NewsTrust - Blog Archive

Immigration News Hunt Results

Here are the results of our Immigration News Hunt, which NewsTrust hosted with our partners USA Today and their On Deadline blog, from July 19 to August 1, 2010. (see earlier blog post)

During the past two weeks, our community looked for good journalism on Arizona's controversial immigration law and its impact on local and national politics. NewsTrust hosts for this immigration topic were Kaizar Campwala, Kristin Gorski, and Jon Mitchell. Kaizar Campwala was managing editor and Fabrice Florin was executive editor.

Overview
Immigration has long been a heated political issue in America. It's tied to issues of security and economic prosperity, and raises many questions about national identity and citizenship.

Most recently, the immigration debate was rekindled with the passing of Arizona's new immigration bill, SB 1070, in April 2010. Among its provisions, the act "makes it a state misdemeanor crime for an alien to be in Arizona without carrying the required documents, bars state or local officials or agencies from restricting enforcement of federal immigration laws, and cracks down on those sheltering, hiring and transporting illegal aliens." (Wikipedia)

To sort through the political spin and develop a fact-based understanding of the Arizona bill and immigration issues, NewsTrust members teamed up with USA Today readers for two weeks. Together, we reviewed over 162 stories on immigration, posted 684 reviews, and fully rated 105 stories. We've highlighted some of the best of these stories below, with our take on how they inform and clarify the immigration debate.

Recommended Stories
Here are some of our top rated stories for this News Hunt:

NEWS

• The All-American Canal - 60 Minutes
• Immigration re-enters national debate - USA Today
• Immigration law author claims 60 percent of Arizona Hispanics support the measure - PolitiFact
• The 'Dangerous' Border: Actually One of America's Safest Places - Time
• Obama Gains Evangelical Allies on Immigration - New York Times
• Illegal immigrant profiles hard to discern from legal residents - Arizona Republic
• GOP Faces Internal Divide On Changes To Immigration - NPR
• What's a Little Marriage Fraud Between Amigos? - Village Voice
• Arizona's immigration law isn't the only one - Los Angeles Times
• Obama Administration Considers Bypassing Congress on Immigration Reform - ProPublica

OPINION

• In the fight over Arizona's immigration law, everybody loses - Washington Post
• Arizona, rogue state - Economist
• Borderlines - New Yorker
• Adios, Democrats - Slate
• Time for Obama to Put Up or Shut Up on Immigration - Pajamas Media
• No Win in Arizona - American Prospect
• Humane tweak to immigration enforcement - Dallas Morning News

For more recommended stories, check our full listing for this News Hunt.

News Comparisons
To highlight some of the important themes that emerged during the News Hunt, we compared stories on four different aspects of immigration: the legal and political debate surrounding Arizona's controversial new law, the economics of immigration, law enforcement and policy proposals for immigration reform.

Arizona Immigration Law: Legal and Political Debate
 On July 28th, a day before Arizona's controversial immigration law was due to go into effect, a federal judge issued an injunction that blocked key provisions of SB 1070. In a lawsuit between the U.S. Justice Department and the State of Arizona, Judge Susan Bolton ruled that the law would risk putting “a distinct, unusual and extraordinary” burden on legal resident aliens in Arizona. This decision provoked a frenzy of opinions about the role of the federal government in controlling illegal immigration.

Supporting the judge's ruling, the reliably left-of-center Nation gave readers their analysis of Arizona's SB 1070 law, arguing that all "[Judge] Bolton really did was to assert one of the most basic principles of Constitutional law: that the federal government gets to set immigration policy." Reviewer Thomas Rees gave the story a low rating, finding "its lack of real data negates its ability to inform the undecided or contrary thinker. It exists solely to stoke the fires of those who already believe in this particular point of view. Mr. Hearst would be proud."

Heather MacDonald writing in the National Review offered a dissenting perspective on what she deemed a fictitious ruling. "The real threat posed by S.B. 1070," MacDonald asserted, "was that it would disrupt the de facto amnesty that the executive branch has accorded to the vast majority of illegal aliens. It would start to implement congressional mandates and the public will that the immigration laws be enforced. For that reason, it had to be stopped." Not all NewsTrust reviewers were convinced by her arguments, as exemplified by William Gordon, who wrote "like many pundits she focused on the details of the law, if it were legal and misses the reason why it is not legal. She wholly misses the point of preemption in our federalist society in order to find demons in the Obama Administration."

While The Nation and National Review garnered mixed reactions, The Economist's Lexington column offered an opinion that was appreciated by most reviewers. The column cut through the rhetoric, writing that "at bottom the argument between Arizona and its critics is political. The stated aim of 1070 is to reduce the number of illegal immigrants, mainly by enforcing federal laws which local politicians accuse the federal government of neglecting. Although Mr Obama is in fact deporting more illegals (a total of about 400,000 a year) than George Bush did, that cuts little ice in Arizona because people know his eventual hope (or at least the one he dangles in front of Hispanic voters) is to give illegals a pathway to citizenship, not kick out as many as possible. Mr Obama’s policy was also Mr Bush’s, and is probably the only humane way forward. But in Arizona “amnesty” has been turned into a dirty word."

Economics of Immigration
 The immigration debate is inextricably tied to economic issues. High unemployment and strained government budgets have inflamed the conversation, with many Americans questioning the role illegal immigrants play in the U.S. economy. News media coverage of this issue varied greatly: some news outlets stoked the public's fears, while others worked to help citizens better understand the economics of immigration.

In a report that received mixed reviews on NewsTrust, The Arizona Republic, the state's largest newspaper, explores how illegal immigrants are often forced to operate in a 'shadow' economy. Though reviewer Gordon Oliver found the story "scattered" and "imprecise," other reviewers found the report commendable because it investigates a question that repeatedly surfaced during the News Hunt: "... whether illegal workers are a net boon to the economy because of the labor they contribute, or a drag because of the medical, education and other services they require?"

A number of news outlets focused on the role played by U.S. employers in providing jobs to illegal immigrants. The Wall Street Journal argued that employers are to some degree the victims, on one hand getting sanctioned for hiring illegals, and on the other facing Justice Department probes "for allegedly violating anti-discrimination laws by demanding too many identity documents from applicants who aren't U.S. citizens."

To address these competing pressures, two different sources, Truthdig and The Week, published opinion stories advocating for the expansion of guest worker programs in the U.S. As explained by Will Wilkinson in The Week, "By establishing a common labor market in which Americans and Mexicans (Canadians too!) may range freely, living and working where they please, we can channel the commercial energy of integration while maintaining distinctly separate citizenship." Longtime reviewer Patricia L'Herrou found the piece "thoughtfully based on reason, and a viable model in the EU."

History has shown that people will migrate to find better economic opportunity. In a story that reviewer Alice Lake felt gave "a glimpse of both sides of migrant worker reality," the New York Times took a step back to explore the phenomenon of migration from a global perspective. The piece highlighted the difficulty in trying to stem the tide of migration, explaining that "from the Arizona Statehouse to Calabria, critics warn that porous borders hurt native workers, threaten local cultures and increase crime. But even a downturn of rare magnitude did less than expected to slow the flows, revealing instead the persistent forces that keep migrants venturing abroad."

Law Enforcement
 Much of the news coverage we reviewed examined the real challenges of enforcing immigration laws. The Village Voice featured an intimate look at how “some young, assimilated illegal immigrants” married U.S. citizens, also Hispanic and often friends, in an attempt to become legal.

To gain perspective by looking at the past, an Arizona Republic article on the state's recent history with racial profiling warned that, in implementing SB 1070, police departments had to be careful to “never violate the public trust again.”

Looking at what could be a massive influx of newly arrested illegal immigrants, reporters at the Arizona Capitol Times constructed an insightful multimedia piece on how sheriffs and local government predicted how they would shoulder its cost; this piece showcased many different viewpoints in an unbiased way, and this successfully illustrated how complex the law's enforcement could be.

Not all articles were clarifying, however. An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle about sanctuary cities didn't explain what they were and didn't clearly show how SB 1070 would affect them. And an interview on Fox News veered from a more factual, reasoned conservative source to focus on right-leaning political commentary, thereby losing points on credibility, balance and information quality.

Another law enforcement issue which surfaced during our search is the federal “Secure Communities” program, a national fingerprint-database program that's already in effect. The Associated Press wrote a well-sourced, factual and informative piece on this program, pointing out that it doesn't rely on racial profiling and results in used effectively to arrest and deport illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Immigration Reform
Most of the stories we reviewed on this theme observed that SB 1070 has provided lawmakers with a strong impetus for passing national legislation to fix the country's broken immigration system. But when it came to discussion of the means and rationale for enacting sweeping immigration reform, agreement was far thinner.

The Texas Observer, an independent bi-weekly from Austin, argued that Texas, which has the longest international border of any U.S. state, should take a leadership role in reshaping the country’s immigration policies. It took a three-pronged approach: build a stronger social and economic relationship with Mexico; acknowledge that the U.S.-Mexico border can’t be “secured” and stop spending money to seal it; and redefine what makes an immigrant legal or illegal.

