NewsTrust - Blog Archive

Providing Good Links: An Editorial Service

Yesterday I had the same conversation I've had a dozen times, about whether or not journalists should link to external sources of news. The journalist on the other side of the phone was complaining about websites that act as "aggregators." I applauded them.

The best phrase I've come to explain this is that "providing good links is an editorial service." The Newspaper Next blog says it best:

Our users control how they spend their time. They always did and they always will. We need to give them value and links have value.

This fear that people will never return to our site if we send them away becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Refuse to give them what they need and they will go away in frustration rather than because they clicked a helpful link. If they click a helpful link and find the answer they were looking for or some information that helps them understand your story better, they will remember that you provided the answer, even if it came from someone else. And they will come back to you for more answers.

Another mantra that comes to mind, from Jeff Jarvis: "Do what you do best, and link to the rest."

At NewsTrust we create what I like to call "tasty hyperlinks." We like to think they are so tasty that people who use them will come back for more. We don't just filter news by topic - we add one more layer of value by filtering the news by journalistic credibility. David Weinberger points us to examples where other news organizations are obviously failing to meet the same criteria. We believe the top links we send out at NewsTrust solve various problems that we now face as a society living in a networked world with arguably too much information.

The key to this success is community - no one person can sort through all the journalism that comes out every day. It takes a community of people shouldering that responsibility. But that, my friends, is a post for another day.

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

Featured Topic - Presidential Election: March 3rd, 2008

Today's featured topic is the 2008 presidential election.The Democratic primaries are reaching a climax. This Tuesday may determine who will run against John McCain to be the next president of the United States of America. Is the press being fair to Hillary? Is John McCain being unfairly scrutinized? Help us find good journalism on the topic and together we will become better informed about the state of our election.

Just taking a quick look at our topic page on the presidential election one can tell that the heat is on between Obama and Hillary. The Democrats are at a crucial state right now - determining between two firsts. Will we have the first contending female candidate or the first contending African American candidate?

All the major papers have declarative articles: "How did the Clinton Campaign Get Here?" and "Obama Spends Heavily on Knockout Blow," from the Los Angeles and New York Times respectively, seem to re-assert the growing media narrative, that Obama has the momentum and will come out the victor. That does seem to be the tale of the tape from most major news sources, but as Saturday Night Live pointed out in an opening sketch, and notable blogger Jeff Jarvis has been saying for some time, the media chorus could be interpreted as bias.

Whether or not these are articles are being completely unbiased is a fair question. According to most polls it's a political dead-heat. Or, as the Wall Street Journal notes, "tomorrow the eyes of America will be on these two states" Texas and Ohio.

This is also a perfect opportunity to dive into articles produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus.net, one of our media partners, who is covering the election at the grassroots level.

The primaries might be coming to an end - but that just marks the beginning of the election season. We deserve the best journalism about our election process and together we can find it.

Quality versus Popularity - A Map of Online News Sites

Here's an interesting map of news sites that aggregate journalism based on popularity, editorial quality or computer algorithms. This Venn diagram helps us compare NewsTrust and key players in this news filtering space, by showing how they might be ranked visually, by review depth and editorial expertise.

This visualization illustrates differences between the various news evaluation methods practiced by these sites, which fall in three categories: computer-based, popularity-based and quality-based news filters.

We see four primary groups of news sites and aggregators in this space:
• computer-based, automated sites with no user reviews or editors (e.g. Google News)
• popularity-based social sites with automated calculations of user reviews but no editors (e.g. Digg)
• quality-based social sites with both user and editor reviews (e.g. NewsTrust)
• quality-based editorial sites with mostly editor reviews (e.g. FactCheck)

In the computer-based filter category, purely automated aggregators like Google News offer a low-cost, but imperfect solution, because they rely primarily on computer intelligence, which is still limited. Google News partly addresses that issue by relying on the collective judgment of editors for a small group of 4,500 news publications, vetted largely based on business metrics (audience reach, # of employees, # of editors, financial strength).

In the popularity filter category, popularity-based social news networks like Digg, Newsvine or Reddit are also low-cost, but their listings are riddled with misinformation because they rely mostly on untrained reviewers, with no editors -- and only rate the news along a single dimension, which primarily tracks popularity, not quality.

On the other end of the spectrum, editor-led news evaluation services like Fact Check or Journalism.org provide effective quality filters based on in-depth reviews, but are typically limited in their coverage by the fact that they rely on paid editors and/or experts, which makes for a costly evaluation process. And news aggregators like AP, Reuters or NY Times have in-house quality review processes that are also quite effective, but are limited to only their own content. Lastly, partisan media watchdogs like NewsBusters also provide full reviews by editors, but their quality is questionable, because they are often biased by their political agenda.

NewsTrust is unique in that it provides the best of all worlds, combining users, editors and computers in a collaborative evaluation process that focuses on quality journalism. This approach leverages the expertise of professional journalists and amplifies it by training larger groups of citizen volunteers to use our state-of-the-art, non-partisan review tools. In addition, we also use sophisticated computer algorithms to assess information quality based on core journalistic principles, and weigh member ratings based on their expertise and trust levels.

To sum up, here are the key differences between NewsTrust and other news sites:
• we rate journalistic quality, not just popularity
• we invite professional journalists and editors to guide our citizen reviewers
• citizens using our tools can assess news quality as well as professionals
• our multiple-rating evaluations are more reliable than single ratings
• we track ratings for each publication in our source reputation database
• we feature stories from our most trusted sources in our daily listings

To discourage member fraud and gaming, we offer these preventive measures:
• reviewers are identified by their real names
• we rate our reviewers based on the quality of their work
• our reviewers' ratings are weighted based on their own member level
• member levels are based on activity, experience, ratings and transparency
• our staff validates active reviewers for compliance with our terms of service

Independent research by the University of Michigan confirms the reliability of our review process. To find out more, check our study reports.

As this chart illustrates, NewsTrust has a unique opportunity to establish itself early on as the leading news filter and news literacy service in this field, based on journalistic quality, rather than popularity or ideology. We cost-effectively bring the best practices of profession organizations to the public, and coach our members to gain some expertise as citizen reviewers, so they can reliably rate the news in a scaleable manner, based on core principles of journalism (e.g. fairness, factual evidence, sourcing, context, etc.).

This slide is part of our NewsTrust PowerPoint presentation. To preview some of our other slides and find out more about NewsTrust, check our NewsTrust Slides (PDF) (or download our PowerPoint)

In coming Sundays, we will feature on this blog more charts and diagrams about some of the solutions we aim to provide with our non-profit service.

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.

Please note that this Venn diagram is not based on verifiable quantitative data. It is intended as thinking tool, to visualize perceived differences between various news evaluation methods.