NewsTrust - Blog Archive

Email Notifications

Today we're rolling out our latest feature, Email Notifications. 

Want to know when others have reviewed your favorite stories? NewsTrust now sends you an email when a fellow member has reviewed a story you've also reviewed, submitted or 'Liked.'

We'll notify you when someone:

• Reviews a story you've submitted

• Reviews a story you've also reviewed

 (but only if they've included notes, comments, quotes or links)

• Reviews a story you've 'Liked' 

  (but only if they've included notes, comments, quotes or links)

The email notifications will include any review notes or comments from your fellow reviewer, as well as their overall rating of the story -- and NewsTrust's rating if that story has three or more reviews. 

If you like, you can expand your review to add a comment, a quote, or a link to a related story. To edit your review, click 'Review' on the story page where your review is featured. 

You can turn off any of our email notifications at any time. Simply go to the 'Emails' tab in 'My Account' and uncheck the box for the notification you don't want to receive. Be sure to click the 'Save' button when you're done to save the changes you've made. 

What do you think about our new Email Notifications? We'd love to hear your feedback and any suggestions for improvement. Add a comment here on the NewsTrust Blog or on our feedback page and share your advice. And if you need any help, email us at [email protected].

And many thanks for reviewing on NewsTrust. The more stories you review, the more your ratings count -- and the smarter we get as a community. It's people like you who make this service possible.

See you online,

The NewsTrust Team

News Comparisons - First Results

Last week we introduced News Comparisons on our site, in response to the overwhelming support this feature received in our recent survey. Of about 223 survey respondents so far, 165 said they favored News Comparisons over our other features in development right now (UPDATE: Check our blog post on the final survey results).

You may have noticed our new 'News Comparison' box in the top-right corner of our home page. Every day we'll post in this box three stories that are related to our featured story -- stories that present different perspectives on the same topic -- and invite you to review them. This is a prototype for what we hope will grow into a full-featured service for comparing related stories. 

With News Comparisons, our goal is to get the most comprehensive and trustworthy coverage of an issue as possible by having our community review and comment on clusters of stories on the same topic. As our community has judged, it's often not enough to review a single story, particularly in the case of breaking news, when a topic hasn't been fully vetted yet.

UPDATE 6/5:  We have gotten some great feedback on News Comparisons from our community so far. Here's what a couple reviewers had to say:

Deborah Plummer

I love it! Thank you so much for this idea. I have not been able to write reviews lately but I do read aka “quick look” Newstrust and these comparisons have been terrific. Once upon time, when I wasn’t so busy, I use to do it myself but now, Newstrust is doing it. To me, it’s the only way to learn about what’s going on by comparing how others (i.e. countries) view what’s going on with us and other situtions in our world. Amrica isn’t the truthsayer as we once were, if we ever were, anymore.

Naomi Isler

I think this is a very interesting experiment, which should be continued and refined. I always try to look at the articles, even if I don’t review them. There has been at least one instance where I felt that another article in the listings would have made a better comparison – but that’s part of development.

Tell us your thoughts! Leave a comment here on our blog, on our Feedback page, or email us at [email protected].

Today's News Comparison: Judge Sotomayor
This week, we're looking at each day's major news stories for our News Comparisons. Yesterday, we compared news stories on North Korea's Nuclear Test. Today, the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court dominates news headlines -- and we're comparing news and opinion on the impact of President Barack Obama's nomination of a Hispanic woman to the Supreme Court.

Our highest rated story for this topic yesterday came from SCOTUSblog, in which Tom Goldstein outlined the four major lines of attack he anticipates from Sotomayor's opponents in the coming weeks. Vincent Camintini called it "a delightful read that brimmed with sanity. Oddly and sadly, the article is about observing a dysfunctional body politique and how we have become a series of strategists operating in huddles in order to select a representative from a small group of Americans - to represent the Judicial word of the land as it pertains to the Constitution."

We compared this story to three others well-received by our community. 'The Sotomayor Mystery,' from Slate, focused on how challenges to Sotomayor's opinion in the case of Ricci v. DeSetfano may complicate her confirmation hearings. The Hill asked how the Republican Party will criticize Sotomayor without alienating Hispanic voters, while Mother Jones went further, predicting that Sotomayor's confirmation could split social conservatives and moderates in the GOP.

How you can Help
Today, we're continuing to focus on Sotomayor's nomination. Can you help us find the best coverage of this topic? Review a story in the News Comparison box on our home page – or on our Supreme Court topic page. If you've come across a good story that relates to this topic, please submit it under 'Supreme Court' on our site - or 'link' it to an existing story on this topic, using the Links tool in the review form.

News Comparisons on the Economy
Last week, we featured News Comparisons on the Economy. We focused on clusters of stories that covered a range of economy-related subtopics, from jobs to globalization to finance. Here are a few of the most notable comparisons.