The Miami Herald, meanwhile, contended in an editorial that the case for immigration reform is as strong as it has ever been and that good ideas already exist -- what’s missing is leadership. The paper compared President Barack Obama’s calls for reform to those of his predecessor, saying the country has only grown more impatient since former President George W. Bush made the drive for immigration overhaul and failed. “In short,” the Herald said, “the delay has cost us money, created ill-will with our neighbors and produced bad laws -- without fixing the problem.” The problem, it concluded, is that lawmakers are too afraid of political backlash if they try to tackle the issue.

The Economist picked up on the same theme, but painted a somewhat bleaker picture. "President Obama and Democratic leaders are killing any chance of Congress approving an immigration reform bill by alienating Republican legislators whose support is crucial," The Economist said. "And the Justice Department’s lawsuit over SB 1070 only made matters worse," it added, confusing the roughly 60 percent of the country that approves of the new law. Obama’s plan -- which contains calls for a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants -- risks failure if Democrats continue to make it an issue for the midterm elections.

Other stories departed from the politics behind reform and offered different perspectives on what measures would be most beneficial to the United States and immigrants alike.

The Sun Sentinel said a guest worker program should be an essential aspect of reform, and attempted to dismiss claims that such a program would take jobs away from American citizens.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed took a more focused view, saying the United States should prioritize talent and special skills in the individuals it allows into the country. “The point is to attract more individuals with the potential to enhance American innovation and competitiveness, increasing the odds for economic prosperity and rising living standards for all down the road,” author Darrell West wrote. Immigration reform has failed so far because reform’s advocates have not convinced a skeptical public that newcomers contribute to the country’s prosperity, he said. “Instead of viewing immigration as a brain gain,” West said, “ordinary folks see the economic and social costs as broad, and the benefits as narrow.”

In a major departure from other sources, Newsweek said immigration could very well fade as a hot-button issue in the next decade, making reform unnecessary except for the short term. Declining fertility rates in Mexico could dramatically decrease the need for Mexicans to come to the United States to seek work because they can’t find it in their own country. “All this angst may be an overreaction,” it said.

Findings by Medium
Each day during the first week of this Immigration News Hunt, we compared stories from different media: news reports from major print publications and wire services on Monday, national broadcast media on Tuesday, online and blogs on Wednesday and local Arizona media on Thursday. Here are examples of noteworthy stories from each group: (see more in our earlier blog post)

National Print Media (Newspapers, Wires, Mags.)

• Immigration re-enters national debate - USA Today
• Farmers Tackle Immigration Issues - Wall Street Journal

National Broadcast Media (TV and Radio)

• GOP Faces Internal Divide On Changes To Immigration - NPR
• Ariz. Immigration Law Roundtable - CBS News

Online and Blogs

• Is Arizona's New Immigration Law Preempted? - Balkinization
• Should the U.S. Restrict Immigration? - Cato Institute

Local Arizona Media

• Open season: Arpaio plans massive sweep, tent city expansion - Arizona Capital Times
• SB 1070 Lawsuit Preview - KJZZ

For more stories by medium, check out our previous blog post on Immigration, or filter our full story listing on Immigration.

Bad Journalism
As part of our educational mission, we try to highlight examples of bad journalism in News Hunts like these. As we searched for great journalism on immigration, we also looked for news and opinions that seemed particularly superficial, biased or irresponsible on this topic.

On the top of our list was an opinion news clip of MSNBC host Ed Schultz's commentary against Fox News: as USA Today reviewer George Horen points out, Schultz "says nothing about the subject but is critical of other news reporting. He is just like a lot of the news people that sit in a chair and read some one else's writings." We also found plenty of bad journalism from the other side of the political spectrum, such as this Fox News clip using immigration to score political points in their case against the Obama Administration.

Here's a sampling of some of the worst offenders:

• Malkin defends immigration law - MSNBC
• Arizona law was already working - Glenn Beck
• What Arizona Ruling Means for Obama - Fox News
• Illegal Aliens Getting Away With Mayhem and Murder - Right Side News

For more questionable stories on immigration, check our least trusted stories for this News Hunt.

Thanks to our partners
We'd like to thank the wonderful team at USA Today for partnering with us for this News Hunt. In particular, we're very grateful to these individuals for their special contributions to this project: Doug Stanglin, editor of the On Deadline blog, as well as Anne Willette, Desair Brown and Chet Czarniak, to name but a few. Together, they went beyond the call of duty to promote this experiment widely on USAToday.com, from home page badges to special blog posts, emails and widgets. We really appreciate their great advice, initiative and inspiring commitment to this cause.

This project was made possible in part by a generous grant from Omidyar Network, which funded a six-month investigation of new ways to help people separate fact from fiction online. We're very grateful for their support, as well as to our other backers at the MacArthur Foundation, Ashoka and the Ayrshire Foundation.

Thanks to our reviewers
We're also deeply grateful to all our reviewers for participating in this Immigration News Hunt. We welcomed hundreds of USA Today readers who signed up for this investigation. These new members added valuable new perspectives to the NewsTrust community, and seemed to share our belief that good journalism is critical to maintaining a vibrant democracy. Our deepest appreciation goes to our great community hosts Kristin Gorski and Derek Hawkins, and staff host Jon Mitchell for their thoughtful posts and reviews about immigration. We would also like to credit them here for their individual contributions to this report: Kristin wrote about Law Enforcement, Derek wrote about Immigration Reform. Managing editor Kaizar Campwala wrote about Law and Politics, and the Economics of Immigration -- and also wrote and edited this blog post, along with Fabrice Florin. Thank you all for your great insights!

This News Hunt and partnership with USA Today was a great opportunity to test our evolving "trust network" platform, which enables citizens and journalists to collaboratively curate the news. This project demonstrated the effectiveness of this 'pro-am' approach, as we all worked closely with each other to learn more about immigration. In the process, we became more informed and engaged citizens, and can now make better decisions about this important and complex issue. We look forward to expanding our news curation platform in coming months, and hope to work with you all again very soon!

-- by Kaizar Campwala, with Fabrice Florin, Kristin Gorski and Derek Hawkins

Join the Truthsquad!
How can you tell fact from fiction on the Internet? Join the Truthsquad, a community fact-checking experiment led by NewsTrust, with the help of our partners at the Poynter Institute and our advisors at FactCheck.org.

The week of August 2nd, our community is fact-checking controversial quotes from politicians and pundits, and we hope you participate as well. Each day this week, our editors are posting daily quotes to research, and asking our members whether they think they are true or false. These short quotes are excerpted from recent news reports, opinions or political ads suggested by our advisors and partners.

Give Truthsquad a try. Here's one particular quote we fact-checked earlier this week, which will let you practice what you learned from our Immigration News Hunt:

• Decline in illegal immigration to U.S. "due to the recession," not enforcement
  By Dick Morris, Fox News consultant
  True or False?

Read more about Truthsquad on the NewsTrust blog. Enjoy!

Introducing Truthsquad

How can you tell fact from fiction on the Internet? Join the Truthsquad, a community fact-checking experiment led by NewsTrust, with the help of our partners at the Poynter Institute, our advisors at FactCheck.org -- and the generous support of Omidyar Network and MacArthur Foundation.

UPDATE: Check our full report about Truthsquad on the NewsTrust blog.

For our first pilot the week of August 2nd, 2010, we invited our members to help fact-check controversial quotes from politicians and pundits. Each day of that week, our editors featured daily quotes to research, and asked the community whether they were true or false. These short quotes were excerpted from recent news reports, opinions or political ads suggested by our community and partners.

Each quote page displayed links to factual evidence that supported or opposed the statement. We invited our community to review these links before giving an answer. We encouraged participants to change their answers at any time, as we all found more facts and posted new links. We also held lively discussions of the quotes in the comment sections.

Throughout this pilot, we updated this blog post to add more stories to fact-check and share our verdict. Our Truthsquad overview page now lists twelve controversial quotes for review. If you haven't already, you are welcome to fact-check them as well. Before you do, be sure to read our FAQ and the 'Learn More' section below (and try not to read the verdicts on this page).

We will post the overall pilot results and our findings on our blog on Wed. August 11th.

Each Wednesday this month, we will also post a new quote to fact-check. What should we research next? Suggest a quote for next week’s Truthsquad to "editors-at-newstrust-dot-net."

If you would like to support this project, please make a donation, so we can can continue to provide this service through the end of the year.

Learn More
For more detailed instructions on how to participate in Truthsquad, read our FAQ. To learn more about fact-checking and finding good journalism online, we invite you to read our guides, especially these:

• Tools of the Trade from FactCheckEd.org (video)
• PolitiFact's Guide to Fact-checking from PolitiFact (video)
• Crap Detection 101 from Howard Rheingold (NewsTrust board member)
• Think Like A Journalist from Michael Bugeja (NewsTrust advisor)

SPOILER ALERT: Be sure to answer the quotes listed on our Truthsquad overview page before you read the verdicts below.

