NewsTrust - Blog Archive

About NewsTrust

NewsTrust was created to help people find good journalism online.

From 2006 to 2012, our nonprofit social news network offered a feed of quality news and opinions from mainstream and independent sources, based on ratings from our reviewers, which included both experienced journalists and news consumers. 

NewsTrust editors curated the site daily, posting news stories for review on a variety of local topics. Community members were invited to submit and rate news stories of their choice and discuss them with each other and with our staff. Experienced editors then picked the best stories to feature on our news hub and partner feeds. Though our service was national in scope, this process worked particularly well at the local level, as we found during our NewsTrust Baltimore pilot.

We invited the public to rate the news based on core principles of journalism. Reviewers used our online review guide to evaluate the accuracy, fairness, context and sourcing of news stories. Their reviews were also rated by our editors, and weighted based on their level of expertise. In the process, we helped millions of citizens get better informed about important public issues, as well as become more discriminating and engaged news consumers. 

Our social news review service was created and led by multimedia innovator Fabrice Florin, with support from the MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network and Open Society Foundations, among others. We also partnered with many respected news organizations, such as the Baltimore Sun, FactCheck.org, PBS NewsHour, USA Today and the Washington Post. Our media partners invited their journalists and audiences to review the news with us on selected topics, and many included our feeds on their sites. 

We also worked with a range of colleges and high schools, such as the French American International School, University of California, the University of Maryland and Stanford University. These educational partners used NewsTrust to help their students develop literacy skills by reviewing the news, earning certificates for their work.

Our findings suggest that this type of community-based interaction between journalists, schools and volunteers improved the way people find their news and helped them become more informed citizens. NewsTrust's collaborative evaluation tools, combined with curation by our experienced staff and media partners and the support of algorithmic ratings, proved particularly effective for surfacing good journalism on important issues. And teachers and students alike found our service useful for helping the next generation of news consumers learn to separate fact from fiction.

NewsTrust is no longer available online. The Poynter Institute acquired NewsTrust in 2012, but could only support the service for a couple years. To enable others to freely use our software platform for their own use, we open-sourced our Ruby on Rails code, which can be found here on Github.

NewsTrust brought together a diverse community of citizens, journalists, students and educators to work with us on this multifaceted social news project. We are deeply grateful to them all.

Building a social network is a team sport, which requires a wide range of skills. For this project, we were very lucky to work with a world-class team, including: Wes Boyd, Kaizar Campwalla, Doug Carlston, David Cohn, Gin Ferrara, Adam Florin, David Fox, Dan Gillmor, Terry Gamble, Tish Grier, Mary Hartney, Derek Hawkins, Andrew Hazlett, Jon Mitchell, Evelyn Messinger, Rory O’Connor, Howard Rheingold, Subramanya Sastry, Debra Shelfo, Kim Spencer and Caleb Waldorf, to name but a few. Together, they delivered a high-quality service with modest resources; we all enjoyed a close collaboration and learned a lot from each other.

We were also privileged to collaborate with so many great partners and funders who generously contributed time and resources to participate in our experiment. We hope that they got as much from it as we did and that our findings will help them and other communities discover even better ways to find and share good local journalism.

NewsTrust is now part of The Poynter Institute

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.

 

Next steps for NewsTrust

Because of your interest in NewsTrust, I would like to give you an update on next steps for our social news network.

After six years building NewsTrust into a valuable online resource, the time has come for me to move on -- and I have just joined Wikimedia as product manager for new editor engagement. My role there is to create new tools to help Wikipedia readers become editors and share what they know. I am very excited about this opportunity, which will enable me to apply many of the lessons we learned together here at NewsTrust, and offer them on a much wider scale. (For those of you who are interested, the first new product I am developing for Wikipedia is a new version of their Article Feedback Tool.)  

As a result, I will no longer be able to run or support NewsTrust's social news service, which I have been funding personally since September 2011, when our funding ran out. Our goal is to continue to offer NewsTrust as an educational service, but no longer as a consumer destination, so the news listings on our home page and topic pages will only be available through the end of February 2012. We are now planning to donate our assets to a trusted nonprofit organization which will provide that educational service, and we expect to make an announcement next month. More on this later.

For now, our social news site will remain live for about another month, but will no longer be curated by any staff members. If you are an existing member or host, please take a moment to correct any errors within your area of expertise. If you are a new member, you are welcome to review stories on our site, but we will not be granting new posting privileges. If you would like to continue to get emails from us in coming weeks, you can subscribe to our daily MyNews email, for a personalized listing of news stories based on your interests. Simply click on MyNews under your name at the top of any page on our site to start your MyNews page, then go to the Email Newsletters page to change any of your email subscriptions. Enjoy ...

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has participated in the NewsTrust experiment for your wonderful contributions to our cause. I have really enjoyed working with you all and I think we have learned a lot together. I hope that we will all be able to carry out these findings into our own lives, to help our communities separate fact from fiction and make more informed decisions as citizens.

Thanks again -- and best wishes to you all!


Fabrice Florin
Founder and Executive Director
NewsTrust Communications

---

UPDATE: Community Responses (Jan. 16, 2012)
I would like to thank everyone who contacted me to express their support following this announcement. Your kind words mean a lot to me, and I am deeply grateful for your insights. I have excerpted below some of these messages, which reflect the impact that NewsTrust has had on our diverse community. For more perspectives, check our testimonials."


" [NewsTrust] seemed to be a tremendous success on many levels. ... I, for one, was transformed by the experience. Once a proud, vocal, "bleeding heart" liberal, involvement with NewsTrust made me a more compassionate person in my personal life. I now find it easier to disagree without becoming disagreeable, at a time when the political tide seems to continue to swell against such "rash" behavior as compromise. So, if NT did nothing else, it changed my life for the better. I believe I am a better educated news consumer. I am definitely able to around my ultra conservative family members now and understand where they are coming from, even if it isn't a place I personally find logical.Thank you!"
Dale Penn - NewsTrust host and reviewer, Florida


"Newstrust was a Sisyphean effort in many ways, but incredibly worthy. I think all of us who participated benefited hugely from the tools you and your team created to abet critical thinking and informed analysis. I believe your philosophy and the groundwork you laid will continue to have an impact in this constantly morphing world of news and (mis)information. I wish you the best at Wikimedia. They are lucky to have you."
Terry Gamble - Author and former NewsTrust board member, California


"There still is so much good journalism out there, but in the 24-7, Web-driven communications environment in which we all now live, good journalism can easily get lost in all the noise. NewsTrust has been smart and creative in using this new platform to present news and news analysis in a way that promises to engage readers who might otherwise never pick up a newspaper. And in a way that values good journalism as something more than mere 'content.'"
Christine Shenot - Former newspaper reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, Florida


"Congratulations on this new chapter! You did an amazing job building NewsTrust and I know you will thrive in this new role."
Calvin Sims - News Media Program Officer, Ford Foundation, New York


"I just wanted to let you know how much I have appreciated NewsTrust … enjoyed is the wrong word. It has pointed me to stories I never would have found, and over a broad spectrum of opinions/positions. I found out about NewsTrust at an ALA meeting some while ago, and have relied on it ever since."
Pam Soreide - Library Director, Holdrege Area Public Library, Nebraska


"I wish you well, Fabrice, in your newest role. However I must add that to me, this seems like the loss of a whole community. Those of us who have been members for some time and have reviewed and posted and read both stories and others' reviews recognize well many of our fellow members' names and, speaking for myself at least, often look to their reviews of articles to discover how valuable it may be for us to read. As i read the future here, it seems not likely that this community of familiar names (and faces on the page) will survive for long as I believe some organization/administration is necessary in preserving a communal sensibility. I believe this level of interaction is unique in news sites and i will miss it very much, as I will miss also the opportunity to read such an eclectic range of articles and assessments from so many varied sources. I have much appreciation for so many of you other members who have brought such great stories which you h ave assessed as fairly and honestly as we are able."
Patricia L'Herrou - NewsTrust host and reviewer, Virginia


Thank you for your vision and leadership in creating and running NewsTrust. I've learned a lot being a part of it as a member, host, editor, and working on various projects; thank you so much for the opportunity to do so. As you stated in your email, it is true that I have taken what I've learned here and applied it to so many other things. ... I am happy to hear that NewsTrust will live on in an educational context, where I think it will do much good to help students become more discerning news consumers -- something all of society needs!"
Kristin Gorski - Teacher and NewsTrust editor, New York



Many thanks to all of you who took the time to share your thoughts about NewsTrust and what it meant to you. It's been a wonderful adventure for me as well and I am so glad it gave us a chance to work together. I hope we'll get a chance to collaborate again in the future. To be continued ... Fabrice

Truthsquad Update

This week, we would like to give you a quick update on Truthsquad, the pro-am fact-checking network we are developing with the Center for Public Integrity.

