NewsTrust - Blog Archive

Search World | Trust, relevance and rights

NewsTrust.net founder Fabrice Florin is on a panel at WeMedia in Miami, a conference to discuss issues of the changing media environment. I'm in the audience and will live blog the event. It might be messy and geeky, but hopefully informative too. NewsTrust.net is part of a larger conversation, and being on this panel alongside the business developer of Google and Mary Hodder, who created modern day Folksonomy (tagging), shows that NewsTrust.net can play a role in helping people find valuable information online. There are lots of issues we have to discuss - and we want to keep you all informed about some of the issues that are facing NewsTrust and the larger world of search ie: Getting information that you want.

So what is the panel?
Search World | Trust, relevance and rights

If you can’t google it, does it exist? Search functions unlock the Internet’s potential, but how can we make it easier for everyone to find relevant information and act on it? Innovative thinking about metadata, permissions and trust could provide the necessary breakthroughs.

Session Chair: Jim Kennedy, VP Strategy, The Associated Press

• Fabrice Florin, Executive Director, NewsTrust
• Mary Hodder, Founder, Dabble
• Josh Cohen, Director, Business Development, Google News

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

A Look Back at Journalism on Africa

In conjunction with U.S. President George W. Bush's tour of Africa, last week we focused on finding good journalism covering Africa. Our reviewer community unearthed some excellent reporting and analysis spanning the continent: From Liberia and Nigeria in the west to Sudan and Kenya in the east. Mainly concerned with ethnic, religious, and political cleavages in these countries, the stories paint a stark image of the challenges democracy and human rights face across Africa.

Kenya had been considered a symbol of stability and development in Africa until the contested election in December opened the country up to violence and upheaval that continues even now. The two highest rated articles on the topic are both examinations of the fault lines along which the Kenyan crisis has developed. In Slate, Michela Wrong explores why Kenya's other tribes resent the Kikuyu, the tribe of President Mwai Kibaki. The piece got high marks from NewsTrust reviewer (and advisor) Terry Gamble, who found it "conveys some sense of the complexity of tribal coexistence." A more politically oriented consideration of the Kenyan crisis was found in the highly rated Foreign Affairs piece, "Kenya's Great Rift".

Looking to west Africa, the community gave high ratings to the Atlantic Monthly special report into the religious tensions in Nigeria between Christians and Muslims. Reviewer Pam Rasmussen felt what was most valuable about the piece was "its refusal to simply reduce the issue to "Muslim vs Christian." Rather, it examines the reasons behind the rise in the importance of religion in general, as well as the many variations it takes within each sect -- ranging from the most fundamental to the verging on modern/flexible."
Also from west Africa is a chilling story published on TomDispatch.com about the violence and oppression against women in war-torn countries such as Liberia. Explaining her high rating of the story, NewsTrust host Linda Raiteri writes "One of the things that makes Ann Jones's story good journalism is that she gives brief histories of the conflicts, thereby tying the women's individual stories to the upheavals as direct cause and effect. It is chilling to read how the perpetrators of very personal destruction of lives - and rape is very personal - have been promoted to high positions."

This is just a sampling of the excellent journalism NewsTrust reviewers identified on Africa. For more, check out the Africa Topic Page on NewsTrust.

Technorati Tags: Kenya, Nigeria

Check out the NewsTrust Salon Video

Check out this short video from our first NewsTrust Salon on Good Journalism, held on February 7, 2008 in San Francisco. This group discussion brought together 26 journalists, educators, technologists and community leaders from organizations like Current TV, Google, Mother Jones and Stanford University. During the salon, we invited participants to break up into small groups, to evaluate a news article for fairness, sourcing, context and other core principles of journalism.

[or check the original on YouTube.]

We're very excited about the potential of this salon format: it's a promising social learning tool for developing news literacy skills in news consumers - and we hope to bring this service to high school and college students very soon. It's a great way to help people find good journalism together, and is a natural extension of our online social news network.

This salon was led by the NewsTrust editorial team, including Fabrice Florin, Rory O'Connor, Kaizar Campwala and David Cohn -- as well as our gracious hosts Terry Gamble and Peter Boyer. The video was shot by David Fox and edited by Ray Nowosielski, with music by Mobius. We'd like to thank them all for their fine work, and for helping spread the word with our community. To find out more about this first salon and who's featured in this video, check our earlier blog post and meeting notes.

Our next two salons will be held in Miami on February 28 and New York on March 18, 2008. If you are an active NewsTrust reviewer and wish to join one of these salons, please email us to find out more. In the meantime, here's some info about the Miami Salon.

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NEWSTRUST SALON - MIAMI
Thursday, Feb. 28 at 2:00pm - (1 hour)
University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
Storer Auditorium - 2nd floor Meeting Room

Join a fascinating group discussion on how to find good journalism online, hosted by NewsTrust.net, a nonprofit social news network devoted to quality journalism.

This stimulating group discussion will bring together a diverse group of journalists, educators, technologists, community leaders and concerned citizens. As a group, we will evaluate a news article for fairness, sourcing, context and other core principles of journalism. We will then discuss best practices for helping people develop their news literacy skills, and become more discriminating news consumers.