Truthsquad Verdicts
Each day during our pilot, the Truthsquad editors (Fabrice Florin, Kelly McBride, Jon Mitchell and Steve Myers) evaluated our collective answers. We gave our verdict when we had enough factual evidence to pronounce a quote true or false.

Here are our verdicts for the twelve quotes we fact-checked during this pilot.

• "Seniors guaranteed Medicare benefits will remain the same" under the Affordable Care Act
  By Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
  Our verdict: HALF TRUE


• Decline in illegal immigration to U.S. "due to the recession," not enforcement
  By Dick Morris, Fox News consultant
  Our verdict: MOSTLY FALSE


• Environmental impact of the oil spill "much less than everyone feared."
  By Jacqueline Michel, Geochemist
  Our verdict: MOSTLY TRUE


• "87 million Americans will be forced out of their coverage" by Obama's health care plan
  By Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator
  Our verdict: FALSE


• "Meek lobbied for big tobacco against children's healthcare."
  By Jeff Greene (D-FL), U.S. Senate candidate
  Our verdict: MOSTLY FALSE


• "Warren Buffett called Greene's scheme 'financial weapons of mass destruction.'"
  By Kendrick Meek (D-FL), U.S. Senate candidate
  Our verdict: FALSE


• "The 'Bush tax cuts' ... remain the single largest cause of America's structural deficit."
  By Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post
  Our verdict: TRUE


• "Norton pushed the largest tax hike in Colorado history."
  By Americans For Job Security
  Our verdict: MOSTLY FALSE


• Obama's choice for budget chief "received more than $900,000 from Citigroup"
  By Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times
  Our verdict: TRUE


• "CIA and Google investing in "a company that monitors the web... to predict the future."
  By Noah Shachtman, Wired
  Our verdict: TRUE


• "Crime is totally out of control" in Phoenix
  By Bill O'Reilly, Fox News
  Our verdict: FALSE


• "There's no evidence of any significant concentration of oil that we haven't accounted for."
  By Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
  Our verdict: FALSE

Correction: We have amended our verdict for the Washington Times story stating that Jacob Lew, Obama's choice for budget chief, received a $900,000 bonus from Citigroup. We now conclude that this statement is TRUE, after verifying factual evidence from the State Department, which supports that claim. Our original verdict for this claim was "Half True." We regret any inconvenience which our preliminary verdict may have caused.

What do you think?
How do you like Truthsquad? Add your comments below, or email your comments and suggestions to "feedback-at-newstrust.net," after you've tried fact-checking some of the quotes from our first pilot. What were your first impressions? What do you like most? least? what could be improved? which of these quotes do you find most interesting? were they easy or hard to answer?

Next steps
Now that this pilot is over, we will analyze the results and raise funds for more Truthsquads in the fall. During that time, we will continue to post a new quote every Wednesday, on the Truthsquad overview page.

What should we fact-check next? If you come across a good quote to research on Truthsquad, please email it to our editors at "editors-at-newstrust.net." We're looking for short, recent quotes from politicians or pundits, on public interest topics in the news. These should be 'statements of fact' (not opinions). Our members should be able to verify it on their own, by checking links to factual evidence supporting or opposing each statement. Quotes should be no longer than thirty-five words, and the full text of the quote should available online, from a trusted source.

Thanks to our Team, Partners and Community
Many thanks to our worldclass team, for their wonderful work in building Truthsquad: Subramanya Sastry, Caleb Waldorf, David Fox, Jon Mitchell and Kaizar Campwala created another great application of the NewsTrust platform in just a month.

Many thanks as well to our whole community, who helped us design this service through surveys, emails and phone conferences over the past two years. We're very grateful to all our members, advisors, partners and friends who took the time to propose new ideas, check our early designs, test our site and share their invaluable feedback.

Thanks to our Partners and Funders
We also really appreciate the great support of our partners at the Poynter Institute (Kelly McBride, Steve Myers and Julie Moos) and our advisors at FactCheck.org (Brooks Jackson), for collaborating with us on this experiment.

Last but not least, we're deeply grateful to our backers at Omidyar Network and the MacArthur Foundation for their wonderful support of this project. Thanks to them, Truthsquad offers a whole new way for citizens to inform and engage each other on public issues, and tell apart fact from fiction on the web.

Make a donation

Donate today so we can host more programs like Truthsquad in the fall.

We hope that Truthsquad can provide a useful fact-checking solution to the public, as well as help participants like us become more discerning about what the news they get on the web. This first pilot should give us all an introduction to the discipline of factual verification, under the guidance of professionals from Poynter and Factcheck. If this pilot is successful, we are prepared to offer the Truthsquad service on an ongoing basis in the fall (we own the truthsquad.com domain).

Thanks for your interest in Truthsquad!

-- by Fabrice Florin, Jon Mitchell and the NewsTrust Team

Immigration: Join our News Hunt

Arizona's new immigration law has been met with mixed reactions. Supporters feel it's a necessary solution to the difficult problem of illegal immigration, while detractors argue the state law oversteps federal law -- and may encourage racial profiling. 

How have news media investigated and explained this contentious issue? To find out, join our Immigration News Hunt. 

Immigration News Hunt
From July 19 to August 1, 2010, NewsTrust is partnering with USA Today and its On Deadline blog to find good (and bad) journalism about immigration -- with a focus on Arizona’s controversial law and its effects on local and national politics.

During this two-week Immigration News Hunt, we will collectively post and review stories on that issue from a wide range of print, broadcast and online news providers. On Wednesday, August 4, we'll feature on this blog some of the best (and worst) coverage we found together on this important topic.

Join the News Hunt
Join the Immigration News Hunt -- and get more informed!

Can you help find good journalism on this topic? You can participate in just minutes. First login (see below), then review some of our recommended stories on our Immigration topic page. In the process, you will learn more about immigration issues, and you will become more aware about the quality of the news you consume.

If you are not yet a NewsTrust member, please sign up on our special welcome page for this project. You can also login through Facebook, if you prefer. This will let you review stories on NewsTrust and get the full benefit of our free service.

News Hunt Schedule
Here's a day-by-day schedule for the next two weeks:

Week 1 (July 19-25): By Medium/Type

• Mon. 7/19 - National Print Media (Newspapers, Wires, Mags.)
• Tue. 7/20 - National Broadcast Media (TV and Radio)
• Wed. 7/21 - National Blogs and Online
• Thu. 7/22 - Local News (all media)
• Fri. 7/23 - Opinions (all media)
• Sat. 7/24 - Community Picks
• Sun. 7/25 - Weekend Reads & Features

Week 2 (July 29 - Aug.1): By Theme

• Mon. 7/26 - Economics of Immigration
• Tue. 7/27 - Law Enforcement
• Wed. 7/28 - Immigration Reform
• Thur. 7/29 - Arizona Law
• Fri. 7/30 - Bad Journalism
• Sat. 7/31 - Community Picks
• Sun. 8/1 - Best & Worst Stories

Featured Stories
Throughout the News Hunt, we will UPDATE this blog post to feature stories recommended by our hosts and reviewers for each of these themes. Please review some of the stories below:

Monday, July 19: National Print Media (Newspapers, Wires, Mags.)

• Immigration re-enters national debate - USA Today
• Obama Gains Evangelical Allies on Immigration - New York Times
• Arizona's immigration law isn't the only one - Los Angeles Times
• Farmers Tackle Immigration Issues - Wall Street Journal

Tuesday, July 20: National Broadcast Media (TV and Radio)

• Getting Control of the Border? - Fox News
• GOP Faces Internal Divide On Changes To Immigration - NPR
• Ariz. Immigration Law Roundtable - CBS News

Wednesday, July 21: Online and Blogs

• Immigration law author claims 60 percent of Arizona Hispanics support the measure - PolitiFact
• Is Arizona's New Immigration Law Preempted? - Balkinization
• U.S. v. Arizona: Who wins? - Texas Monthly
• Should the U.S. Restrict Immigration? - Cato Institute

Thursday, July 22: Local Arizona Media

• Open season: Arpaio plans massive sweep, tent city expansion - Arizona Capital Times
• Political rhetoric ignores reality at United States border with Mexico - Arizona Republic
• SB 1070 Lawsuit Preview - KJZZ
• Phoenix Police Department's policy on enforcing SB1070 comes under scrutiny - ABC15

Friday, July 23: Opinions

• Borderlines - The New Yorker
• Dispute Over Controversial Arizona Immigration Law Heads to Court - PBS Newshour
• Humane tweak to immigration enforcement - Dallas Morning News
• No Win in Arizona - American Prospect
• Time for Obama to Put Up or Shut Up on Immigration - Pajamas Media

Saturday, July 24: Community Picks

• Judge mulls Arizona immigration law - Politico
  - posted by Samuel W. Velsor IV
• Arizona immigration law has groups readying for court - USA Today
  - posted by Joseph W Kalb
• Profiling's enabler: High court ruling underpins Arizona immigration law - Washington Post
  - posted by Elishia Windfohr
• ‘Immigrant’ List Sets Off Fears - New York Times
  - posted by Chris Finnie

