We held our first NewsTrust Salon in San Francisco last Thursday, for a group discussion about quality journalism with a great group of 26 journalists, educators, technologists and community leaders from organizations like Current TV, Google, Mother Jones and Stanford University, to name just a few (see below).
I'm pleased to say this salon was a big hit for all concerned -- we had a truly stimulating conversation and learned a lot from each other (more on that here). We started this two-hour event with an opening presentation about NewsTrust, followed by small group meetings, during which each participant was asked to review an article and rate it on NewsTrust. We then gathered again as a large group, to hear people's impressions and recommendations for next steps.
The good news is that most people felt that the NewsTrust review process was effective for guiding them through a thoughtful evaluation of the article's journalistic quality. Each group that reviewed the article came up with a below average rating, due to concerns about fairness and sourcing. 
Some of the questions we touched on as a group included:
* 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?
It was great to have that large group discussion after the small group sessions, because it allowed participants to make informed recommendations for improvement. We plan to summarize these suggestions in an upcoming post -- and hopefully incorporate as many as we can in the next version of NewsTrust later this year.
In the meantime, check out some of the photos from the salon on our NewsTrust Album on Flickr, such as the ones in this post.
We think this group discussion format has great potential for helping citizens become more informed about what they get in their daily news -- either through house parties like this one, or in classroom settings in schools and universities across the nation.
To that end, we plan to host more NewsTrust Salons in coming months, starting with these dates:
* Miami - February 28
* New York - March 18
* San Francisco Bay Area - mid-April
If you are an active NewsTrust reviewer and are interested in joining (or hosting) one of these private events, please email us.
Our first NewsTrust Salon was generously hosted by our friends Terry Gamble and Peter Boyer, who are active NewsTrust reviewers and supporters. We're deeply grateful to them for so graciously opening up their home, and helping us try out this promising new service.
And we're also very grateful to our salon participants for joining us and sharing their good words of advice. They included:
* Andrew Fitzgerald - Current TV
* Ann Grimes - Stanford University
* David Pablo Cohen - Google
* Ed Bice - Meadan
* Fran Maier - TrustE
* Francis Pisani - Le Monde
* Hap Perry - GenSpring
* Howard Rheingold - Smart Mobs
* Johnny Falla - Skoll Foundation
* Kara Andrade - Maynard Institute
* Marty Krasney - Writer, Consultant
* Mary Beth Pudup - University of California
* Nick Aster - Mother Jones
* Patrice O'Neill - The Working Group
* Peter Leyden - New Politics
* Steve Katz - Mother Jones
* Tim Lundeen - Web Crossing
Salon organizers and NewsTrust staff members included:
* Terry Gamble, Peter Boyer - Ayrshire Foundation
* Fabrice Florin - Executive Director
* Rory O'Connor - Editorial Director
* David Fox - Technology Director
* Kaizar Campwala - Associate Editor
* David Cohn - Contributing Editor
* Phyllis Florin
* Annie Fox
Thanks to all for a job well done -- and stay tuned for more!
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