We spent the summer fundraising, signing up new partners -- and designing a new user experience, which we will be introducing next Wednesday. We hope you will participate actively in next week's extended pilot, to help us test and improve this new service. For more info about Truthsquad, visit the Truthsquad pilot site and sign up, so we can inform you when our new service launches.

Truthsquad aims to revolutionize the field of fact checking by combining the best practices of crowdsourcing with the knowledge of a large nonprofit newsroom and the reach of major online news partners. This new initiative empowers citizens to collaborate with journalists to fact-check controversial claims from politicians and newsmakers. Participants are invited to post questionable claims online, research factual evidence supporting or opposing these claims, and verify their accuracy as a community, with professional oversight.

With the help of our community, we aim to launch Truthsquad.com as a daily service by early 2012. Our goal is to provide new ways to find accurate information and verify suspicious claims on our site and widgets -- featuring our own findings, as well as promoting the work of other trusted research organizations like FactCheck.org, PolitiFact and the Washington Post.

To learn more about our next steps, read the recent articles in The Atlantic and Nieman Journalism Lab.

We are encouraged to witness the rise of a new fact-checking movement, as more journalists join forces to verify claims from politicians -- and expose misinformation during the 2012 elections. The next step is to give citizens a voice in that process, which is what Truthsquad is all about. Stay tuned for more …

 

Fact-checking the GOP Debate 
In the meantime, we thought you would enjoy these links to some great fact-checks on the recent GOP debate, from a wide range of trusted sources. How did the fact-checkers cover the CNN Tea Party Express debate? Compare these reports:

• FactCheck: CNN/Tea Party Debate

• PolitiFact: Fact-checking the CNN/Tea Party Express GOP debate

• Washington Post: Fact checking the CNN and Tea Party Express debate

• Associated Press: GOP debate fact check: A look at the record

• New York Times: Fact Check: Social Security, Health Care and More

• CNN Politics: Fact Check: Did the stimulus create “zero” jobs?

Review more fact-checks (and post your own) on this special feed from Google News.

See you next week on the Truthsquad pilot site!

 

NewsTrust goes open source

Today, we're excited to announce that we are open sourcing the code for NewsTrust.net, our social news platform.

We have just published that code on Github, under the name SocialNews. It runs on the popular Ruby on Rails web framework, which is also open source.

This SocialNews code will enable developers to create their own social news sites, using our platform to help people find good journalism together. We are really happy to make our tools and methodologies available to a broader community.

Last month, we announced a new direction for NewsTrust on our blog, and this open source project is part of that transition. NewsTrust is now pivoting from a standalone news curation site to a consultancy that will serve the needs of larger partners and help their communities become better informed about important public issues.

We are very grateful to our partners at Transitions for providing the funding to make this open source project possible. This will enable them to test new applications of our social news platform in Eastern Europe and other world regions.

Developers can download SocialNews Version 1.0. here and read our technical documentation here. This open source code is licensed by NewsTrust Communications under the terms of the Berkeley Software Distribution ("BSD") license. We are moving on to new projects and don't plan to actively develop or support this code base in the short-term, but we will post code updates on Github from time to time, along with corresponding notes on this page.

NewsTrust also offers a range of consulting services to organizations that wish to help their communities become better informed and more engaged about public issues. For example, NewsTrust can provide development services to help your organization adapt this SocialNews code to create your own social news site. To inquire about our partner services, email us at partners-at-newstrust-dot-net.

The NewsTrust and SocialNews projects were a team effort and we are grateful to all our contributors for their work over the past six years. This SocialNews open source code was prepared by Subramanya Sastry, NewsTrust's engineering manager. The NewsTrust code was written by the following developers: Adam Florin, David Fox, Caleb Waldorf, Subramanya Sastry and Mark Daggett. The following editorial staff members played an important role in developing the various features of this application: Kaizar Campwala, Derek Hawkins, Jon Mitchell, Mary Hartney, Gin Ferrara, Andrew Hazlett. Special thanks to Ezra Fox and the members of the larger NewsTrust community for testing and feedback.

Last but not least, we would like to thank our many funders for helping us develop and improve this software platform over the years. They include the MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, Open Society Foundations, Ashoka, Ayrshire Foundation, Mitch Kapor Foundation, Sunlight Foundation -- as well as private donors such as Craig Newmark and Doug Carlston.

We can't wait to see what new creative uses come out of this open source project. We ourselves benefited greatly from the open source code movement while developing our application and we are happy to return the favor with SocialNews.

Enjoy ...

Fabrice Florin
Executive Director and Founder
NewsTrust Communications

 

UPDATE - Jan. 24, 2012: Here is a NewsTrust Guide for Administrators, which describes how NewsTrust and SocialNews work. This guide includes short tips on how to use our tools, with different sections for members, hosts and admins. It is particularly useful if you have installed SocialNews on your site and would like an overview of its services, with short operating instructions for each tool.

Onward!

Last year, a mutual friend introduced me to Jon Mitchell, who was looking for advice on how to get into journalism, having recently graduated from Brown University. In a matter of weeks after our call, Jon became one of our most prolific NewsTrust reviewers, rising to the occasion to become our managing editor in July 2010. It has been a true pleasure to work with Jon ever since and I am very grateful for his many thoughtful contributions to NewsTrust. In a single year, he took on more jobs than some people get in an entire career, from hosting news hunts to fact-checking politicians, managing online communities, teaching journalism students and promoting our findings on social networks. I am sorry to see him go, but am also rooting for him in his new role as a writer for ReadWriteWeb. For this exit report, I asked Jon to share his personal observations from his experience at NewsTrust, and reflect on how social news sites like ours can encourage more people to grow their news literacy skills. Thank you, Jon, for all your wonderful insights and good luck with your next steps as a journalist! -- Fabrice Florin

After a year and a half of playing around with it, I'm more sure than ever that NewsTrust is the right tool for the job. As the person responsible for curating the day-to-day NewsTrust experience, the amazing array of features and options was occasionally dazzling, even to me. But I've been away from it for a month or so, having started as a full-time writer at ReadWriteWeb, whose warm review of NewsTrust was among my first impressions of it, and it's a joy to look at this homepage from an ordinary user's perspective again. The homepage is well-organized, rich with content, easy to share, and filled with friendly faces of members. I can hardly imagine a better example of a civic-minded social news network.

The trouble is, the idea of the Web is shifting under our feet. In 2006, when NewsTrust opened, there was no iPhone. Facebook had barely begun to reach the general public. The word "app" scarcely existed to describe what NewsTrust is: a Web app for filtering the news. And the NewsTrust application is powerful. It has enabled this small team to attain some lofty goals. But many more Web apps have sprung up over the last five years, some of them growing at gargantuan scale, and the great ones offer rich content and warm community, too. They also offer tantalizing games, titillating gossip, and videos of cats.

We can only spend so much daily time and energy on the Web, and though we may spend quite a lot, there's always more stuff out there. Herbert Simon described the Information Age as an "attention economy." NewsTrust requires careful attention. It's not always fun, at least not in the way other social networks have defined fun. Separating fact from fiction in the news is a tough job, but, if we want a healthy civic society, somebody's got to do it.

 

Shifting gears

As we decided this summer, NewsTrust is shifting from a standalone news curation site into a consultancy to help larger partners better inform and engage their communities. The idea of crowd-sourcing quality control over the news was a noble one, and I don't mean that it was unrealistic; it just requires a really big crowd. Our email newsletters go out to about 12,000 people, and that drives a good amount of traffic to the site, but there are too many alternatives now. In this heyday of the social Web, a few websites hold sway over most of the crowd, and it's usually the ones with the cat videos.

NewsTrust has kept up with social media all along, with deep Facebook and Twitter integration practically everywhere, but just sharing stories is no longer enough. All news sites have sharing options, usually too many of them. It's expected. NewsTrust demands more than just reading; it asks for analysis, reflection, and reviews. NewsTrust has to do more to get people to go through that effort. Its next challenge is to take this practice beyond the confines of this complex website with its high learning curve and bring the ongoing conversation along with it.

 

Transparency and identity

The best part about NewsTrust is the conversation. The hierarchy of trust on the site produces such high-caliber discussion for a Web forum; it never ceased to amaze me. Fabrice frequently calls it "a clean, well-lighted space," contrasting it with the dingy basements that comments sections so often become on large news sites. NewsTrust's insistence on transparency and disclosure helps ensure mutual respect, although it isn't a community model that works for everyone.

Other social networks, like Facebook and Google+, have chosen a similar approach to pseudonymity. That has proven a controversial choice, because these social networking sites are vying to become the root location of Web users' identities, and many people don't want their Web identities to be public. But NewsTrust needs a more particular kind of community. It doesn't need everyone on the Web to make it work. A dedicated few can add great value for the benefit of many more. Those who are willing to stand up and be counted in the effort to improve the quality of news and information can bear the standard for their fellow citizens.