Sunday, July 25: Weekend Reads

• Arizona Girds for Immigration Law - Wall Street Journal
• Immigrant 'sanctuaries' rouse opponents' wrath - Los Angeles Times
• Adios, Democrats - Slate (Opinion)

Monday, July 26: Economics of Immigration

• Migrants' place in the 'underground' economy often reflects culture as well as caution - Arizona Republic
• Downturn Does Little to Slow Global Flow of Workers - New York Times
• Policing Citizenship and Worker Status Puts Employers in a Bind - Wall Street Journal
• Arizona immigration law opens farm jobs to unemployed - Arizona Republic

    Opinions

• Immigration Reform Is Good for Big Business - Truthdig
• Arizona's Bill Is Bad For Business - Forbes

Tuesday, July 27: Law Enforcement

• Obama takes action on immigration enforcement - Washington Post
• Immigrant groups criticize fingerprint initiative - Associated Press
• What's a Little Marriage Fraud Between Amigos? - Village Voice
• How racial profiling cases changed Arizona policing - Arizona Republic
• Free pass for sanctuary cities? - San Francisco Chronicle [opinion]

Wednesday, July 28: Judge Rules on SB 1070

• Arizona immigration law: Key parts struck down by judge - Arizona Republic
• Officials react to ruling on SB1070 - ABC15
• Judge nixes key parts of Arizona law - Politico
• Judge blocks controversial parts of Ariz. law - Associated Press

    Opinions on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

• The Immigration Dilemma - Texas Observer
• Deflating the Myths About Immigration in the U.S. - New York Times
• Case for immigration reform remains strong - Miami Herald
• Why the Immigration Issue May Just Fade Away - Newsweek

Thursday, July 29: Was the Arizona immigration ruling fair?

• Arizona, rogue state - Economist
• Key Provisions of Arizona Immigration Law Blocked by Federal Judge - The Nation
• What Judge Bolton’s Injunction Doesn’t Say - National Review
• Helplessness and Anarchy - Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion
• Ruling Against Arizona Is a Warning for Other States - New York Times

Friday, July 30: Bad Journalism on Immigration

• Malkin defends immigration law - MSNBC
• Arizona law was already working - Glenn Beck
• What Arizona Ruling Means for Obama - Fox News
• Illegal Aliens Getting Away With Mayhem and Murder - Right Side News

More stories can be found on our Immigration topic page -- and in this full listing of all stories reviewed so far. We'll keep updating this blog post with new recommended stories every day through the end of the News Hunt on August 1st.

If you come across good stories we're missing about immigration, please post them on our site (be sure to tag them "Immigration" under Topics in the Edit form, so they will be listed in our News Hunt page).

Happy Hunting!

-- by Kaizar Campwala, Fabrice Florin, Jon Mitchell and the NewsTrust Team

Photo: Getty Images

Try our new review tools

We just launched a new version of the NewsTrust review tools, to make it easier and faster for you to check and review stories on our site.

Our new review form (see screenshot) features big buttons with two choices per question. For example, we ask if a story is 'fair' or 'unfair' (instead of asking you to rate the fairness of that story on a scale of 1 to 5). Our current rating form continues to work the same of for existing reviewers, and you can easily switch between versions (use the drop-down menu at the top right of any review form).

We also streamlined our toolbar to provide a better user experience for new visitors and experienced members alike. You can now quickly view story info, star stories you like, and share them on Facebook, Twitter or email, straight from the toolbar. Our improved popup window offers the same features for sites that don't support the toolbar.

What's New
Here are some of the new features in this release:

New Review Form

• simple review form for new members
• big buttons with positive/negative answers for simple form (instead of 1-5 ratings) 
• compact format shows short review form by default, with only three questions
• help balloons show quick review tips when you mouse over question marks 
• expanded review section lets you add notes, comments, quotes and links
• larger text box with a lot more room for writing notes or comments
• current rating form still available for experienced reviewers
• drop-down menu lets you switch quickly between review forms 
• saved settings show the same review form you used last time (expanded or not)
• no more "guest reviews" to reduce confusion and spam - only members can review now

New Toolbar & Popup

• new toolbar has been streamlined to a single line, to reduce visual clutter
• star icon lets you bookmark stories you like, and add them to your picks widget 
• story info tab lets you get more information about the story you are viewing
  
• edit info button lets trusted members (with a level of 3 or more) edit story information
  
• share buttons let you quickly share stories on Facebook, Twitter, Email and more
• login link makes it easy to login or logout from the toolbar (or popup window) 
• popup window offers the same features for sites that don't support our toolbar

New Review Form
Our new review form is shown by default to new members, to help them get started as reviewers. But many experienced reviewers may also find it helpful. 

This simplified review form features big buttons with two choices per question: for example, we ask if a story is fair or unfair (instead of asking you to rate the fairness of that story on a scale of 1 to 5). We also offer help balloons with quick review tips when you roll over question mark buttons.

The new review form is also more compact. To quickly add a note, quote or link -- or share your review with your friends -- just click on Expand your review (see expanded view). This lets you add notes, comments, quotes and links -- using a larger text box with a lot more room for writing your reviews.

You are welcome to keep using our original rating form, if you prefer (we now call it "rating form" to distinguish it from the new review form). To switch between review forms, simply click on the drop-down menu at the top right of any form (shown to the right). This lets you preview all of our review tools. When you see a review form that you like, simply click on the yellow 'Save' button to update your settings. You can change your review settings as often as you like.

Lastly, we have discontinued "guest reviews" by non-members, to reduce confusion and spam. Going forward, you must be a registered member to review stories on NewsTrust, and you need to login before you can use the review form.

 

New Toolbar & Popup Windows
We also streamlined our toolbar to provide a better user experience for new visitors and experienced members alike.

You can now quickly view story info, star stories you like, or share them via Facebook, Twitter, or email, straight from the toolbar. Our improved popup window offers the same features for sites that don't support the toolbar.

To learn more about these new features, check our Toolbar Visual Guide.

Try it out for yourself! Click here to review a sample story using our new review form.

Note that if you don't like this new form, you can you can easily switch back to our current rating form, which still works the same as before (use the drop-down menu at the top right of any review form). 

Go check out all these new features on our site and let us know what you think. Be sure to click on any yellow 'Review' button next to any story title to see our new review form, with all its bells and whistles.

Thanks to our Team
Many thanks to our wonderful web development team: David Fox, Subramanya Sastry and Caleb Waldorf created a much improved user experience in just a few weeks. This core team was supported by our editorial staff members Kaizar Campwala and Jon Mitchell, who worked beyond the call of duty to make this new review tool possible. Thank you all for a job well done!

Our new review tools were designed with the help of our community, through a variety of surveys, emails and conversations this year. We're very grateful to all our members, advisors, partners and friends who took the time to check our early designs, test our site and share their invaluable feedback.

Please share your comments, suggestions at the bottom of this page - or email us. What do you like most? what do you like least? did you experience any bugs? how can we improve these new review tools?

Thanks again to all our supporters for making this community effort possible. We hope that these new tools and enhanced user experience will make it easier for all of us to find and share good journalism together -- and make more informed decisions as citizens.

Enjoy!

Fabrice Florin
Executive Director, NewsTrust

The Future of Energy: News Hunt Results

 From June 7 to 20, 2010, NewsTrust hosted an Energy News Hunt to find good (and bad) journalism about the future of energy -- with a focus on low carbon technologies and innovative solutions that can scale quickly to power the whole planet. (see earlier blog post)

Our partners for this News Hunt were The Long Now Foundation and its Long News initiative. Our hosts were Kirk Citron, Mike LaBonte, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington. Kaizar Campwala was managing editor and Fabrice Florin was executive editor.  

Overview
Each day during this two-week News Hunt, we reviewed stories on a new energy source: solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, biofuels and fusion. We also researched related topics, such as the BP oil spill and energy efficiency. Our findings for each of these topics are summarized below. During that period, we reviewed over 260 stories about the future of energy, 129 of which received a NewsTrust rating, with a total of 774 individual reviews during that period. Posted stories were published by over 120 separate news sources.

Together, these stories helped us better understand some of the many challenges and opportunities related to the future of energy. As scientists, businesses and governments around the world look for scalable alternatives to fossil fuels in the next few decades, it appears that many clean energy sources can play a role to offset peak oil -- and yet they all have their own limitations. Based on what we found as a community, the future of energy is likely to be made of a patchwork of many different technologies, as our society struggles to generate terrawatts (not just gigawatts) to power our global needs.