Green-collar Jobs
In our top news comparison this week, we looked for good journalism on green-collar jobs. Time Magazine's 'It Will Pay to Save the Planet,' gave a concise overview of the potential for green-collar jobs help pull the economy out of recession and create new employment opportunities. Grist profiled the Climate Corps, a group of MBAs dedicated to helping big businesses become more energy efficient. Washington Business Journal, on the other hand, warned of a "bandwagon effect" in green-collar jobs that could harm accountability in energy and other projects.

Here are other News Comparisons we featured last week:

Economic relations between China and the United States:
Will China Still Bankroll U.S. - New York Times
As Detroit crumbles, China emerges as auto epicenter - Washington Post
"We hate you guys... but there is nothing much we can do" - Council on Foreign Relations 

Youth in the workplace:
'Youth magnet' cities hit midlife crisis - Wall Street Journal 
Why boomers can't quit - Time
Even in hostile working environments, employees reluctant to leave jobs - Science Daily

Thanks to our Reviewers!
We'd like to give a big thanks to all our NewsTrust reviewers who participated in our first round of News Comparisons. Your enthusiasm and involvement is an inspiration to all of us as we continue to develop this new feature. Kudos to Vincint Camintini and Glenn LaBauve for their excellent reviews on our story clusters.

-- Derek Hawkins, with Fabrice Florin and Kaizar Campwala

Pakistan: Top Stories | News Comparisons

Global news media turned their attention to Pakistan last week as conflict between military and Taliban forces escalated in the northern part of the country and displaced millions. Our community tracked this coverage in a week long News Hunt on Pakistan. Together we reviewed 45 stories on this conflict and its impact on the Pakistani population and foreign policy in the region.

Overall, the news coverage we reviewed was broad. At the core of many of our stories, however, was the question of how successfully Pakistani civil society and government could combat the Taliban.

In news, our top rated piece, 'Pakistan on the Brink,' came from the New York Review of Books. Ahmed Rashid gave a bleak assessment of the crisis facing Pakistan, where in April the Taliban won control of a swatch of land less than 100 miles from the capital. "Pakistan is close to the brink, perhaps not to a meltdown of the government, but to a permanent state of anarchy, as the Islamist revolutionaries led by the Taliban and their many allies take more territory, and state power shrinks," Rashid said. "...we can expect a slow, insidious, long-burning fuse of fear, terror, and paralysis that the Taliban have lit and that the state is unable, and partly unwilling, to douse."

On a more optimistic note, Link TV’s Global Pulse compared worldwide coverage of protests by Pakistani women against the Taliban. This video report pointed to a growing movement of women across the country - which is resisting the Taliban's harsh imposition of Islamic law.

Wired kept a beat on the U.S. military's involvement (or lack of involvement) in the conflict with reports on the use of drone planes to kill insurgents -- how the drone planes are used and how much information the CIA shares on this matter with the Pakistani government. Asia Times ran a dispatch from the ground in Pakistan, detailing the growing humanitarian crisis that many media began to report on mid-week. And GlobalPost profiled an organization that offers early morning and night classes to child laborers.

Our top opinion explained why Pakistani civil society has yet to achieve a unified resistance against the Taliban. In 'Talibanistan and the identity crisis' from Dawn, author Huma Yusuf said Pakistan is experiencing an "identity crisis," in which a plurality of interests and beliefs has prevented the population from coming to a consensus on why the Taliban should be rejected. "The first step to overcoming militancy is knowing ourselves," Yusuf concluded. "So before we can take to the streets with a single, articulate demand, we’re going to have to answer the question that we’ve been avoiding for over 60 years: who are we?"

Here's a sampling of our top news and opinion on Pakistan:

News

Pakistan on the Brink
New York Review of Books
Pakistan: Women vs. Taliban
Link TV
Hope for Pakistan's child workers
GlobalPost
Pakistan reels under Swat offensive
Asia Times
CIA: Our drones are killing terrorists. Promise.
Wired

Opinion

Talibanistan and the identity crisis
Dawn
The battle for the soul of Pakistan
Aljazeera
Pakistan's ethnic fault line
Washington Post

Pakistan: top rated stories
Pakistan: most recent stories


This Week: News Comparisons on the Economy
This week we're hosting a special News Hunt on the Economy, with a new twist. Rather than covering one broad topic as we have in the past, we'll focus on clusters of related stories on economy sub-topics such as: globalization, poverty, housing, or jobs (today's feature). Each day this week, the featured story on our home page will include links to related stories which we'll ask you to compare. Join this News Hunt and help us develop this new service by reviewing stories in the News Comparison box on our home page.