 

Future applications

I'm excited for the future of Truthsquad, the pro-am fact-checking services we created last year. The first pilots have shown that bringing questionable claims to the attention of many will inspire a few to dig for the truth. The compelling part about Truthsquad is that it offers information that's useful at a quick glance, a one-word assessment of the truth or falsehood of a statement, but it's also open to much deeper exploration of an issue. If NewsTrust is to add value to news stories encountered out on the open Web, rather than in the well-defined constraints of one site, making bite-sized statements about the content will make it more digestible.

I think NewsTrust's educational applications have shown great promise. The tools are flexible enough to custom-build solutions on a case-by-case basis, whether for teaching journalism skills or courses on a particular topic in the news. Check out my report on our 2010 educational programs for more specifics.

I also couldn't be more proud of the NewsTrust Baltimore team and the amazing work they pulled off using NewsTrust tools at a local scale. The reports alone offer a wealth of information about Baltimore's local news ecosystem that didn't exist in one place before.

Whatever new applications are found for NewsTrust's tools and methods, I know they will make for a better Web.

 

Onward!

Fabrice loves to sign his emails with that superhero-like exclamation: "Onward!" It's inspiring to work under that kind of enthusiastic guidance. I can't even begin to thank Fabrice for the opportunity he gave me to work on the NewsTrust project (believe me; I've tried a few times). When I started here, all I had was potential and enthusiasm. Fabrice entrusted me with a title and a range of roles way beyond my years, and it was only due to his patient guidance that I was able to fill them. I hope he's as proud of the work we did together as I am.

And to Kaizar Campwala, NewsTrust's previous editor, who saw enough potential in me to leave the reins in my hands, I owe a great deal. I'm eagerly watching his new endeavors, and seeing what he built here at NewsTrust, I know his work is going to rock the world.

To Subbu Sastry, most patient of engineers, I can't believe what you accomplish every day. Though I learned from everyone with whom I worked here, I certainly learned the most from you. Honestly, if I have any sort of career in what my fellow bloggers call "Tech," I have you to thank. Talking to you about the systems, databases, and languages that make NewsTrust hum along so smoothly was really what inspired me to keep building on the platform every day. And I'll never forget the day Amazon EC2 crapped out on us, and how you single-handedly flipped us over to their beta program for moving regions, bringing NewsTrust back online faster than so many other headline-grabbing Web services. And you saved the day many more times than that.

To Gin, Mary, and Andrew, the NTBmore team, again in no order other than that in which I met you, it was such an honor. You people are so skilled. It has been a joy seeing what each of you has started to get into in your lives after NewsTrust, and I'll definitely be keeping track. Someday, I'd love for us all to work together on something again. Seriously. Call me.

And to the NewsTrust community, whose reviews I've read, whose posts I've tagged, whose validation levels I've increased, whose comments I've liked, you people are what it's all about. All Web communities should have what we've had. We haven't been free of interpersonal issues or strife — every community has those — but we've had such a strong basis for working it out amongst ourselves, and that is rare on the Web. I hope you'll stick with NewsTrust wherever it goes, and, more importantly, I hope you'll carry on the lessons of fairness, accuracy, and transparency we've all practiced together. I know I will.

See you around the Web.

- Jon

Mapping Baltimore’s news ecosystem

As the NewsTrust Baltimore pilot winds down at the end of July 2011, we are publishing a series of reports about our local news experiment. For the past six months, we have provided a free online service to help local residents find good journalism about their city -- and become more discerning news consumers in the process, thanks to the support of the Open Society Foundations.

In this report by staff writer/researcher Andrew Hazlett and NewsTrust founder Fabrice Florin, we’ll share what we have learned about Baltimore's news ecosystem. See also our other reports to date on our blog: our editorial report, educational and community report, survey results and first pilot statistics.

 

How are the news media covering public issues in Baltimore? Are local citizens getting the quality journalism they need to make informed decisions about their lives and government? These were some of the key questions we wanted to address during our six-month NewsTrust Baltimore pilot.

In this report, we will share some general findings about Baltimore’s news ecosystem and provide some details about some of the most interesting news sources we reviewed as a community. Our report is based on more than 3,200 reviews of local news stories and opinions during our pilot. The NewsTrust Baltimore site now features a large compilation of qualitative and quantitative data about the local news media, gathered by our staff and hundreds of community members and students. Through the numerical ratings and written observations of local citizens and journalists, we can now map some of the key players in the city’s news ecosystem, with a first look at the perceived quality of their journalism over the past six months.

 

How Baltimore news happens now

In January 2010, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism published a report entitled "How News Happens." Focusing on a single week in the city of Baltimore, researchers traced several key news storylines as reported in traditional and new media sources. Tightly focused on original reporting of public affairs issues, the study found that newspapers created the vast majority of important news.

The report received a lot of attention when published. As discussed in the New York Times and within journalism circles, the study affirmed the central role of "legacy" print outlets, especially the Baltimore Sun, in generating original reporting that drives all news consumption.

Some took issue with the report’s definition of what qualified as a legitimate news source. At the time the Pew study was released, journalism scholar Jeff Jarvis argued it was a helpful snapshot of a moment in time but did not capture the emerging role of amateur and independent news sources.

Two years after the Pew study’s data was collected, NewsTrust Baltimore now offers new information on how that ecosystem has evolved. Our project is not directly comparable to the Pew study, but it does provide a detailed record of Baltimore news coverage over about six months.

What has changed in the last two years? Our findings reveal a rich, diverse and growing ecosystem of both mainstream and independent news sources in Baltimore.

Where the Pew study focused on a handful of news stories during one week, our project reviewed thousands of individual stories from 120 news sources across a six-month period. While the Pew study included only 10 blogs and online sources that met their criteria, we found newsworthy material from 68 local blogs and online sources, including both professional and amateur operations. We also discovered new or previously unknown sources throughout the life of the project, with informative news stories and insightful commentary from the edges of a rapidly changing news ecosystem. During the six months of this project, we saw some news sources go dark, others come back to life, and new entrants, such as Baltimore Fishbowl, make a splash.

Our observations confirm that Baltimore’s news ecosystem continues to be heavily influenced by The Sun and a few other mainstream news outlets. However, we also found a growing independent journalism scene filled with innovative players, with 70 independent sources representing 37 percent of our story reviews. Across this variety of media, we reviewed quality news and analysis from both independent and mainstream sources, many of which received high ratings regardless of their ownership or size. These diverse journalistic groups complement each other to offer Baltimore citizens a much broader spectrum of factual reporting and insights than we had anticipated when we started this project.

This graphic chart of our top-rated news sources helps visualize some of the key players that stood out for us in the Baltimore ecosystem.

Sources are shown as bubbles on this chart, where they are scattered vertically by quality (average story rating) and horizontally by activity (number of stories listed), with bubble size based on number of story reviews. Note that this chart only features sources that had at least 50 stories listed on our site and 35 or more reviews, to insure that their ratings were based on a sufficient body of work. These ratings, calculated on a 5-point scale, are based on story reviews by our staff and "trusted members" (50 reviewers who demonstrated high news literacy skills, earning a member level of 3 or more) -- instead of overall ratings from all community members (many of whom were students who were just learning these skills).

Here's a more detailed listing of our top 20 news sources that met our above criteria, ranked by rating, and showing their number of stories and reviews, using the same data set from Jan. 31 to July 15, 2011.

While these charts are based on subjective evaluations over a limited time period and cannot be viewed as definitive quality measurements, they do reflect a general consensus among our trusted members about which sources they found to be informative and credible over the course of our six-month pilot.

We are also encouraged by the fact that four out of ten of the top-rated sources on our bubble chart were independent publications (shown in green), which we view as a positive development for the Baltimore news ecosystem.

The pie chart below shows how Baltimore sources broke down between independent and mainstream publications, with a third of the content coming from independent sources, based on the number of stories listed for review on the NewsTrust Baltimore site.  

 

And here's how the same story data set can be broken down by media type. Again, we note a wide range of diverse media types, particularly online, to complement the steady output from such newspapers as The Sun, The Post, City Paper and The Daily Record.

 

For more information on how local news sources in various media contributed to the overall news coverage, read our earlier report on the NewsTrust Baltimore blog, where we offered general observations and specific examples of interesting work in print and wire services, television, radio, and online sources.

By necessity, NewsTrust focuses on content that is readily available online. Unfortunately, this excludes a number of broadcast and print-only sources, as well as outlets that restrict access to paying subscribers. Our mission is to help people find good journalism online, so we can only review stories that the public can view on the Internet. This constraint may also exclude under-resourced newsrooms and small neighborhood papers, but readily shared online content is not just a convenience for NewsTrust editors -- it should be an important goal for any entity that works to inform the public.