Throughout the News Hunt, we found some great journalism about energy, but were also struck by the scarcity of comprehensive, in-depth, well sourced and contextual news coverage of this topic. Many of the straight news reports we reviewed tended to be superficial and focused more on the "problem box" (e.g.: BP oil spill), rather than the "solution box" (e.g.: clean and scalable energy sources). Popular science publications usually provided better coverage of possible solutions than general news outlets, but often relied on a single source (e.g.: the scientists whose work was being featured in the story). We also found many opinions and advocacy pieces that were more thoroughly researched than news reports, but they typically favored their own viewpoints. Thanks to our focus on "long news", we were able to go back several years to find better information. This was the first News Hunt where we didn't restrict ourselves to recent news stories, and it was a liberating experience: though some of the stories we found were a bit dated, the overall quality of their coverage usually made up for this time lag.

Here's what Long News editor Kirk Citron thought about this Energy News Hunt:

"The Long News project looks for news stories that might matter in the long term; obviously, the search for energy will be one of the great challenges of this century. We wanted to run this News Hunt now in the hope that the current BP oil spill crisis might help prompt a broader conversation about possible alternative sources. There was good news on many fronts - we found a lot of high quality journalism; we had participation from a large number of NewsTrust and Long Now Foundation members, bringing in news sources from around the world; and finally, there was a surprising amount of good news in the news stories themselves, as you'll read below."

Recommended Stories
Here are some of our top rated stories for this News Hunt:

NEWS

• European Dream of Desert Energy Takes Shape - Der Spiegel
• How Texas Lassoed the Wind - Scientific American
• Water Adds New Constraints to Power - New York Times
• This Machine Might* Save the World - Popular Science
• Nuclear Energy Guide - Council on Foreign Relations
• The rise of Big Solar: Growing pains - Economist
• Exxon $600 Million Algae Investment Makes Khosla See Pipe Dream - Bloomberg
• Geothermal Power - Wikipedia

OPINIONS

• Big Oil can't get beyond petroleum - Washington Post
• The Case For and Against Nuclear Power - Wall Street Journal
• Climate Change Recalculated - The Long Now Foundation
• What happens when energy resources deplete? - The Oil Drum
• Goodbye, bullet trains and windmills - Salon
• A 2-Cent Solution to Help Fuel an Energy Quest - New York Times
• Bill Gates on nuclear energy: Innovating to zero - TED
• Obama signals need for new energy agenda - Grist
• An Energy-Independent Future - Daily Show

For a full listing of stories evaluated in this Energy News Hunt, check all stories we reviewed, as well as our least trusted stories -- these stories were all reviewed between June 7 and 20, 2010, regardless of their publication dates. More recent stories can be found on our Energy topic page.

Solar Energy
As we found out in this News Hunt, solar radiation is by far the most abundant energy source on earth (The Oil Drum), exceeding global energy demand many times over. But at its current capacity, solar power generation can only produce a tiny fraction of the world's total electricity supply (Wikipedia). However, according to The MIT Technology Review, the market continues to grow rapidly, especially in the U.S., and the industry has begun to employ a range of technologies, from next-generation photovoltaic cells to solar thermal generation using heat, to capture and harness more solar power.

And yet these advances appear limited by their high costs and the large amount of physical space they require, making solar unlikely to become a leading source of new energy in the near future. As our partner and reviewer Alexander Rose points out: "This should be put in perspective. Solar currently represents less than 1% of the total energy mix."

Recommended Stories

• The rise of Big Solar: Growing pains - The Economist
• European Dream of Desert Energy Takes Shape - Der Spiegel
• How home solar arrays can help to stabilize the grid - Scientific American

See all stories we reviewed on this topic. More recent stories can be found on our Solar Energy topic page.

Wind Power
 As we learned from over forty articles we reviewed on this topic, wind power is less costly than solar, and doesn't require the large upfront investments needed for nuclear and geothermal. And scientists, governments, and private companies appear to be tackling many of the issues that previously stunted the growth of wind energy, as demonstrated in Texas, where "a unique state energy policy combined with federal subsidies have helped make this state an important test case for scalable wind power deployment," as noted by Fabrice Florin.

We also read about several schemes to store wind energy, including the use of compressed air, pumped hydro, and even a piece in the New York Times about battery storage (which co-host Mike LaBonte noticed contained "three viewpoints, but only from the subject company and one customer"). A number of sources also covered an ambitious offshore wind proposal spanning the eastern United States, that could harness stronger, more consistent winds, while "eliminating aesthetic and noise concerns that have delayed [past] projects." As with other alternative energy sources, government support has been critical to the growth of wind, but there's increased interest in wind from the private sector, boding well for the future of this technology.

Recommended Stories

• How Texas Lassoed the Wind - Scientific American
• Eritrea: Reaping the wind - IRIN
• Bottled Wind Could Be as Constant as Coal - Wired

See all stories we reviewed on this topic. More recent stories can be found on our Wind Power topic page.

Nuclear Power
We found much controversy in the stories we reviewed about nuclear power. Is nuclear energy the clean, safe alternative to fossil fuel's finite supplies and carbon emissions? Or is it unsafe and too expensive to build? Critics say the timeline for conversion to nuclear power is too long, that investments divert resources from other technologies that work. They point to dangers involved in uranium mining, plant operations, nuclear waste disposal and the possible use of nuclear material for weapons. Proponents say that nuclear power has become a viable alternative to fossil fuels. They tout its lower cost per kilowatt, its baseload, always-on character, as opposed to intermittent solar and wind -- and point to "fourth generation" reactors which use nuclear waste as fuel.

The Council of Foreign Relations lays out the arguments both pro and con in its "Nuclear Energy Guide", which Sirajul Islam calls "a good resource." A number of stories report on the benefits of a "nuclear renaissance," such as this article from MarketWatch -- while NASA climate scientist James Hansen supports the use of fourth generation reactors. Other stories point to some serious side-effects, such as "Nuclear power & public health" which Dwight Rousu calls "a thorough and informative article... from an expert not in the pay of the nuclear industry."

Recommended Stories

• The Future of Nuclear Energy - Scientific American
• The Case For and Against Nuclear Power - Wall Street Journal (Opinion)
• Some Nukes - The New Yorker

See all stories we reviewed on this topic. More recent stories can be found on our Nuclear topic page.

Geothermal Energy
 Geothermal energy is generated by converting heat from deep within the earth into electricity. We learned in this News Hunt that unlike wind power, geothermal power plants produce a consistent energy load all year round, and have a smaller footprint compared to solar. However, geothermal energy is highly location dependent. "The reason Iceland gets 26% of its power from geo," said Alexander Rose, "is that it is highly geothermally active."

Another hurdle for geothermal power is the significant capital needed to explore and then build geothermal plants. Accessing the heat source requires drilling deep in the ground, a process that "is very nearly as old as the discovery of oil as a fuel source, and is expensive, time-consuming, dangerous and environmentally hazardous." Scientific American's Christopher Mims explained that while geothermal may be cost effective in the long run, the high up-front investment mean "companies are more likely to spend money on things with lower front-end costs, like natural gas-powered plants." Drilling for geothermal power plants also increases the risk of earthquakes, according to Nature.

Recommended Stories

• Using Carbon Dioxide to Extract Geothermal Energy - MIT Technology Review
• Mining Magnate Ross Beaty is Turning to Geothermal - Forbes
• Joining the Energy Underground: Residential Geothermal Power Systems - Scientific American

See all stories we reviewed on this topic. More recent stories can be found on our Geothermal topic page.

Biofuels
 As we found out in this News Hunt, not all biofuels are created equal. The Guardian points out that producing biofuels from corn and soybeans can drive up the price of food, and the Associated Press explored whether wood-base biofuels could harm woodlands. 

On the horizon are "fourth generation fuels that use techniques like hydroprocessing, advanced biochemistry, and "solar-to-fuel" methods, which were reported on in Scientific American and GreenTech Media. Reviewer Mindy Phypher sounds a note of caution about these new technologies in her Scientific American review, explaining that she has "learned to take glowing reviews of potential breakthroughs with a grain of salt. So many, for one reason or another, never make it to the market or successfully solve the problem they were intended to solve."

Recommended Stories

• Exxon $600 Million Algae Investment Makes Khosla See Pipe Dream - Bloomberg
• Algae to solve the Pentagon's jet fuel problem - Guardian
• EU biofuels 'should be certified' - BBC News

See all stories we reviewed on this topic. More recent stories can be found on our Biofuels topic page.

Fusion Energy
 Unlike nuclear fission, fusion power forces atoms to join and thus release some of their energy, using only water and other commonly available elements as fuel, as we found out in this News Hunt. A leader in this field is the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Labs. On June 16, 2010, The Long Now Foundation hosted a talk by NIF director Ed Moses, who described their groundbreaking work (this News Hunt was originally intended as a companion program to this talk). If Moses is right, fusion energy, likely to be driven by the NIF's laser array, could provide clean, abundant electricity to power the planet. 

Some scientists and politicians have expressed skepticism about this technology (Scientific American), and question whether society can bear the cost of development (Bnet). But Long Now founder Stewart Brand points out that "fusion power, like nuclear fission power, would cost less per kilowatt hour than wind (and far less than solar), yet would be less capital intensive than fission. For the constant baseload power no carbon is involved, no waste stream, no possibility of meltdown or weaponization, and there is no such thing as peak hydrogen."