Some of the questions we'll discuss in this session include:
* what is good journalism? how can you tell it apart from misinformation?
* how can we join forces online to share quality news with each other?
* how can we encourage more citizens to grow their news literacy skills?
* how can we improve NewsTrust.net to serve these goals?

During the meeting, we will briefly introduce what we're doing at NewsTrust to address these questions-- and ask your thoughts on how to best expand this public service -- to help more citizens make informed decisions about their lives and governments.

Session leaders: Fabrice Florin, Rory O'Connor and David Cohn, NewsTrust.net

Featured guests: NewsTrust Host Dale Penn and other NewsTrust members based in Florida

Maximum 25 participants. Please RSVP to reserve a spot -- and check this blog for more details on this and other NewsTrust Salons.

The Growing Importance of Information Found Online

via EarlyEdition.com

"The CIA may not hold the same respect they once had, but you must admit their intelligence-gathering techniques must still be superior to either yours or mine."

At least, that's what you would think. I mean - it is the "C.I.A." They are an agency of "intelligence," so how they get their information should be legit, right? As it turns out, newspapers are becoming less and less of a research source and the C.I.A. is increasingly turning to the Internet to accumulate information.

A Look Back at New Media - A Collaboration with Arizona State University

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."

A Look Back at U.S. Congress Stories

Last week, when Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation and I hosted the search for quality news coverage of the U.S. Congress, the highest overall review score from Newstrust's community went to "Home Builders Halt Campaign Funds After Setback," by the Washington Post's Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, a story I had not predicted in my blog post introducing the featured topic.

Birnbaum wrote on February 14 about the announced withdrawal of campaign contributions after the homebuilders' political action committee saw its desired tax breaks cut from the economic stimulus package.  He outlined the breaks sought and set the background of what's happening in the housing market.  The story had been broken, according to Google News,  the afternoon of February 12 by Reuters reporter Kevin Drawbaugh, and the Wall Street Journal's Brody Mullins had blogged that date about the withdrawal of funds, depicting its effects as "a blow to Republicans" because "[u]ntil recently, the home-builders had given about two-thirds of their donations to members of the GOP" and had given "55% of their $868,000 in campaign cash to Republicans" this year. Birnbaum used the extra time to go further, getting quotes from attorneys, other lobbyists both pro and con the move, and tried to get a comment from the PAC, who declined to elaborate on a written statement.

One of our new reviewers, Justin Michels, wrote, "maybe it is in all our best interest that at least someone is trying to hold them [politicians and lobbyists] accountable. In my opinion this article is the epitome of good reporting, because it encourages us to ask real questions and illustrates an important topic. well worth the read."

The story received an overall rating o 4.0, with eleven reviews ranging from a 3.0 to 4.4.  As our editorial director Rory O'Connor commented, "Campaign contributions from 'interest groups' are tied to the decisions they hope lawmakers will take on their behalf? As Louie put it in Casablanca, 'I'm shocked!' Still, as this piece points out, the 'connection that usually goes unspoken.' This time it's explicit."

One of our hosts, James Jackson, who still found the story to be accurate, balanced and well-written, answered, "I would be genuinely surprised if the world didn't work this way. If I make an investment, I expect a return on investment."

Newstrust advisor, journalism professor Dan Gillmor, noted, "This story is one data point, and doesn't provide absolute proof of what readers already suspect. But the data point is highly revealing nonetheless, and the supporting comments from other lobbyists tell more of the story."

Host Ben Ross suggested the story could have been improved by mentioning "present or past reform to lobbying and [PAC's.]" I also would have liked a bit of background on who this particular PAC supported and how they voted, as well as what Congress opted to include in the stimulus package in lieu of the homebuilders' favored incentives.

Thanks are due, too, to our new host Juliet Sallette, host/editors Mark Monday and Jim Lang, as well as  Contributing Editor, David Cohn, all of whom also took time out of their busy schedules to review this story and thus compile Newtrust's "guide to good journalism" on the featured topic. A special hat tip, too, to Associate Editor Kaizar Campwala, who helped me locate stories on the U.S. Congress and get them out to our readers.   And, of course, to all of you in the community who submitted and/or reviewed stories on this and other topics.

New Media - A collaboration with Arizona State University

New media is changing the way we interact and absorb information. In the interest of being well-informed about the changing online environment, New Media is our featured topic this week. This space is changing so rapidly that it's hard to keep. Even the most tech-savvy people have trouble finding reliable information that is up to date. This week on NewsTrust, help us find good journalism on the topic of New Media. (week of Feb. 18-22)

We're delighted to be working with our trusted advisor Dan Gillmor, and his class of journalism students at Arizona State University's Journalism School (pictured to the right), who will be joining forces with us in our search for quality news and opinions about New Media.

If you don't know who Dan Gillmor is, you can start by looking at the Wikipedia entry on him, where you'll see that he is no stranger to technology or the changing media environment. He is often considered the foremost expert on citizen journalism - and has taught new media for several years at U.C. Berkeley's journalism school before leaving for ASU.