 

Featured Baltimore news sources

To complement our overview of Baltimore’s news ecosystem, we feature below brief descriptions of some of the most interesting and representative news sources we reviewed during our pilot, along with links to their source profiles on our site. We selected a handful of major players and some unusual outlets that operate in various corners and niches of the city’s news and information ecology. We like to think of this short list as a "core sample" of the diverse media and styles that compose Baltimore’s news environment. For a complete list of sources we have found, we encourage you to explore our source listings -- and you can even rate these sources here, all on one page. Our many issue-focused News Hunts also provide rich detail on more of the sources that our community evaluated in the course of the project. 

The Baltimore Sun

Baltimore’s news "solar system" typically revolves around The Sun, its newspaper of record. Like many newspapers in recent years, The Sun has weathered a revolution in how people consume information, an unprecedented economic crisis and ownership changes. Despite some dire predictions, The Sun has proven flexible and adaptive as the media landscape has changed around it. In the course of our project, no other source came close in number to the 1,171 Sun stories reviewed by the NewsTrust Baltimore community (out of 1,471 Sun stories listed on our site). The Sun excels in coverage of Baltimore’s government at the local and state level and Maryland’s delegation in Washington. No other news source was as comprehensive, in our observations.

NewsTrust Baltimore community members were particularly interested in reading and reviewing the work of Sun reporters Justin Fenton, Michael Dresser, Julie Bykowicz, Julie Scharper and Annie Linskey. These journalists cover crime, transportation and politics at the city and state levels. These are the same topics on which NewsTrust community members have sought out The Sun’s expertise.

We have found The Sun to be an excellent source of both in-depth news and up-to-the moment breaking stories. The online presence of the newspaper is timely and interactive. Blogs maintained by columnists and reporters complement news stories with analysis, context, and (when moderated) a forum for civil public debate.

Here are some notable stats we collected in our evaluation of The Sun, as shown on its source profile on our pilot site:

Overall Rating: 3.8*.
Number of Stories Reviewed: 1,171.
Highly rated for: Facts, Fairness, Accuracy, Information and Relevance. 
Topics covered: Politics, Business, Living, Education, Crime, Sci/Tech, Maryland General Assembly, Health.
Most reviewed authors: Justin Fenton, Michael Dresser, Julie Scharper. 

* All source ratings in this report are on a scale of 1 to 5 and based on a weighted average of story reviews by trusted members, rather than all reviews by community members, for reasons outlined above. As a result, these ratings may vary from the community-wide ratings shown on our public site. 

The Daily Record

The Maryland Daily Record is a statewide business and legal newspaper, published six times a week. The paper reports on commerce, finance, law, business, construction and real estate, with a focus on Baltimore City and Baltimore County.

During the NewsTrust Baltimore experiment, The Daily Record contributed a great deal of enterprising reporting. The launch of our project coincided with a widely-cited investigative series that highlighted problems and setbacks in a massive development project around Johns Hopkins Hospital. The stories generated a City Council hearing and numerous substantial comments from our community. In addition to specialized business news, The Daily Record has established expertise and relevance well outside its niche market.

Overall Rating: 3.7.
Number of Stories Reviewed: 161.
Highly rated for: Facts, Accuracy, Relevance, Transparency. 
Topics covered: Business, Politics, Law, Development, Courts. 
Most reviewed authors: Rachel Bernstein, Nicholas Sohr, Melody Simmons.

City Paper

The Baltimore City Paper dedicated itself in 1977 to provide an alternative source of news and opinions on local politics, communities, culture and the arts in the Baltimore metropolitan area.

While it remains proudly alternative, it has also become something of an institution in Baltimore. Our community members rated the City Paper highly for its blend of lifestyle news and accountability journalism. That combination may be one reason for the paper’s longevity and continued relevance. As an illustration, NewsTrust reviewers praised City Paper stories on subjects ranging from the city’s Environmental Control Board to internet-enabled amateur ornithology

Anna Ditkoff’s Murder Ink column has ensured that homicide victims receive more dignity than is possible in scant police blotter reports.

Overall Rating: 3.7.
Number of Stories Reviewed: 150.
Highly rated for: Facts, Accuracy, Relevance, and Transparency.
Topics covered: Politics, Living, Business, Crime, Culture.
Most reviewed authors: Edward Ericson Jr., Van Smith, Anna Ditkoff.

Urbanite

Publishing a host of stories about innovative people and projects in Baltimore, Urbanite magazine engages in a very direct form of civic journalism. In addition to food, arts and lifestyle reporting and criticism, the magazine has sponsored competitions and exhibitions that encourage creative solutions to urban problems. In addition to a freely distributed print monthly, Urbanite has developed a robust online presence and a new project called The Great Baltimore Check-in -- an interesting integration of social media, location-based services, serious issues and recreation.

Overall Rating: 3.9.
Number of Stories Reviewed: 138.
Highly rated for: Sourcing, Style, Accuracy, Context, Relevance. 
Topics covered: Living, Politics, Business, Culture, Arts, Sci/Tech, Food. 
Top authors: Greg Hanscom, Cara Ober, Michael Corbin.

WBAL-TV

WBAL-TV is the NBC-affiliated television station in Baltimore. It is one of the flagship stations of the Hearst Corporation, which also owns sister radio stations WBAL and WIYY.

Among Baltimore television stations, the NewsTrust community had particularly strong praise for WBAL-TV. Our editors and community members were drawn to the station’s approach to the news. Strong investigative work by Jayne Miller and other reporters is one distinctive quality of WBAL-TV’s work. Its sister station, WBAL Radio, was also rated highly for its coverage of local issues by NewsTrust members.

Overall Rating: 3.5.
Number of Stories Reviewed: 49.
Highly rated for: Facts, Fairness, Enterprise, Relevance. 
Topics covered: Politics, Baltimore City, Business, Crime, Living, Youth.
Most reviewed authors: Jayne Miller, Sheldon Dutes, Barry Simms.

WYPR

WYPR is the local NPR affiliate, serving the metropolitan Baltimore area and Maryland with a goal to provide radio programs of intellectual integrity and cultural merit that aim to strengthen the communities it serves.

WYPR spurred the most reviews on NewsTrust Baltimore from among Baltimore’s radio stations. WYPR has reserved a large portion of its airtime for local news and analysis. From in-depth cultural coverage to daily interviews with newsmakers, it seems fitting that our community ranked WYPR especially high on the "originality" and "insights" scales.

Though it can be difficult for broadcast-oriented outlets to extend their work onto online platforms, WYPR has done an admirable job of enhancing their radio journalism with podcast versions and additional material.

Overall Rating: 3.7.
Number of Stories Reviewed: 113. 
Highly rated for: Facts, Originality, Information, Insights. 
Topics covered: Politics, Living, Business, Health, Sci/Tech, Arts.
Most reviewed authors: Sheilah Kast, Stephanie Hughes, Tom Hall.

 

Baltimore Brew

The Baltimore Brew is a daily online journal featuring independent reporting and informed commentary about greater Baltimore. Founded by Fern Shen, a former Washington Post reporter, the Brew has proven to be a strong source of original reporting and opinion writing on several beats. The Brew has published many news-hunting scoops and informed analysis. By pursuing several stories on an ongoing basis, the Brew has developed authority on such topics as urban bicycling, the Sparrow’s Point steel mill, and downtown development projects. Despite its modest resources, the Brew is an enduring example of quality work outside the institutional frameworks of traditional journalism.

Overall Rating: 3.73.
Number of Stories Reviewed: 274. 
Highly rated for Relevance, Originality, Insight, Accuracy, Information. 
Topics covered: Politics, Business, Living, Transportation, Education, Sci/Tech, Industry, Development
Most reviewed authors: Fern Shen, Mark Reutter, Gerald Neily.

 

Other noteworthy sources

The prolific and highly-rated sources we featured above were staples of Baltimore’s news diet during our study period. But there were many other quality sources that added flavor, variety and some other essential ingredients. 

* The Afro (formerly The Afro-American Newspaper) is rooted in a rich history dating back to the 19th century. The Afro was highly rated for the information it conveyed and the relevance of its reporting on the black community. It is published from a point of view and cultural context that is underrepresented in Baltimore’s media landscape.

* Baltimore magazine has been published for more than a century and, in addition to stories boosting the local dining and cultural scenes, it provided quality journalism on a number of public issues, as well as in-depth profiles of intriguing individuals.

* AOL’s Patch network of hyperlocal news websites has extended into Baltimore and its suburbs. Patch sites regularly broke stories in the region and covered local community issues particularly well. For example, the Towson Patch was one of our most highly rated sources. The daily churn of neighborhood news stories and event listings proved valuable, but there were also investigative pieces like this one which questioned the authenticity of "grassroots" efforts to push for more speed cameras in Baltimore County.