Recommended Stories

• Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes - BBC News
• This Machine Might Save the World - Popular Science
• Clean Fusion Power This Decade - The Long Now Foundation/NIF (Opinion)

See all stories we reviewed on this topic. More recent stories can be found on our Fusion Energy topic page.

Energy Efficiency
Energy-efficient buildings, industrial processes and transportation could reduce the world's projected energy needs in 2050 by one third, according to the International Energy Agency. In the U.S., while the size of the economy tripled between 1970 and 2010, 75% of the energy which fueled that expansion came from efficiency advances, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The real challenge seems to be a lack of political will to change energy policy in the United States, as suggested in opinions such as "The Psychology of Climate Change.

In "Europe Energized", Steven Hill looks at how government policy can encourage the adoption of energy alternatives -- and reviewer Chris Finnie found "this piece was not only informative, but inspiring."  Shari Shapiro comments on the proposed Kerry-Lieberman bill in the Green Building Blog, noting that it "took the best, easiest and cheapest means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions - through energy efficiency - and gave them the very short end of the stick." Perhaps the most informative opinion on this topic was by Grist's David Roberts, who covered Robert Lugar's less ambitious bill  in "A bipartisan path forward on energy and climate." 

Recommended Stories

• Europe Energized - New York Times (Opinion)
• A bipartisan path forward on energy and climate - Grist (Opinion)
• As Congress Dithers, Military Provides Leadership On Green Energy - Forbes (Opinion)

Gulf Oil Spill
Our News Hunt coincided with the BP oil spill, which dominated the news and raised urgent questions about this environmental disaster. Coverage of this event ranged from the immediate threats to Gulf Coast residents to the consequences for BP and its shareholders to "longer news" stories about the spill's ecological impact (which reviewer Dale Penn calls "excellent journalism")  and the dim future of fossil fuels as an energy source from The Oil Drum (reviewer Patricia L'Herrou calls it "a fascinating description.")

For this News Hunt, we looked at dozens of stories related to the BP oil spill, hoping to find good information about alternative energy sources that might wean us from fossil fuels. We were often disappointed by the lack of substantive coverage about viable solutions to the upcoming energy crisis.

Recommended Stories

• In gulf oil spill's long reach, ecological damage could last decades - The Washington Post
• Lasting Menace - Scientific American (Opinion)
• Energy Transitions Past and Future - The Oil Drum (Opinion)

See all stories we reviewed on this topic. More recent stories can be found on our Oil and Gas topic page.

Bad Journalism on Energy
As always, we try to highlight examples of bad journalism here at NewsTrust, and we found plenty of them in this News Hunt. The usual suspects did not disappoint, with Glenn Beck's associates Pat & Stu offering a review of President Obama's June 15th primetime address, leading reviewer Richard Williams to write: "If we look at this as an opinion piece delivered by comics, it wasn't half bad. If we look at it as 'journalism,' we're barking up the wrong tree."). We were also concerned by Keith Olbermann's interview with Mother Jones reporter Kate Sheppard at MSNBC.

This Energy News Hunt also uncovered a particular kind of bad journalism, in which lazy writing allows the wow-factor of a new technological development to overwhelm critical reporting and thorough investigation, as noted above.

Least Trusted Stories

• Using oil to focus energy - Hardball / MSNBC (Opinion)
• Obama unleashes big government - The Glenn Beck Program (Opinion)
• US lab debuts super laser - AFP

See all our least trusted stories about energy. More recent stories can be found of our Energy topic page.

Thanks to our partners
 We'd like to thank our partners at The Long Now Foundation and its Long News initiative, for participating in this News Hunt. In particular, we're very grateful to these individuals for their special contributions to this project: Stewart Brand, Kirk Citron, Danielle Engelman, Kevin Kelly and Alexander Rose. 

You can read Kirk's own News Hunt report on the Long News blog. And as Long Now's executive director, Alexander shared these observations about our partnership:

"Looking back over what came out of the Energy News Hunt I found that I learned not only more about energy, but a lot more about the way it is covered by the press. I am reminded how rare it is to see a story that contextualizes new energy technology in the overall picture. Crowd-sourcing is a tricky and nuanced business, NewsTrust did a great job framing and directing the efforts of its contributors to yield high quality stories."

This project was made possible in part by a generous grant from Omidyar Network, which is funding a six-month investigation of new ways to help people separate fact from fiction online. We're very grateful for their support, as well as to our other backers at the MacArthur Foundation, Ashoka and the Ayrshire Foundation.

Thanks to our reviewers
Our deepest appreciation goes to our great hosts Kirk Citron, Mike LaBonte, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington, for their thoughtful posts and reviews about the future of energy. We also greatly appreciate their findings in this blog post: Jon wrote about Solar, Fusion, the Gulf Oil Spill and Bad Journalism. Beth wrote about Nuclear, Biofuels and Energy Efficiency. Kaizar wrote about Wind and Geothermal -- and also wrote and edited this blog post, along with Fabrice. Thank you all for your good contributions!

Lastly, we're grateful to all our NewsTrust reviewers for participating in this Energy News Hunt. And a big welcome to over a hundred new members who signed up for this project. We're delighted that you could join us for this fascinating investigation.

This News Hunt and partnership with The Long Now Foundation was a great opportunity to test our evolving "trust network" platform, which enables citizens and journalists to collaboratively filter the news. This demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach, as we all worked closely with each other and used all of our tools to learn more about our energy options -- and became more informed and engaged citizens in the process. We look forward to expanding this platform in coming months, and working with you all again very soon!

What do you think?
We would love to hear your thoughts about this News Hunt -- and/or NewsTrust in general. To share your feedback, please leave a comment below, or email us.

-- by Kaizar Campwala and Fabrice Florin, with Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington

Scaling Impact with Omidyar Network

 I just got back from an inspiring conference hosted by Omidyar Network (ON) to help its nonprofit partners scale their impact and better serve the public. This invitations-only event took place April 27-29 at the Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel in Menlo Park, California. Speakers included ON co-founders Pierre and Pam Omidyar, as well as experts in the field of management, social marketing and human relations. Participants included CEOs of over 30 ON grantees in fields as diverse as social media, micro-finance and government transparency --- including organizations such as BridgeSpan, DonorsChoose, Global Voices, GuideStar, HopeLab, Kaboom, Sunlight , Ushahidi and Wikimedia, to name just a few. I represented NewsTrust (as a recent ON grantee), and was very grateful to be
included in this event.

The purpose of this 'executive boot camp' was to help us learn and network with peers, content experts, and ON leadership, to "ignite transformative change around the world." Using a highly interactive format, ON provided us with coaching and practical tools on topics like governance, strategy, influencing behavior, generating revenue, and maximizing talent. As the new kid on the block, I learned a great deal by interacting with all these innovators and developing our own plan for growing NewsTrust.

In this short post, I wanted to share a few links and quick observations about this exceptional program. To get a feel for who was there, check out some of my photos on Flickr  (with some nice group photos at the end -- sorry I couldn't include people who left early). And you can find some great comments on the special twitter feed set up for this event (#onef). I wrote this blog post to help provide a bit more context for outsiders who stumbled upon this twitter feed, and hope that other participants will post more info on their sites as well.

 Omidyar Network is pioneering a very unique approach to helping make the world a better place, by applying some of the best practices of the for-profit world to philanthropic purposes. They support both nonprofit and for-profit organizations, bridging the gap between these different sectors -- and using remarkable business discipline to help bring about social change. As Pierre Omidyar pointed out in his talk, nonprofits can achieve greater impact when they charge for their services, because "people who pay you give you valuable feedback that helps improve your product."

Other speakers provided more insights on this topic, such as Bridgespan's William Foster, who reminded us that only 7% of nonprofit funding comes from foundations & big donors -- and that business models based solely on foundation support generally don't scale up. We also learned a lot from professor Alan Andreasen about traditional social marketing tools that nonprofits can use to influence the behaviors of both 'downstream' disadvantaged consumers, as well as 'upstream' market forces that can help solve social problems.

One of the most remarkable aspects of this event was the extensive coaching provided by ON and its consultants, either one-on-one or in small group exercises, which helped us learn from each other in an interactive format. One of ON's special qualities is that it invests in people, not just programs, as this project made very clear.

Overall, this was a great opportunity to interact with peers and experts in a convivial and well-structured setting, which encouraged us to think intelligently about growing the impact of our public services. I look forward to applying some of these tools and principles in our own work at NewsTrust, and am very grateful to Omidyar Network for being such a thoughtful and effective partner in helping us achieve social change.

Thanks to everyone in ON community for this invaluable experience!

Global Economy: News Hunt Results

The week of April 19, 2010, NewsTrust hosted a News Hunt on the Global Economy (see earlier post). Together, we surveyed journalism from every continent, to better understand how people around the world were affected by the financial crisis. We found some fascinating stories about a global economy that is deeply interconnected. In this post, we'll highlight some of the stories that stood out, and identify some key themes covered in the stories we reviewed.