Link and Submit Related Stories
We also invite you to link (or submit) more related stories on this week's featured topics. When you have reviewed a couple linked stories on a topic, please write a comment in your review, or click the 'Like' button to let us know which story you found most informative. This experiment is a response to the sweeping support our News Comparison idea received in last week's survey on the future of NewsTrust (more on this later - we'll write up our findings on next week's NewsTrust blog post). In the meantime, your suggestions are welcome on our Feedback page.

-- Derek Hawkins, with Fabrice Florin and Kaizar Campwala

Education Reform: Top Stories | Take Our Survey

Last week, we organized a News Hunt on Education Reform with our partners NOW and PBS Engage. Led by NewsTrust community editor Kristin Gorski, we reviewed 50 stories on this important but under-reported topic, 21 of which received a NewsTrust rating.

Most reporting on education reform was overshadowed by other news coverage throughout the week. Our top stories, however, covered a range of significant issues related to improving schools and education systems.

Some of our top rated stories reported on the viability of charter schools. For example, NewsHour's Jim Merrow wrote about the performance of charter schools in New Orleans. While many charter schools in New Orleans -- called the "national laboratory of the charter movement" in this piece -- are outperforming non-charter schools, some sources said the "characterization" of city has disadvantaged some children. Kristin called this story "both informative and accessible," and other reviewers commented on its meticulous balance of perspectives.

The New Yorker took a more favorable view of charter schools in a profile of Steve Barr, creator of the Los Angeles-based Green Dot school program. Focusing on the main character behind this experiment in education reform, the New Yorker reported that under Barr's leadership, Green Dot schools have outpaced Los Angeles public schools in standardized tests by 20 percent since 2006.

The Christian Science Monitor tapped a new government study on the 30 million illiterate adults in the United States that received little high-profile coverage elsewhere -- "For the first time," the paper reported, "a detailed portrait of America's least literate adults is emerging." The New York Times ran a highly rated local story on the New York City public school Chancellor's decision to stop hiring teachers outside the system, due to poor economic conditions. And the Chronicle of Higher Education asked whether the rumored wide-screen Amazon Kindle could spark an "electronic-textbook revolution."

Opinion on education reform was scarce -- only five made our top stories list -- but one piece in particular garnered high ratings from our community. In a special to the Seattle Times, the former president of the Seattle School Board called the U.S. education system "obsolete," and offered three ideas for fixing it: change the way leaders are selected and treated; modify certification laws; and appoint school boards in urban systems.

Here's a sampling of our top news and opinion on Education Reform:

News

New Orleans charter schools produce mixed results
NewsHour
The Instigator
New Yorker
Klein orders New York schools to stop hiring from outside
New York Times
How a student-friendly kindle could change the textbook market
Chronicle of Higher Education
Why do millions of Americans struggle with reading and writing?
Christian Science Monitor

Opinion

Fix public education
Seattle Times

Education Reform: most trusted stories (full list sorted by rating)
Education Reform: most recent stories (full list sorted by date)

Thanks to our host and partners
Kristin Gorski is one of our shining stars at NewsTrust, and she showed her skills once again while hosting this News Hunt. A freelance writer and editor, and a former middle school teacher (not to mention, a news junkie), Kristin works tenaciously alongside us at NewsTrust and consistently brings valuable insights and ideas to the table. Thanks again for your wonderful participation, Kristin.

We'd also like to thank our partners at PBS Engage and NOW for helping us promote this News Hunt. As always, it is a pleasure to work with you, and we look forward to working on future projects together.

Quick Survey: Help plan our next steps
Take our short survey and help guide the future of NewsTrust. We’d love to hear your thoughts on new services we're developing this year to better serve the public. We’ll give you a sneak peek of our new home page, toolbar and review forms, and ask you to comment on some exciting new applications now in development. To take the survey, click here:
http://newstrust.net/survey/

It’s a great way for you to share your feedback at this critical time in our development. Your participation would mean a lot to us, and we think you will enjoy brainstorming new ideas for growing our community, and helping each other find quality news and information online.

This Week: Pakistan
Pakistan is our featured topic this week. As Taliban forces edge closer to the Pakistani capital, observers around the world are expressing concerns over the security of this nuclear-armed nation. Can the Pakistani government stave off Taliban militants while maintaining the support of the population? How have Pakistani citizens responded to this conflict? How can the Obama Administration address this problem without compromising Pakistani sovereignty? Help us find the best journalism on this timely topic -- join our News Hunt by reviewing (or submitting) a story on our Pakistan topic page.

-- Derek Hawkins, with Fabrice Florin and Kaizar Campwala

Obama's First 100 Days: Top Stories

What do President Barack Obama's first 100 days in office say about how he will lead the country for the rest of his term? Which promises has he delivered on? Which has he neglected?