* The Washington Post does not actively cover Baltimore, but it provided quality news and analysis about Maryland politics, earning a consistently high rating from our reviewers.

* The Maryland Reporter, a nonprofit news operation, provided close coverage of local and statewide politics, producing "wonky" watchdog coverage and a number of stories that no other outlets covered.

* Center Maryland, a nonprofit online news aggregator, added depth, detail and texture to our understanding of the state legislative session in Annapolis and helped us find many quality news stories about local politics which we might otherwise have missed.

* Investigative Voice is an adventurous and energetic source of reporting on crime and politics in Baltimore. While it had a relatively low rating on NewsTrust Baltimore, its reporters and editors worked to break stories on the police and corruption beats.

* Bmore Media reports weekly on social and business innovation in Baltimore and has developed into a formidable source several years after a somewhat rocky start in the city.

 

The Baltimore blogosphere

In contrast to the Pew study of Baltimore’s news scene, we found a plethora of blogs and other online sources generating news and opinion. Some published only occasionally, others more regularly, but all added something to the conversation. The many voices conversing in the city’s blogosphere include community organizations, impassioned advocates, nonprofit policy groups and private individuals. 

* Adam Meister, who blogs about Baltimore city politics on the Examiner and Charm City Current, did some digging into property records and broke a story that travelled up the media food chain to the point that a City Council member filed a lawsuit against him.

* Unsung Baltimore is an example of a personal blog that also covers events and reports news. Written by Kevin Griffin Moreno, a local nonprofit staffer and active NewsTrust Baltimore member, the blog contains personal reflections, and, from time to time, reporting on events in the city. His post "Walbrook Film Project Teaches Students About More Than Holding a Camera" is an example of the real journalistic value that can emerge from a personal blog. 

* The Baltimore Slumlord Watch blog falls outside a lot of our usual categories and measures. It is an anonymous, single-minded blog repeating a steady drumbeat of attention on one issue plaguing Baltimore: neglected properties that degrade the physical and economic landscape of the city, as well as the living conditions of tenants and neighbors. As evidenced by this interview with The Baltimore Sun’s Jamie Smith Hopkins and some recognition from City Paper, the blog has made an impact on a major civic concern. This post on a particularly egregious case of landlord neglect is an example of this blog’s striking work: "Breaking a Rule."

* Audacious Ideas is a blog "created to stimulate ideas and discussion about solutions to difficult problems in Baltimore." It features insightful opinions about important local issues from a variety of community leaders and innovators in Baltimore. Disclosure: this blog is published by the Open Society Institute - Baltimore; its parent organization, Open Society Foundations, funded the NewsTrust Baltimore experiment.

 

Tweets, updates, streams and flows

During the NewsTrust Baltimore pilot, we have also seen local journalism that does not fit easily into traditional notions of the news media. Increasingly, news gathering and reporting can fall outside the form of an article composed of text for publication on paper or on a static website. We have certainly seen examples of professional reporters — notably The Baltimore Sun’s Justin Fenton and Julie Scharper — using Twitter in innovative ways. Staffers at The Sun also used the Storify service to curate and collect Twitter and Facebook posts from public figures and citizens reacting to the death of former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer.

Email newsletters and discussion lists, often keyed to particular neighborhoods, are also an important news source for some Baltimoreans. The Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance blog lists seven active neighborhood listservs that focus on city parenting.

Within Facebook’s "walled garden," individuals and organizations make announcements and report new information. Communities coalesce around shared interests to share news and perspectives (see, for example, the active Baltimore Tech group).

Baltimore has even become home to a local variation on the web-enabled anonymous-leaking trend in BaltiLeaks. Baltimore Government Watch was also created in the same vein, though quickly shut down.

 

Conclusion

In the course of half a year, we have had an opportunity to immerse ourselves in the Baltimore news ecosystem. We have been impressed by the overall quality and diversity of the local news landscape. We have seen vital and innovative work by media organizations founded before the Civil War, as well as important news-breaking by amateur bloggers. Our tools helped surface and spotlight quality journalism from many sources in many media -- both mainstream and independent. Even in a time of transition, Baltimore's journalists are providing vital information to area residents.

As Clay Shirky has written about the news media, the local news scene is in a state of flux with more than a little creative chaos. But patterns are emerging. As news startups and impassioned individuals become more rigorous and as traditional news organizations become more open and responsive to the public, there is a growing opportunity for collaboration across the local journalistic community. The energy and reach of amateurs can combine effectively with the expertise, contacts and judgment of professionals. Enabled by social technology, including tools we use at NewsTrust, we are beginning to see deeper connections among all those who seek trustworthy information about their communities. In "Links that Bind Us" — a summer 2011 report from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University — many scholars and analysts explored this networked future of the news. We have witnessed, online and in person, ample evidence of the importance of community and collaboration in building a healthy news ecosystem. 

A local nickname for Baltimore is "Smalltimore," a reference to the city’s tight-knit communities and the first-name basis of many social relationships. In reality, many divides and differences remain. A major achievement of NewsTrust Baltimore has been through our formal partnerships and informal connections with the many individuals and organizations contributing to the local news ecosystem. At our social events and on our website, the people producing quality journalism in Baltimore found a "clean, well-lighted place" where they could meet and exchange ideas with each other and the public. We believe that NewsTrust Baltimore has in effect catalyzed the same community we were invited to study.

As a result, personal bonds were formed between independent and mainstream journalists that might not have developed otherwise, and we are grateful to the local journalism community for participating in this project and for making us feel welcome in their midst. Our experience was itself evidence of Baltimore journalists' openness to experimentation and innovation.

New sources and new journalistic practices are emerging to feed citizens’ information needs. The media landscape is changing rapidly, and news organizations are adapting and transforming as well. Like the 2009 Pew study, our experiment may be capturing moments of transition. Overall, we see substantial progress in legacy media and new independent sources of local news, which encourages us to be optimistic about the future of journalism in Baltimore.

-- By Andrew Hazlett, writer/researcher, NewsTrust Baltimore; and Fabrice Florin, NewsTrust founder 

A new direction for NewsTrust

NewsTrust will be taking a new direction this month, to adapt in a rapidly changing news media landscape.

To fulfill our mission more effectively, we will pivot our nonprofit organization from a standalone news curation site to a consultancy that will serve the needs of larger partners and help their communities become better informed about important public issues.

Our initial focus will be on fact-checking services to expose misinformation in the public debate. To that end, we have partnered with the Center for Public Integrity and Craig Newmark to develop Truthsquad.com for the 2012 U.S. elections. We created this pro-am fact-checking service last year to help citizens and journalists work together to separate fact from fiction. Read more on our Truthsquad pilot site.

News sharing on the web is now primarily taking place on large social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, reducing the need for curated news sites like NewsTrust.net. As a result, our site traffic has decreased in recent months and we no longer have funding to pay for our daily news curation service, which we have offered for the past five years with support from foundations and private donors.

Instead, we see an emerging need for quality fact-checking services and collaborative evaluation tools, which we think we can effectively provide by extending our innovative social media platform to serve partner communities on their sites. We will also explore partnerships that enable us to provide news literacy and civic engagement services through consumer and educational channels.

This new strategy supports our overall mission to help people find good journalism and credible information online, but it does so more effectively, by shifting our focus to services that can be sustained over time, in collaboration with our partners.

We reached this decision through extensive deliberations over the past six months with our board of directors, our staff, advisors, hosts, partners, funders and other members of our community. Most people we spoke to agree that this is a logical development for NewsTrust -- and we all look forward to our next steps together on this new course. 

What will change on NewsTrust?

At the end of this week, on Friday, July 15, we will discontinue our daily news curation service on NewsTrust.net. The home page of our website will promote partner activities and reports, instead of a daily featured news story. We will still provide news listings below the fold on our home page, as well as on other pages on our site, and NewsTrust members will be able to post and review stories on these pages. But these listings will no longer be moderated or curated by our staff on a daily basis -- and we will no longer send daily newsletters, since we cannot guarantee their quality without staff curation.

Our last daily email newsletter will go out this Friday. We will continue to offer our weekly newsletters for the next few months, highlighting some of the most trusted news stories of the week, according to our reviewers. These newsletters will be curated by a NewsTrust staff member, to insure a quality news listing. If you now subscribe to our daily newsletter, you will automatically receive these weekly newsletters every Wednesday at 4 p.m. Eastern time (1 p.m. Pacific), starting next week.  

If getting daily emails from us is important to you, you can subscribe to our daily MyNews email, which provides a personalized listing of news stories based on your interests every morning at 6 a.m. Eastern time (3 a.m. Pacific). This automated service is available at no charge to all NewsTrust members, and only takes a minute to set up on your MyNews page (if you're not yet a member, read more about MyNews here). Of course, you can change any of your email subscriptions on our Email Newsletters page, once you are logged in.

