I am happy to announce that NewsTrust is now part of The Poynter Institute, a respected journalism training organization based in Florida.
The Poynter Institute has been a NewsTrust partner since 2009 and collaborated regularly to our social news network. They share our commitment to news literacy and journalism education. We think our tools and services will be a great addition to Poynter's News University, their innovative online journalism and media training site.
Effective immediately, Poynter is the new owner and operator of NewsTrust.net, and we are glad to donate our assets to help them further this worthy cause.
As a valued NewsTrust member, you will continue to enjoy the same level of service, and we hope you’ll keep reviewing and posting stories on our site, which will now be curated by Poynter.
If you haven't visited us in a while, come take a look. We have a great selection of news stories for you to review on newstrust.net.
We also invite you to visit Poynter.org and learn more about their programs. And check out News University, Poynter’s e-learning site, which offers hundreds of training modules to anyone who wants to improve their journalism-based skills -- from multimedia to writing, reporting and more. Most of this training is free or very inexpensive. Poynter’s news and media literacy programs are explained on this special page at News University.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank and introduce some of the folks at Poynter Institute who made this acquisition possible: Howard Finberg, Pam Hogle, Vicki Krueger, Kelly McBride, Julie Moos and Kathryn Rende, to name but a few. You will be hearing from them and their colleagues in coming weeks.
I would also like to thank the world-class team that made NewsTrust possible over the years. We have been incredibly lucky to work with a wide range of journalists, educators, technologists and other innovators, including these individuals: Kaizar Campwala, David Cohn, Bill Densmore, Gin Ferrara, Adam Florin, David Fox, Terry Gamble, Kristin Gorski, Dan Gillmor, Mary Hartney, Derek Hawkins, Andrew Hazlett, John McManus, Evelyn Messinger, Ellen Miller, Jon Mitchell, Craig Newmark, Hap Perry, Howard Rheingold, Subramanya Sastry, Debra Shelfo, Kim Spencer, Gene Takagi and Caleb Waldorf, to name but a few. My deepest thanks for all your wonderful contributions to our cause!
I founded NewsTrust in 2005 to help people find good journalism online and make more informed decisions as citizens. Over the past seven years, we have been honored to touch the lives of millions of visitors, and a dedicated community of over 20,000 members grew around this experiment, drawn together by a shared passion for news you can trust. It’s been a true pleasure and honor to curate a daily feed of quality journalism with you all.
In the process, we learned to pay attention to the quality of the news and information we consume every day, and we built better tools to help each other separate fact from fiction.
Now that we are part of the Poynter community, we hope to reach an even wider network of experienced journalists and students to use our tools, so we may all join forces to “help maintain the integrity, the stability, the progress of self-government” -- a vision that we share with newspaperman Nelson Poynter.
I am deeply grateful to you all for helping us take NewsTrust this far -- and I look forward to our next steps with Poynter in this promising news literacy and civic media experiment. See you online!
All the best,
Fabrice Florin
Founder and Executive Director
NewsTrust Communications
fflorin-at-newstrust-dot-net
P.S.: On a personal note, I have joined Wikimedia Foundation to help engage readers to contribute productively to Wikipedia. It’s a great new assignment, where I am applying some of the lessons we learned together at NewsTrust over the years. You can track our progress here.
I am still active on NewsTrust and will keep sharing interesting stories on media, politics, psychology and technology on my favorite social news network, as I have in the past.
I hope to see you there very soon!
__________________________________
COMMUNITY RESPONSES
Updated on June 20, 2012
Here are some of the responses we received from community members and partners after we made our announcement of Poyner's acquisition on June 16, 2012.
"So glad NewsTrust will continue. I'll make a point of getting more active!" -- Walter Cox
"Fantastic news--and a standing ovation for making it all possible." -- Marsha Iverson
"Thank you Fabrice for dreaming up this experiment. I am a much better media consumer than I was before meeting you via NewsTrust.net. Congratulation for founding, guiding and ensuring the ongoing sustainability of this important resource. Bravo!" -- Dale Penn
"I'm so glad that you've lined up a solid organization to continue all of the good work that you started." -- Philippe Habib
"How prestigious for NewsTrust and how fortuitous for the public! Great news." -- Eve Harris
"Congratulations, Fabrice. A great home for NewsTrust. Good work." -- Bill Buzenberg
"You started something amazing and I would love to see it scale." -- George Polisner
"Congrats on making this happen! NewsTrust will be in very good hands." -- Keith Hammonds
Thanks for your kind words and good insights. We are very grateful for all the encouragement we have received so far, and look forward to our next steps with Poynter.
Read more comments on Facebook.