Last week NewsTrust.net founder Fabrice Florin visited Dan's class on entrepreneurial journalism to share the story behind NewsTrust.net; how it got started, what it's like to run a journalism nonprofit and what's next for our community.

After trying out the site, the journalism students agreed to review three stories and submit one over the next five days on the topic of new media, with an emphasis on entrepreneurship. We invite our community to join forces with ASU students to find great journalism on that topic and on Wednesday we'll take a look back and share the insights from our collaborative effort on the blog.

Dan's students are obviously no strangers to the digital world either. They have been submitting and rating some amazing content in our new media section, finding stories on everything from blogging and citizen journalism to large online advertising networks. Just browse the stories that are "for review" and you'll be blown away by the depth and variety of the stories that we can now dive into.

And if you think new media is all "fun and games" think again. Many of these issues have real business or political ramifications. Just take a look at the reviews on this story about net neutrality. Almost every reviewer has something to say about the quality of the article. The general consensus, repeated over and over: This issue is far too important to receive only mediocre quality coverage. Where is the good quality content on net neutrality?

Perhaps the net neutrality issue struck a nerve? It's an admittedly very complex subject, but one that has very real consequences. This is a topic the public needs good information about - and if this article is representative of the information that is out there, we should demand better articles. Can you find a more informative story on network neutrality?

But it isn't just this one issue. New media is a broad category and darts and laurels abound. We are very lucky to have a pioneer like Dan Gillmor and his students, who are ridding the wave of new media, to help us in the search for quality content - but we can help by submitting and rating more articles in this topic.

If you've wanted a breather from all the politics on NewsTrust, now is your chance to "geek-out." Check out your favorite tech blog. ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and other "journobloggers" are usually the first to report on new media issues, but as often pointed out (especially right now on Techmeme) they aren't always the most thorough or accurate. Without having any preconceived notions, we should find and rate news articles from these sources as well, as they often set the pace for coverage on new media topics.

With all that said: Happy hunting for new media articles to submit and rate along with our partner this week - Arizona State's Journalism and their students - the journalism leaders of tomorrow.

Our Challenge: A changing news media landscape

by Fabrice Florin, executive director and founder, NewsTrust.net

Today, I'd like to share with you a helpful diagram that helps us visualize NewsTrust's challenges and opportunities in the rapidly changing news media landscape. In coming weeks, we will feature on this blog more charts and diagrams about some of the solutions we aim to provide with our non-profit service.

This first diagram provides useful context about NewsTrust's mission, which is to help people find and share quality journalism online, so they can make more informed decisions as citizens.

The recent explosion of new media outlets on the web, along with the consolidation of big media and the decline of public trust, are creating serious problems for democracy, such as information overload, misinformation, mistrust and civic apathy (see our full diagram).

Every day, hundreds of thousands of news stories and opinions are released on the Internet by wire services, newspapers, TV, radio, magazines, blogs and websites. An increasingly frustrated public struggles daily to assess their credibility, without effective tools to filter the best reporting, evaluate information quality and share trusted content with other citizens.

Here at NewsTrust, we aim to offer a practical and sustainable solution to address these issues, by providing a unique set of news filters, news literacy tools, and a trust network that invites civic engagement.

Next week, we will feature another diagram to help us visualize our challenges and opportunities in this field.

To preview some of our other slides and find out more about NewsTrust, check our NewsTrust Slides (PDF) (or download our PowerPoint)

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts about our community initiative, and encourage you to add your two cents in the comments below.

Making the Most of Life On NewsTrust: Becoming a Host

So, you’ve been reviewing articles at NewsTrust for a bit now—and you’re wondering what might be the next step to contributing more to the community.

Chances are, the NewsTrust editorial staff is looking at you right now—your profile, the number of stories you’ve reviewed, what you’ve said about those stories-- and  are determining whether or not to promote you from Reviewer to Host. 

Up until now, most of our Hosts have quietly received email notification of their improved status. As we’ve discussed plans to grow our community, it’s become more apparent that everyone should know a more about how to become a Host.

Hosts are chosen on their level of familiarity with the NewsTrust site. They have taken advantage of all the different ways we’ve set up for articles to be reviewed. Potential hosts are those Reviewers who have been careful to keep the focus of their reviews on the quality of the journalism in an article, and not on whether an article forwards a particular partisan viewpoint.

 Also, potential Hosts may have demonstrated particularly good judgement in reviewing stories on a particular topic, and will then asked to “host” or add stories to the NewsTrust site on that particular topic.

Hosts are also able to edit story reports and change the Editorial Priority of stories.

The Host FAQ explains in detail how to edit a story as well as edit the source information.

 Hosts have access to a Host member area for discussion, and are brought in to Host Conference Calls, where they may be asked for their input on a range of topics, including site design. Currently, NT Staff is going over different designs for our Review Form, and the input we get from our Hosts is very important to us.
 
So, if you think you’ve reviewed enough stories and you think you’d like to do more with your NewsTrust participation, take a look at the Host FAQ and drop us an email. Or, you can simply hang out till we tap you. :-)