Our partners for this News Hunt were Global Voices, Link TV and Youth Noise. Joining them were over 120 high school students from San Francisco's International High School and Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy. Our community hosts were Kristin Gorski, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington, who also wrote the detailed findings and news comparisons below. Kaizar Campwala was managing editor.

Overview
Together we posted 248 news reports and opinions about the global economy, 86 of which received a NewsTrust rating. Posted stories were published by an impressive 123 different news sources from around the world.

These stories revealed a complex, multi-layered picture of the global economy, with wide variations in different regions of the world. The IMF released a cautiously optimistic report pointing to "a tepid recovery in many advanced economies, and a much stronger one in most emerging and developing economies."

In the US, for example, weak consumer demand and high unemployment continued to plague the nation's economy -- while allegations of fraud by Goldman Sachs dominated the news. Many stories grappled with what, if anything, the US government should do to regulate banks and prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial meltdown.

Europeans dealt with two crises last week that serve as stark examples of how interdependent their economies have become. Greece's debt troubles continued to reverberate across the continent, despite a loan guarantee from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU). As Greeks prepared for new austerity measures, EU member states faced an uphill battle to convince their citizens of the importance in propping up the Greek economy. At the same time in Europe, the eruption of an Icelandic volcano shut down air traffic across much of the continent, disrupting commerce and costing their economies millions of dollars a day.

Many African farmers and businessmen also suffered when the volcano prevented exports to European markets. But as NewsTrust reviewers found, the big challenges for African economies remained structural, including a need to reduce corruption and improve governance.

Asian economies faced very different pressures than the more mature economies of Europe and North America. Countries such as India and China continued to grow at a rapid pace, leading to inflation and economic bubbles such as the Chinese housing market.

Our detailed findings below begin with some of the most trusted stories reviewed during the News Hunt, along with examples of bad journalism on this topic. We've also included insightful summaries of our findings by medium (e.g. print, TV, blogs). Finally, we've included a couple news comparisons showing how different publications covered stories about unemployment and the Greek financial crisis.

Most Trusted Stories
Here are some of our top rated stories for this News Hunt:

News

• Lengthy eruption would put economy under a cloud - Associated Press
• It's Not Just Passengers Trying to Catch A Flight (reviews) - NPR
• Bric countries try to shift global balance of power - BBC News
• Social mobility and inequality: Upper bound - Economist
• Debt: Greece vs California - Link TV
• Few alternatives to Gaza police job - Aljazeera
• Indians debate government policy and the Maoist response - Global Voices
• Romania says poverty reduction is 'impossible target' - euractiv.com
• China's real estate time bomb ticking - China Daily
• Nigeria's Late Passage of 2010 Budget Stirs Hardship in Benin Republic (reviews) - AllAfrica

Opinion

• Do I See Movement In The Greek Trenches? - A Fistful of Euros
• Unemployment: Israel's other existential threat - Haaretz
• World Faces Serious New Economic Challenges - Huffington Post
• How Wall Street Became a Giant Casino (reviews) - New York Times
• What links the banking crisis and the volcano? - The Guardian
• Angela Calling - Greece Economy Watch

Least Trusted Stories
As part of our News Hunt, we also looked for bad journalism, from superficial reporting to misinformation. Here are a few of the worst offenders we found:

• Global business cratering (reviews) - New York Post
• China slams Argentina for 'discriminatory' trade measures (reviews) - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
• Chavez: China to Devote $20B to Venezuela Projects (reviews) - Associated Press
• Social investing comes of age (reviews) - Insead Knowledge

For a full listing of stories reviewed in this News Hunt, check all our rated stories, as well as our most trusted stories and least trusted stories, published between April 12 and April 25, 2010.

Findings by Medium
Each day of the News Hunt, we compared stories from different media: news reports from major print publications and wire services on Monday, opinions from the same on Tuesday, TV and radio sources on Wednesday, online sites and blogs Thursday, and citizen journalism on Friday. We devoted Saturday to featuring examples of bad journalism across all media types. Here's what we found in each of these categories:

News From Print Media  
Two stories dominated mainstream news coverage during our news hunt. A cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano disrupted air travel over much of Europe for days, causing an economic ripple effect felt around the world. American and European sources mostly covered the inconveniences for Western travelers, but we found some reports of unexpected consequences in far-flung places, revealing just how interconnected the global economy has become. 

The Kenyan newspaper The Daily Nation reported that European flight cancellations cost the Kenyan economy more than $3.9 million a day. The horticulture industry was hardest hit. Stephen Mbithi, CEO of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya stated, "We have handled drought, El Niño and the post-election violence, but we have not seen anything like this." Mbithi told the Associated Press that 5,000 workers were temporarily laid off due to these losses. 

The other major story this week was the Greek debt crisis. On Monday, we featured this story from The Guardian, which outlines the possible financing options and summarizes their economic, political, and social ramifications. 

The Economist published a summary of new findings about social mobility in America as compared to other countries, which gave us a look at broader trends in the global economy. Reviewer Walter Cox said the story "puts a difficult topic in clear perspective."

Opinions From Print Media
Reviews of opinion pieces in the print media often differed widely. In "What links the banking crisis and the volcano?" in the Guardian (UK), George Monbiot looked at disruptions in air travel caused by the eruption in Iceland and advocated that we "start decommissioning this industry while there is time and find ways of living happily with less of it." Andre Heinemann liked the piece, however "gloomy." Walter Cox argued "Our real task is to make existing systems more durable and less sensitive to natural and man-made phenomena." 

Nehemia Shtrasler, in the Haaretz (Israel) piece "Unemployment: Israel's other existential threat" wrote that instead of creating a long-term plan for improving education, professional training and infrastructure, the government took the easy route of simply increasing outlays to the unemployed. James Canning thought the author "correctly identifie[d] the government's preoccupation with staying in power...". Eremipagamo Amabebe complained, "Clearly, just because one isn't working does not necessarily mean one is living off the state. I was left curious to know what percentage of unemployed Israelis really are living from the work of others, and how many of these are using the government support as a permanent means of sustenance (rather than just a temporary stop-gap to help them through tough times)."

TV and Radio
We found a wide range of TV and radio pieces on the global economy, from both mainstream and independent sources. These stories make it clear that our world is increasingly interconnected. Clearly, any ripple in the global economy affects all shorelines, although with varying severity.

Link TV's Debt: Greece vs California compared news broadcasts from around the world to cover two different casualties of the financial crisis in Europe and the U.S. Al Jazeera offered a compelling video narrative of a young man's journey to become a police officer in Gaza, one of the only paying jobs available. The Real News' Senior Editor Paul Jay presented a video interview with Jane D'Arista, a research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Their topic: Can the U.S. dollar remain the world's currency?

Public Radio International's Marco Werman delved into the reasons why Russia is the 120th on a World Bank list of countries with attractive business options. National Public Radio took us to South Africa in a quest to understand the negative economic effects of Iceland's volcanic ash cloud and its hamper on travel. Though this story was highly rated for its ground-level reporting and context, International High School student MeiLi LeRoy accurately noted, "There aren't many sources, mainly from one guy."

A joint effort by Ira Glass's This American Life and non-profit journalism organization ProPublica resulted in the highly rated "Inside Job: Eat My Shorts" It chronicles how a hedge fund named Magnetar bet against the very securities it helped create, contributing to the recent global financial crisis.

Online News Sites and Blogs
We found interesting coverage of the global economy by online sites and group blogs from a variety of countries. Edward Hugh, in the group blog A Fistful of Euros observed in "Do I See Movement In The Greek Trenches", "This isn't about economics anymore, this is now about who does what, and when, and how everyone else reacts." Jon Mitchell found "The arguments in this article are high-level, but their presentation is excellent, and the sources back them up." 

Aparna Ray of Global Voices weighed in with "India: Citizens debate government policy and the Maoist response". Bhumika Ghimire observed that "India has a huge wealth and education gap. The cities are zooming ahead while the rural areas are far behind. Maoists are taking advantage of this gap." Alexander Roe added that "This report shows a variety of sources. We see reactions from bloggers, citizens and the government, which re-inforces its credibility". 

Also popular was an opinion piece in the Huffington Post by the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund: "World Faces Serious New Economic Challenges."

Citizen Journalism
Citizen journalists and individual bloggers worldwide brought many local perspectives on the global economy. Prolific economics blogger Edward Hugh shared his views on the Greece financial crisis here and here. Seeking Alpha bloggers weighed in on the Greek debt crisis as well, along with an article on how Asian markets could be recovering. Economist Stefan Karlsson examined 2-year European inflation rates as indicators of the continent's monetary health.

Two Global Voices bloggers provided more perspectives on this issue. Tarek Amr explained how rising meat prices in Egypt are driving a trend in local vegetarianism, both out of necessity and out of protest. And Sonam Ongmo drew our attention to South Asian leaders traveling to Bhutan for the SAARC summit.

These ground-level reports and independent insights helped us better understand the global economy's many facets.

