NewsTrust Survey Results

Last month we invited our community to guide our next steps, and take a survey about our new services we are considering for NewsTrust.net. This online survey took place between May 14 and 21, and focused on six new service ideas for our site -- as well as a redesign of our home page and review form. 

The results are in, and are summarized below. 

We sought input from NewsTrust members and non-members, as well as from our board of director and advisors. They were invited by email to complete an online survey, which took between 5 and 15 minutes to complete. Two different survey versions were offered -- a full survey for members and a quick survey for non-members. Our full survey was completed by about 189 members and our quick survey by 25 new visitors, for a total of 214 completed responses.

Overall Direction

When asked about the overall direction of NewsTrust, most respondents thought we could improve our service by focusing our efforts on making the site:

• more informative
  
• easier to use 
  
• more educational

Asked to choose three of eight options, about 52% of members and 62% of non-members favored making NewsTrust more informative. Making NewsTrust more professional ranked highly among non-members (39%) but not members (25%). Making the site more personal, fun and social ranked low in both groups, while improving the site visually ranked in the middle.

New Home Page and Toolbar

We asked participants for their feedback about a new version of the home page and a new toolbar for our review form. The response was very favorable to both of these new designs: 61% respondents said they liked the new home page and 66% liked the new toolbar and review form.

New Services

In both surveys we asked respondents which two of the following new services would make NewsTrust more interesting:  

• News Comparisons - see how different sources cover the same story
• My News - personal news feeds that match your interests
• Groups - recommendations from friends, editors, political groups
  
• Smart Feeds - top links from trusted sources on Twitter, Facebook 
• My Stats - track your media diet and news literacy
  
• My Score - earn points for your contributions 

News Comparisons ranked highest for both groups, with 40% of members (including reviewers and editors) and 49% of non-members (visitors) saying the feature would make NewsTrust more interesting. My News ranked second, with 17% of members and 27% of non-members, followed by Groups, with 14% and 10%. There was less interest for My Stats and My Score, though it's worth noting that reviewers showed more interest than other respondents for these last two features, which reward active participation on our site.

News Comparisons

Respondents were overwhelmingly supportive of News Comparisons in their open-ended comments on the survey. "Exciting idea on several levels: builds expertise and expands visibility--especially for partnerships--while creating educational opportunities to enhance news literacy," said NewsTrust community editor Marsha Iverson. "A grand idea!" 

"This could be very valuable in both news literacy instruction as well as writing courses where students need to find opposing viewpoints," said Aimee DeChambeau. "This would provide solid examples, and even help students in their research."

David Dawson agreed. "It's easy to find the same point of view on sites like TPM and Huffington Post," he said. "Diversity of perspectives really appeals to me." 

Other respondents were more skeptical, worrying that the process could be time consuming. 

"This would give me additional viewpoints, so I'm all for it," said Carol Heidman. "However, would I have time to take advantage of this?" 

David Cohn, a NewsTrust advisor and founder of Spot.Us, said News comparisons go "right to the heart of NewsTrust," but wondered about implementation. "Reading the three stories is a lot to ask," he said. "Having them come back and click even just one more button might be too much."

My News

My News was also fairly well-received. More than one-third of respondents said they were interested in the service, but many said they wouldn't want to be limited in their news consumption. 

NewsTrust community editor Kristin Gorski liked the feature. "If people begin to use NewsTrust as their own news homepage, this could definitely increase traffic," she said. "It makes sense to have this feature since the site is about news."

"I like the idea but I don't want to be too narrow in my interests," said Karen Hertz. "I want to be stretched & challenged to consider alternative view points and I would like to broaden my subject interests."

"I'm interested in the content being personalized for me by content or topic, but not by my politics or by matching only with content that 'shares my values,'" said Mark Steele. 

Groups and Smart Feeds

Although they posted low percentages in the survey, Groups and Smart Feeds had some strong supporters. Groups were enticing to Rich Rodecker. "Taking into consideration my previous comments, I do like the idea of groups," he said. "People with interests close to my own will find me news stories I'm interested in faster and more often then some super-user pushing out articles on a wide variety of topics."

NewsTrust advisor and social media expert Howard Rheingold advocated Smart Feeds. "I see social filtering (smart feeds) as the wave of the future," he said. 

Donations

At the end of the survey, we asked respondents if they would consider making a donation to support these new services. About 18% answered yes, while 34% said no and 48% were not sure. Not suprisingly, members were more likely than non-members to make a donation.

For more info, check our full survey results from our members (note this raw data and there are some slight variations from the summary above, which is more accurate). 

Thank you!

We'd like to thank all of you who took the time to guide our next steps by answering this survey! Your generous advice and wonderful insights are invaluable to us, and will help inform our development for these new services. Expect to see a new home page and toolbar later this summer, and some of these new services in coming months. We'll be sure to let you know  when they launch. 

-- Derek Hawkins, Fabrice Florin and Kaizar Campwala