
But enough patting ourselves on the back - lets take us to task and see what we found this week in the topic of new media. As noted in our first post, new media isn't just fun and games. What happens online has real consequences. Just consider two of our top rated stories "Your Guide To Online Privacy" and "Whistle-blower site taken offline."
I'm particularly interested in the second article which is about WikiLeak, a story I've been following for over a year that is only recently getting some attention in the mainstream media (check today's NYT).
We gave the BBC article a 3.8 and for good reason. Peter Henry said it best, this is a....
Straightforward news story - the Wikileak site, which publishes anonymously leaked documents, was shut down on court order on behalf of a Swiss bank which had leaked documents posted on the site. This is akin to a judge ordering the NY Times to stop publication because it prints an anonymously sourced story based on leaked documents. Very worrisome.
Today WikiLeak is getting attention around the world, from Australia and back to the United States. Let's hope it is being treated in a fair and balanced manner. At the very least, this community has found, in the BBC article, an above average breaking story that is informative and accurate. We also rated a CNET story about WikiLeak that averaged just below the BBC piece. The big discrepancies being fairness, style and sourcing. The BBC outshined CNET on all three.
We can certainly expect more reports on WikiLeak in the future. In fact, Dwight Rousu just submitted a Wired News story from Kim Zetter which is too early to judge in this blog post, but may help our overall understanding of how this issue is being covered in the media.
There are plenty of other issues in new media, including how the presidential candidates approach technology to a PBS MediaShift blog post about videoblogs. This topic is filled with fantastic content for you to geek-out with. In truth, this is one of my favorite topics. At the very least - it is an issue that is only going to become more pressing and more pervasive in our lives. The NewsTrust channel on new media is a boon to anyone who wants to stay with the times and keep up with the changing media environment.
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