As news organizations, pundits and political observers weighed in on these questions, our community looked at how the media covered President Obama's performance since he assumed office in January. Last week, from April 27th to May 4th, we joined forces with Pulitzer Prize winner PolitiFact and the University of Nevada at Reno in a News Hunt for the best journalism on Obama's First 100 Days.

While journalists and scholars dispute the importance of the 100-day mark, this closely watched period in politics was nevertheless a gold mine of in-depth news, analysis and opinion on America's new president. Our community reviewed 84 stories on the Obama Administration and rated 39 of them -- 26 news and 13 opinion pieces. By our standards, the overall quality of these stories was above average -- all but six received a NewsTrust rating of 3.5 (out of 5) or higher.

Our top news stories tended to avoid comprehensive coverage of the Obama Administration where others didn't. Each publication honed in on a trend, theme or set of issues, rather than assess Obama's performance on the full gamut of topics related to the presidency.

Our partners at PolitiFact identified more than 500 promises Obama made on the campaign trail in 2008 and have tracked their progress since his inauguration. As of Obama's 100th day -- which came Wed., April 29 -- Obama had kept 27 of those promises and broken six, according to the website. PolitiFact summed up its findings in three news analyses ('Obama and the big picture,' 'Obama's promises kept,' and 'Obama's promises broken') and one staff editorial ('Obama's two biggest promises'). All four were rated highly by our community.

In a similar analysis, '100 days of spin,' the website FactCheck.org examined a series of recent public statements made by Obama -- and about Obama. The site found several instances in which the president and his political opponents have made false claims, many revolving around the economy. Journalism.org, meanwhile, concluded that Obama "has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George Bush" in their first months in the White House, an assessment based on a survey of 49 news outlets.

Other top stories were more thematic, looking beyond the raw facts behind Obama's first 100 days. The Wall Street Journal focused on the breakneck pace at which the White House has operated since the new president stepped in -- "It's been like flying a plane while you're redesigning it," the paper quoted one administration official as saying. The New Yorker profiled Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director, calling him "unlikely guardian of Obamaism itself." Congressional Quarterly distilled Obama's governing style to four "defining characteristics," and Wired Magazine graded Obama on six issues near and dear to its editorial board.

Our top opinion was New York Times reporter David Leonhardt's one-on-one interview with Obama on the impact his economic plans could have on Americans. NewsTrust reviewer Mark Steele called Obama's answers "amazingly articulate." Leonhardt "knows how to ask good questions," he said, adding, "The unvarnished Obama is a pleasure to listen to."

Here's a sampling of our top news and opinion on Obama's First 100 Days:

News

First 100 Days: Obama and the big picture
PolitiFact
Running the White House at full tilt
Wall Street Journal
What Obama has shown, so far, about his style of governing?
Congressional Quarterly
Obama's first 100 days: How the president fared in the press vs. Clinton and Bush
Journalism.org
100 days of spin
FactCheck
Letter from Washington: Money talks
New Yorker
Obama's 100 days: High marks for science, low for privacy
Wired

Opinion

After the great recession - an interview with President Obama
New York Times
School of Hock
Washington Independent
First 100 days: Obama's two biggest promises
PolitiFact
Straight man
New Republic
How to judge a guy in 100 days
Comedy Central, Daily Show

Obama Administration: Most Trusted stories (full list, sorted by rating)
Obama Administration: Most Recent stories (full list, sorted by date)

Thanks to our Partners!
We’re very grateful to Bill Adair and his readers at PolitiFact, Donica Mensing and her students at the Reynolds School of Journalism in the University of Nevada at Reno, for their wonderful contributions to the Obama First 100 Days News Hunt.

It was an absolute pleasure to work with these world-class partners. In addition to providing excellent news analysis and opinion in its 'First 100 Days' series, PolitiFact brought 152 new members into our community, many of whom posted some really thoughtful story reviews. Welcome aboard, and thanks for helping make this News Hunt a success!

Facebook Update
We're also pleased to report that since we launched our new Facebook Connect feature two weeks ago, 142 people have signed up or logged in through Facebook -- and are sharing NewsTrust reviews with their Facebook friends. We invite you to join them and share your reviews with your friends, as well as visit our Facebook fan page, which now has over a hundred fans. Thanks for showing such interest in our cause -- keep sharing the news!

If you haven't checked out these features yet, read all about them here.

This Week: Education Reform
This week, we're hosting a News Hunt on Education Reform with our partners at NOW and PBS Engage. Can you help us pick the best journalism on how to fix our schools? Join us and our host Kristin Gorski to find quality news and opinions for this News Hunt, which runs through Sunday, May 10th. Please review (or submit) our recommended stories on our Education Reform page.

-- Derek Hawkins, with Fabrice Florin and Kaizar Campwala