If you are a member of NewsTrust Baltimore, check our separate blog post to see how these changes will affect your local service. Daily curation on this local news pilot in Baltimore will end on July 31, and all local email newsletters will discontinue at that time.

We will also make a few more changes in coming weeks, to make sure that our crowdsourced news listings serve the best interests of our community. For example, stories that have been rated highly by trusted members will be featured more prominently. And NewsTrust members will only be able to post up to five stories per day, to prevent any individual from flooding the site with content that others may not find as useful. If you have any feedback or questions about any of these changes, please contact us at feedback-at-newstrust.net.

Make a donation

If you value our work at NewsTrust, we invite you to make a donation today to support our cause in this time of need.

Personal donations from supporters like you are more critical than ever before, as our foundation grants have declined in recent years.

Please help NewsTrust continue to serve its civic mission. Your contribution will support free public services such as our educational programs in colleges and high schools, fact-checking services, quality review forms, literacy guides, weekly email newsletters, news widgets and RSS feeds -- and more great ways to help people get better informed.

Your donation is tax-deductible as a charitable contribution. NewsTrust Communications is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit corporation (Tax ID: 32-0251525). For more information about NewsTrust, check our profile on GuideStar, which includes our financial reports. Or email us at donations-at-newstrust-dot-net with any questions about contributing to NewsTrust.

Please make a donation now, to help us make a smooth transition during this critical time.

Thanks for your understanding. We're deeply grateful for all that you and other community members have done to support NewsTrust over the years!

 

Fabrice Florin
Executive Director and Founder
NewsTrust Communications

The community responds: Our online survey report

This blog post about our NewsTrust Baltimore local news experiment was written by NewsTrust Baltimore community manager Gin Ferrara and originally published on our Baltimore blog on June 29, 2011. It is republished here for the benefit of our national community.

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In April and May 2011, NewsTrust Baltimore staff invited members, partners and supporters to take a short online survey about our service. We asked them to share their perspectives on the usefulness and impact of our site and to make suggestions for improvements and new features. Here are our findings about this survey.

Overview

We collected both quantitative and qualitative data in this brief survey, using tools from the website Survey Monkey. Individuals were asked a combination of multiple-choice and short-answer questions. There were 12 questions total, which could be completed in about 5 to 10 minutes, on average. Questions addressed user satisfaction with the site, frequency of use, areas of strength and weakness, and potential new features. Links to the survey were distributed to all members of NewsTrust Baltimore via email, and emails were also sent to community partners. Public links to the survey were posted on social media, our blog and on the homepage of the site. 

The online survey took place from April 22 through May 6, 2011. In total, 192 people began the survey, and 135 completed it. A smaller, normalized sample of 87 respondents was used for analysis purposes, to feature more diverse responses; this community sample was intended to be more representative of our community, with fewer college student responses. It also excluded NewsTrust staff responses, as well as duplicate or incomplete responses.

The survey gave respondents the option to select a user group that best represented them: 50 respondents self-identified as college students, seven were educators, seven were journalists, 14 were unaffiliated members, and the remaining nine were visitors. This breakdown is similar to NewsTrust Baltimore’s overall statistics, with one exception: We experienced a very high response rate from college students, many of whom were encouraged by their teachers and likely driven by NewsTrust incentives, such as our student certification and awards, to complete the survey. The percentage of student members on the NewsTrust Baltimore site is about 40 percent of total members (versus up to 60 percent of total survey respondents). We used this sample for much of the analysis in this report, as well as for the charts.


Key findings

The majority of respondents (about 60 percent) found NewsTrust Baltimore to be personally useful or very useful. Many survey participants thought the project was unique and a valuable complement to existing news sources, as well as a way to identify trustworthy sources for local news. Respondents also told us that they were introduced to several new media outlets via NewsTrust Baltimore, and they said they felt comfortable commenting in what they considered to be a respectful online community.

Based on the pilot stats we collected, we know that NewsTrust Baltimore had many unique visitors (11,215 visitors in its first three months), but fewer people signed up as members (514) and reviewed stories (329). Most survey respondents (85 percent) said they visited the site weekly, and roughly half (52 percent) reviewed stories at least once a week.

When asked which features of NewsTrust Baltimore were most interesting to them, 59 percent of survey respondents said they were interested in finding good local journalism all in one place and 57 percent were interested in discovering local news sources that they hadn’t heard about.

“I like that I pay attention to a wider variety of new stories and outlets because of NewsTrust,” member Kate Bladow wrote in a survey response.

Diana Soliwon, the former editor of Owing Mills Patch, commented that the local site was “very helpful for someone trying to figure out where to get their information in the greater Baltimore area.”






Responses to a question about possible new services shows that respondents’ interests were divided somewhat evenly among activities for college students (49 percent), a suggestion box for new story ideas (47 percent), and a field guide for local news sources (44 percent).






Areas of improvement recommended by many respondents included making the site simpler to use, adding more diverse and entertaining stories, and increasing community dialogue opportunities.


Findings by group

NewsTrust Baltimore serves many groups of people with different backgrounds, interests and approaches to the site. We have filtered the survey findings into groups to examine their different perspectives on NewsTrust Baltimore.

College students

College students were one of our most active groups of members. Of the students in the community sample, 50 percent of them said they visited the site more than once a week, and 48 percent visited the site weekly or monthly. Students were also our largest pool of reviewers, with 30 percent of respondents saying they reviewed stories every few days and 62 percent reviewing stories weekly or monthly.

Students told us that the program was beneficial to their education and future goals. Many of our student participants were studying journalism and made the connection between NewsTrust’s services and their own careers. Fifty-four percent of respondents liked discovering news sources they hadn’t heard about, and 52 percent liked rating the work of other journalists.

Devin Hamberger said in the survey, “I think it is a great way for students to expose themselves to good journalism that not only helps them be critical consumers, but also helps their own writing skills.”

Micah Mohlmann was one of several students who felt that the site improved their own critical thinking: “I have learned how to better analyze and reviews news stories. It has helped me to critique articles in a professional manner.”

Rebecca Jackson wrote, “As a journalism student, looking at the work of local journalists helped me understand the things I need to look for in my stories.”

While students enjoyed learning more about the big issues of Baltimore, they also expressed interest in seeing more multimedia stories and more news that they felt was relevant to their lives.

“I think that having more news sources for young people would make me visit more often,” wrote Megan Flannery in a survey response.

Other students commented that they would like to read and review more stories about sports, entertainment, the arts, health, and beauty. In addition, 78 percent of college students said they would like to see activities specifically for college students on the site.

Kara Duffy suggested, “I would like to see News Trust have some focus on other colleges. It would be cool to have a group where journalism majors in Maryland colleges could post their articles and have other students grade them.”

Educators

Our teachers, professors and youth workers used the site primarily as an educational tool. JoAnne Broadwater, a Towson University professor, wrote in a survey comment: “I like it for its usefulness in the classroom. I think that it will help students to be more critical of what they are reading. I also like the concept of requiring them to read news and then evaluate it. Since many students do not read news stories at all, they have difficulty writing news stories and grasping the concept of a carefully constructed story. I think NewsTrust will help them to become better writers.”

While the site saw strong adoption by college students and their professors, some respondents saw a need for more focused attention on high school students. Susan Malone, executive director of Wide Angle Youth Media, wrote, “I would have liked to see more intention to create a youth-centered site where young people can start to digest news in bite-size pieces, that utilizes anonymity so young people can feel more inclined to participate.”

The convenience of aggregating local news was appealing to this group of respondents, with 86 percent of educators reporting that they like being able to find local news all in one place. They were also introduced to new local media organizations, with 71 percent reporting that they discovered new news sources via NewsTrust Baltimore.

Journalists

For journalists, NewsTrust Baltimore presented an opportunity to engage with their audience in a new way. A large percentage (86 percent) of journalists who took the survey said they visited the site more than once a week, and 46 percent visited daily, though the majority (71 percent) of journalist respondents said they rarely or never reviewed stories.

Stephanie Hughes, a producer at WYPR-FM, found the site to be valuable to her programming: “I like getting direct feedback on the segments I'm working on. NewsTrust responses are especially valuable because I know people are encountering the segments via the web, as opposed to just on air. WYPR is figuring out how to create great content for both on air and online, and it's interesting to see how reactions from online consumers differ -- it helps us to figure out what we can do to enhance the web experience. “

Howard Libit of Center Maryland, a NewsTrust Baltimore media partner and former Baltimore Sun editor, said in a survey response: “It has been interesting to see and read other people's perspectives on the different journalism taking place in the market. I am also learning about some individuals and groups involved in journalism that I was not previously aware of.”

For some journalists, the site offered new opportunities and new questions. City Paper writer and editor Bret McCabe wrote, “I'm just curious as to how best to interact with the feedback generated by this site, because if people are going to the effort of commenting thoughtfully about what they read, it should have some utility in the practice.”

Journalists were one of the more critical groups of respondents regarding the website’s usability. They described it as “cluttered” and asked for “a better job of displaying stories,” as well as “a more attractive site.” These comments were representative of the suggestions for improvements from this group.  

Members

This “members group” includes members who had signed up on the website and who were not included in the other categories, such as partners and students. Their participation spanned the spectrum, with many members visiting the site weekly (43 percent) and half of all members reviewing once a week (29 percent) to once a month (21 percent).

These members said they liked the convenience of finding good journalism in one place (79 percent), and several mentioned their appreciation of the respectful environment on the site.

Gabby Knighton commented, “I like that there is a ’sane’ community of news readers out there. You don't see them as often in the ‘comments’ sections” of other news sites.

Debra Joseph wrote, “I like the transparency, the focus on smart journalism critiques, and the mutual respect among members.”

This group of members also had suggestions for improvements. Some asked us to increase the number of stories and the frequency of refreshing our pages with new articles. We also found that, while some people were critical that we sent too many emails, others wished we sent more. This suggests that a user’s email preferences and settings could be made more clear, so users could easily adjust their communication with NewsTrust Baltimore to their comfort level.

Visitors

We were fortunate to receive feedback from visitors, partners, community leaders, friends and supporters of the site, people who didn’t consider themselves members but who cared enough about our outcomes to share their thoughts in this survey.

These respondents said they did not review stories often but visited the site frequently (77 percent visited the site at least weekly). Their feedback was thoughtful and specific.

Carl Ehrhardt wrote about the challenges of adding another social network site to his regular use: “Perhaps if NewsTrust were an app for Facebook it would be easier.”

John Walters saw a challenge in the volume of participation on the site and felt that some of the tools,  “like the discussion features, might be useful if there were more users.” Others also expressed this concern about the number of reviewers on the site.


Feedback by activity

In analyzing the survey results, we also looked at how people responded based on their activity on the site. People who said they reviewed stories more than once a week are defined as Active Members, those who reviewed stories weekly or monthly are Basic Members, and people who reviewed rarely or never are considered Visitors for this assessment.

Our Active Members group found the review tools to be a valuable service, with 71 percent of them reviewing stories every few days and 29 percent reviewing stories once a day or more.
Olivia Stephens wrote, “I think it’s a great tool for people to evaluate the news critically and really understand how to find reliable, credible news.”

Active Members also appreciated that NewsTrust Baltimore let them keep up with local news (54 percent) and find everything on one site (50 percent). Lauren Calva commented, “There really isn’t another website, that I know of, that collects local journalism and puts it all in one place.”

The majority (64 percent) of our Basic Members group reviewed stories once a week. They, too, like finding a variety of local news on a single website, but 60 percent also reported that they enjoyed discovering news sources they hadn’t heard about. Basic Members had the greatest number of suggestions for new content and topics.

Our Visitors group did not review stories but visited the site with some frequency, with 49 percent visiting more than once a week. They said they came mainly for the convenience of aggregated local news and are interested in reading a field guide for local news sources.

“The most significant feature for me is NT’s ability to be a trustworthy aggregator of local news,” wrote Michael Catalini, a journalist.


Conclusions

Overall in our collected survey responses, we found that NewsTrust Baltimore was valued as an aggregator of local news, introducing people to new sources and serving as a one-stop daily news site. Members appreciated the rational critique process and the sense of respect for commenters.

NewsTrust Baltimore was also found very useful as an educational tool, helping students build critical media skills, separate fact from fiction, and work on their own writing.

We also learned that there is room for improvement, through streamlining the site, increasing the frequency and diversity of stories posted, and creating more community participation opportunities. There is also a desire for more education resources, both activities for college students and learning tools that are appropriate for high school students.

All of us at NewsTrust and NewsTrust Baltimore appreciate the time and thought that respondents took in answering the survey, and we hope to continue to work together to build a robust, inclusive and relevant news community.

Truthsquad: Is Maryland "America’s number one public school system"?

This blog post about our NewsTrust Baltimore local news experiment was written by NewsTrust Baltimore writer Andrew Hazlett and originally published on our Baltimore blog on June 20, 2011. It is republished here for the benefit of our national community.

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In March 2011, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley stated on his website that Maryland has "America's number one public school system." This claim, which was frequently used by O'Malley and other state leaders in campaign speeches, has been questioned by several experts and commentators, who cite evidence that Maryland public schools are behind other states on a number of key measurements.

Given this controversy, we invited the Baltimore community to join our first local Truthsquad and fact-check this statement on the NewsTrust Baltimore site in June 2011. To find out if O'Malley's claim was true, NewsTrust staff and members posted and discussed a wide range of education statistics and competing arguments over school policies and student achievement.

After reviewing the evidence and views of our community on this statement, NewsTrust Editors find O'Malley's claim to be "HALF-TRUE."

Here are some of the key facts and insights that led us to this finding.

We're No. 1! … Or are we?

 

O'Malley's statement that Maryland has "America's number one public school system" is based in part on research by the newspaper Education Week, which has given Maryland a No. 1 ranking for the past three years. These favorable findings were frequently cited by other state officials, such as Maryland schools superintendent Nancy Grasmick, who has been widely praised for helping improve the state's public schools over the past 20 years.

Maryland schools also received a No. 1 ranking from the College Board for the state with the highest percentage of graduates who have been successful on Advanced Placement tests. And last year, "Maryland was one of only a dozen states to be awarded a $250 million competitive federal grant, known as "Race to the Top," as noted in this Baltimore Sun story.

By these measures, the state's schools would appear to be among the nation's best. But when those reports were released and when O'Malley made this No. 1 claim, several experts and commentators questioned the findings. In recent years, Maryland public school graduates have been deemed unprepared for college. State-by-state comparisons of performance on standardized tests place several states ahead of Maryland in student achievement. And most observers we spoke to agree that Baltimore City's public schools face serious challenges, which seem to contradict this claim.

Evaluating O'Malley's claim

 

Given this mixed evidence, we asked NewsTrust staff and community members to review and post links to relevant news stories and factual evidence related to this claim. Participants were then invited to weigh in with their reactions on a special Truthsquad page, from Monday, June 6 to Sunday, June 19, 2011.

Over the past two weeks, we collected a dozen links to determine the accuracy of Gov. O'Malley's statement. We found a wide range of news stories and opinions, think-tank reports, government statistics, and other evidence and commentary supporting or opposing this claim. Members of the NewsTrust community weighed in with their views and observations, as well. Of 42 respondents at the time this post was written, a plurality of 17 voters found the statement false, but there was no majority view. Fourteen voted that the statement is "true" and nine were "not sure." 

Let's review the evidence we gathered and discussed during our collective quest.

The primary basis for O'Malley's claim appears to be this report produced by Education Week. Their annual "Quality Counts" report is based on test scores, spending figures, and aggregated statistics from 50 distinct indicators. The data are grouped into broad categories: chance of success, K-12 achievement, school finance, and transitions and alignment. This report has given Maryland the highest grade for three years running and, as education reporters for The Sun have pointed out, "Gov. Martin O'Malley and other state leaders mentioned [the Education Week rankings] frequently in campaign speeches."

Community member and former Baltimore Sun editor Howard Libit wrote on the Truthsquad page:

The Education Week analysis of states is about the best system that we have for ranking the states. The long-term consistency of Dr. Nancy Grasmick has provided Maryland with the opportunity to enact reforms and see them through, particularly on such issues as student assessments and holding schools (and systems) accountable for achievement and teacher performance. Setting clear, consistent standards is really one of those things that makes the state stand out.

Still, Grasmick acknowledged some ambiguities in the survey results. At a Washington, D.C., event after the report's release (video available here), Grasmick welcomed the positive attention to Maryland schools, but she shared that her team had "drilled down" into all of the report's 50 indicators and found that "we're not consistently strong in all of those indicators."

There are also important questions about the criteria and findings of the Quality Counts report. In her comments on our Truthsquad page, Sun columnist Marta Mossburg questioned the formula used by Education Week: "A number one ranking should reflect student knowledge, not money spent and other inputs."

Though the Education Week report does reflect attempts to measure student knowledge, it certainly gives considerable weight to "inputs" that may not translate into positive outcomes for students.

At the time the report was released, a story in the The Baltimore Sun noted some skeptical voices, including from a representative for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The Sun article pointed out that "Maryland falls behind in the gap between the achievement of its poor children and those who aren't poor, ranking 37th in the country in the National Assessment of Education Progress."

 

Community Insights

 

In their observations during this Truthsquad, a number of NewsTrust Baltimore community members echoed those concerns.

Community member Khalilah Harris, who heads the Baltimore Freedom Academy, a Maryland charter school, wrote:

The state of Baltimore City schools, Prince George's County schools, schools in NW Baltimore County, etc. are evidence of this claim being questionable. I need evidence of a measure that pairs MD scores with states who use similar tests, rates family engagement, student success post high school, massive reduction of achievement gap on a school by school basis, and a large percentage of its most decrepit school buildings in good condition to agree with this. Being #1 with two of the wealthiest counties in the country is so very easy. Further, there is little to no evidence of efforts or reform that reduce poverty at a rate that would impact the necessary family investment in eliminating low expectations for children.

In reviewing the Education Week study, community manager Gin Ferrara, a former Baltimore media educator, said:

While Maryland ranks 4th in the Achievement Index, the 3rd measurement in that category, achievement gaps between rich and poor, is much lower than the other top states. Maryland's 15.9 ranks us around 37th for providing opportunities for all our citizens.

Several other commenters raised the issue of statewide figures masking inequality and inconsistent results in local districts. To support his finding that O'Malley's statement was "false," community member Chip Molter wrote:

Providing effective education to young people inside Baltimore City is not an easy issue by any means. It is intertwined with so many other issues facing the city and its inhabitants. However, as long as Baltimore City and Anne Arundel school systems occupy a second tier status within the state, it is difficult for the residents of those school districts to cheer along with the Governor as he congratulates himself for the fortune of the rest of the state's educational success.

And NewsTrust Baltimore member Christopher Siple wrote on the Truthsquad page:

A lot of the rural schools and Baltimore City (another school system that rocketed to #1 under O'Malley's leadership if you were to ask him) aren't doing so hot, while Howard and Montgomery Counties are some of the richest in the union, so it isn't terribly shocking that these schools tend to be of a higher quality. Maryland is so heterogeneous in its quality of life and education that it's only political sophistry to claim its #1 status in the entire United States.

Indeed, Census Bureau figures make clear that Maryland is one of the wealthiest states in the nation. But these statewide figures can hide the fact that very large islands of persistent poverty co-exist with the state's wealthier districts.

 

Other Statistics

 

In addition to the Education Week rankings, several other measures would also place Maryland at the top of the education pyramid. The Maryland State Department of Education has celebrated students' high scores on Advanced Placement tests in news releases like this. Though some have doubted the push to enroll students in AP courses and Maryland's efforts specifically, many students in the state seem to be finding success through these opportunities.

On the other hand, there is some evidence that many Maryland students are graduating from high school without the tools they need to succeed in college. In a Baltimore Sun opinion column about Nancy Grasmick's legacy, Marta Mossburg points to remedial education statistics and anecdotes to suggest that there is a "swelling tide of students who graduate from state public high schools without basic reading or math skills."

Last year, a think tank advocating for a more rigorous education compared Maryland's standards with those of other states and the Common Core standards that have recently been adopted in many states. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute gave relatively low marks to Maryland's standards in English language arts (grade "C") and math (grade "D") and said:

The Maryland [English and Language Arts] standards are a mixed bag. Standards are generally well organized, and many are clear and specific. Others, however, fail to clarify expectations or omit essential content that students should master as part of a rigorous, K–12 curriculum. ... Maryland's [math] standards are poorly organized and difficult to interpret without additional explanation, which is only occasionally provided.

In June 2010, Maryland adopted the Common Core standards. Still, the Education Week ranking would have been based on the pre-existing standards that were critiqued by the Fordham study.

Another source to consider in evaluating the governor's claim are data collected by the U.S. Department of Education. According to information we reviewed, Maryland students have done well on reading and math assessments, but they have not scored higher than students in several other states.

The Condition of Education 2011 report is a comprehensive study worth exploring in depth. For our purposes, we can look at some recent statistics on achievement by eighth-graders. The percentage of students scoring at or above "proficient" in reading was 36 percent in Maryland, but 43 percent in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vermont also had a higher percentage of proficient readers than Maryland.

The results in math were similar. Forty percent of eighth-graders in Maryland were rated at or above proficient in math, but other states had a greater proportion, notably Massachusetts (52 percent).

Another Department of Education report, Indicators of School Crime and Safety, had some disturbing figures about Maryland schools. In 2007–2008, 8.4 percent of Maryland public school teachers reported that they were physically attacked by a student from school during the previous 12 months. This was the highest percentage of any state in the nation.

Though the Education Department's vast stores of information should be read and used with care, we found enough data to suggest a more complex reality than O'Malley's claim would indicate.

NewsTrust contributing editor Kristin Gorski, an educator herself, reflected the ambivalence of many commenters:

What makes a school system #1? Governor O'Malley's claim got me thinking. While the Ed Week report indeed gives Maryland public school system its top score, a B+, followers Massachusetts and New York received Bs (all other systems received Cs and below). All school systems have individual districts and schools that are sorely in need of improvement – focusing on broad statements like who is "the best" compared to "the worst" doesn't inform.

NewsTrust member Bob Herrschaft also questioned the basis for making claims like these:

Political rhetoric can't readily be verified when using terms like "number one" (i.e. best). How do we define "number one"? Even two Phds in education are likely to have a completely different definition. Do we go by the number of graduates that go onto higher educational institutions, some of which are sham factories of propaganda, or do we look at the approach to the individual student's capacity to enhance his or her aptitude for learning?

 

Conclusions

 

NewsTrust Baltimore editors acknowledge that Gov. O'Malley's claim can be confirmed by credible independent sources based on certain measurements, but we also found enough reliable evidence to contradict that statement based on equally important measurements, leading to our finding that this claim is only half-true.

More important, we question the value of making such sweeping statements. Dubious claims and overstatements are an inevitable part of our political background noise, but there are costs. A governor should proudly share good news about the state's schools, and many who have celebrated Grasmick's tenure as state schools superintendent are fully cognizant of the major challenges still faced by Baltimore City schools in particular. But a proclamation that Maryland's schools are already "number one" can seem dispiriting to those who are engaged in an uphill struggle to bring educational opportunity to all young people in the state.

This short investigation of Maryland's school rankings has been a rewarding experience for our team. This was our first local fact-checking experiment, and we are bolstered by its results. This short comment from the governor's office gave us an opportunity to delve into complex issues around educational achievement and accountability as a community. We enjoyed this opportunity to learn from each other, through shared links and thoughtful observations from Truthsquad contributors.

We'd like to thank all the participants in this Truthsquad. Together, we explored a complex subject that is a major concern of Maryland's citizens. Your contributions helped expose some pressing issues and open up a valuable discussion, and we hope it will continue. We invite you to post your comments about our findings on our Truthsquad page -- or email us at editors-at-newstrust-dot-net. 

Special thanks to Craig Newmark, NewsTrust advisor and founder of Craigslist.org, for promoting this local Truthsquad in his blog post, which stated: "It's up to us to do the factchecking that we see little of, in TV or newspapers." We wholeheartedly agree, and we appreciate Craig's support of pro-am initiatives like ours.

For more information about separating fact from fiction, check out our "Crap Detection 101" guide by Howard Rheingold, as well as his video version; the Factcheck.org and Politifact websites; and the book "Blur," by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel.

More about Truthsquad

 

To learn more about the Truthsquad initiative, visit our project overview page. Truthsquad aims to strengthen the field of fact-checking by combining the best practices of crowdsourcing and social media with the expertise and knowledge of experienced journalists. This new experiment empowers citizens and journalists to collaboratively fact-check controversial claims from politicians, newsmakers and members of the media. Participants are invited to post questionable claims online, research factual evidence supporting or opposing these claims, and verify their accuracy as a community, with professional oversight.

NewsTrust created and tested Truthsquad in 2010, with funding from Omidyar Network and with the help of partners at the Poynter Institute, as well as advisors such as Brooks Jackson, director of FactCheck.org. The first pilots were well-received by online participants, partners and advisors, as well as by third-party observers, such as GigaOm. To learn more, read our pilot reports on PBS MediaShift, as well as on the national NewsTrust blog. NewsTrust has since hosted a variety of Truthsquads with other partners, including MediaBugs.org and RegretTheError.com, and with advice from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark.

NewsTrust has now formed a strategic partnership with the Center for Public Integrity to develop a daily service on Truthsquad.com, which we hope to launch in fall 2011. The goal is to create a one-stop destination for fact-checked information -- featuring its own findings, as well as promoting the work of other trusted research organizations, such as FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.

Stay tuned for more announcements about this initiative in coming weeks. To get our free newsletters, we invite you to sign up as a NewsTrust member, if you haven't already. This will also enable you to participate in more Truthsquads like this one.

 

 

-- By Andrew Hazlett, on behalf of the NewsTrust editors