Bad Journalism
We love rooting out bad journalism here on NewsTrust, and during this news hunt, our usual suspects didn't disappoint. See this mystifying story from The New York Post, which apparently took two reporters to write 94 words, including one confusing quotation. Fabrice Florin called the story "shallow," and "a textbook example of bad journalism."

The most common journalistic flaws we found this week were bad sourcing and lack of enterprise. This Associated Press story reported that China has agreed to devote $20 billion to development projects in Venezuela, but the article merely summarizes Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's televised announcement of the deal, without even seeking comment from an official Chinese source.

Similarly, Earth Times published a story about trade between China and Argentina from German wire service DPA that "uses the chinese government as an infallible source," according to Isaac Traister, one of our reviewers from the International High School in San Francisco.

The Hindu also published a story that uncritically reported statements from the general secretary of a political party without seeking comment from the opposition or any independent sources.

News Comparisons
Throughout the 248 stories we found on the Global Economy, there were several themes that news organizations returned to again and again. Across media types, we saw multiple stories about sovereign government debt, unemployment, poverty, recession and/or inflation -- and of course, breaking news about the volcano in Iceland and allegations of fraud by Goldman Sachs. 

Here are brief news comparisons on two of these themes.

Greek Debt Crisis
As Greece teetered on the edge of default and the European Union debated a loan guarantee, we reviewed dozens of stories about this crisis, from a wide variety of news sources.

A detailed article from The Guardian provided an early assessment of the European Union's options in case Greece needed a bailout. NewsTrust reviewer Patricia L'Herrou commented that this article showed "...an EU capable of coming together to save Greece economically and simultaneously strengthen its own union, at a time when the individual countries have been through a difficult financial crisis of their own. I wish there was more here on the potential risk for these countries and on the world financial markets if Greece uses the plan."

NewsTrust reviewer Hanna Moazed posted Smart Money's explanation of how the Greek crisis created both short-term gain for Germany while causing domestic discontent at the prospect of lending more money. Economic blogger Edward Hugh provided one of the News Hunt's most original perspectives on Greece's precarious financial condition, and its impact on Germany and other EU member nations.

Link TV's innovative "Debt: Greece vs. California" Global Pulse segment compared the Greek and Californian debts, as covered by a variety of TV news reports from around the world. Towards the end of our News Hunt, NewsTrust member Nett Davis found a factual BBC News report on what Greece's rescue package was beginning to look like. 

These stories revealed the interdependency between world economies, as Greece's financial troubles quickly spread to other European nations. 

Jobs and Unemployment
Coverage of jobs throughout the world helped us measure the human toll of the recession. We found mixed news on overall employment trends. While some reports in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada sounded optimistic, others were more circumspect.

In Haiti, relocation to new relief camps has taken refugees far from the jobs that could drive economic recovery. In India, workers migrating to the city for jobs face widespread and organized discrimination. And in Nepal this year, over two hundred thousand people have left the country to find employment abroad. Even if the global economy has begun to recover, it seems that workers around the world will take whatever jobs they can get.

According to this Reuters article, anxiety about job prospects, healthcare, and retirement has led to a phenomenon of "walking wounded" workers, who willingly trade career ambitions for job security. The article is based on a report by human resources consultancy firm Towers Watson Co., which highlights a disconnect between this "nesting" tendency and the trends currently driving the global workforce toward flexible, short-term, and part-time work.

Al Jazeera reported on an example of these trends in Gaza, where 60% unemployment has led many young men to apply for a small number of newly created police jobs. The report claims that the incentive for young men to join the police force is "often economic." One man says he "would prefer a normal job, something not in the military or police," but police duty is one of the few stable, paying jobs available in the territory.

Finally, while the Eyjafjallajökull volcano dominated the headlines this week with stories of travel disruptions for Westerners, one less-reported aspect of the story reveals just how fragile employment can be in this global economy. The AP reported that 5,000 horticulture workers in Kenya were temporarily laid off as a result of flight cancellations in Europe.

Thanks to our partners
 We'd like to thank our partners at Global Voices, Link TV and Youth Noise, as well as San Francisco's International High School and Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy, for participating in this News Hunt. In particular, we're very grateful to these individuals for their special contributions to this project: Eremi Amabebe, Linda Annan, Solana Larsen, Firuzeh Shokooh Valle at Global Voices; Heidi Blobaum, Erin Coker, Anna-Lena Isaksson, Evelyn Messinger and Kim Spencer at Link TV; Lauren Hauser and Trina Chiasson at YouthNoise; Andrew Brown, Jane Camblin, Joel Cohen, Marie Ferreira, Dan Harder, Dan Rosenberg, Jeremie Rostan, David Stockwell and Richard Ulffers at the International High School; and Diane Laufenberg at the Science Leadership Academy. 

Together, our partners went out of their way to promote this News Hunt and getting their community to participate in this experiment. Last but not least, many thanks to the 120 high school students who joined forces with us last week (see photos from International High School). 

This project was made possible in part by a generous grant from Omidyar Network, which is funding a six-month investigation of new ways to help people separate fact from fiction online. We're very grateful for their support, as well as to our other backers at the MacArthur Foundation, Ashoka and the Ayrshire Foundation.

Thanks to our reviewers
Our deepest appreciation goes to our wonderful hosts Kristin Gorski, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington, for their great work in posting and reviewing so many stories about the global economy. We also greatly appreciate their detailed findings and news comparisons: Jon wrote about News in Print Media, Bad Journalism, and Jobs and Unemployment. Beth summarized the findings from Opinions in Print Media and Online News Sites and Blog. Kristin write about TV and Radio, Citizen Journalism, and the Greek Debt Crisis. Thank you all for your good insights!

Lastly, we're grateful to all our NewsTrust reviewers for participating in this Global Economy News Hunt. We're delighted that you could join us for this important experiment.

It was a true pleasure to work with our members and partners on this project. Through this collaboration, we learned a great deal from each other about the state of the global economy -- and became more knowledgeable about the impact of the financial crisis around the world. And we really enjoyed helping our high school students in San Francisco and Philadelphia become more informed and engaged citizens in the process. We look forward to our next collaboration!

What do you think?
We would love to hear your thoughts about this News Hunt -- and/or NewsTrust in general. To share your feedback, please leave a comment below, or email us.

-- by Kaizar Campwala, Fabrice Florin, Kristin Gorski, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington

Talking back to the news with NewsTrust

By Dan Kennedy -- Assistant Professor, School of Journalism, Northeastern University.

[Ed.: Dan is a valued NewsTrust member and advisor. We're grateful to him and NewsTrust editor Mike LaBonte for hosting this exercise with Dan's students. This post was originally published on Dan's blog, Media Nation.]

Who doesn’t like to talk back to the news? That, in its essence, is the idea behind NewsTrust, a site I’ve been involved with almost from its inception in 2005. The basic idea is to rate news stories on journalistic criteria such as sourcing, fairness and depth. You can rate news organizations, and other reviewers get to rate you as well.

Last week Mike LaBonte, a volunteer editor for NewsTrust who lives in Greater Boston, visited my Reinventing the News class to lead a hands-on demonstration. Dividing the class into four groups, we reviewed a story in the Washington Post on a day in the life of an Iowa tea-party protester.

It was a difficult story to rate, and my students were of two minds. On the one hand, the story was woefully incomplete, and the reporter allowed the protester to make all kinds of ridiculous assertions about President Obama and health-care reform. On the other hand, the story had value if viewed not in isolation but, rather, as part of the Post’s ongoing coverage. As a result, student reviews ranged from a high of 3.5 (out of 5) all the way down to a 1.7.

We followed that up with a class assignment: each student was asked to find, post and rate at least three stories, and to write about the experience, as well as the positives and negatives of NewsTrust, on her or his blog. Here is our class wiki, which links to everything.

Unlike previous semesters, we did not participate in a news hunt on any particular topic. Thus you’ll find stories ranging from the death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and the pending retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to lighter fare such as why yoga appeals mainly to women.

Students have differing views about the value of NewsTrust as well. One positive aspect, it would seem, is that perusing NewsTrust restores some of the serendipity that existed back when everyone read a print newspaper every day.

Yet Mark DiSalvo observes that Google News and the people he follows on Twitter already put news stories in front of him that he might not otherwise know about, and with less technological hassle. “Google News has better customization tools, and the people I follow on Twitter are already people whose taste I trust,” he writes.

Hannah Martin writes that NewsTrust makes her think about the news in a more critical and discerning way. “What I liked about the reviewing experience was it forced me to really analyze my news on its journalistic value, which, as bad as it sounds, is often something that slips my mind,” she says. “I browse the headlines of nyt.com, read what looks important, and accept it as fact, rarely stopping to count sources or assess context. The process of reviewing though, forced me to think through all the elements of each piece, and consider what, as a journalist, should ultimately be there.”

My own view is that NewsTrust is potentially valuable as a crowdsourced front page — an alternative to letting the New York Times or the Washington Post tell us what the most important news of the day is. The problem is that the software is time-consuming and not particularly intuitive, even though it has been improved over the past year.

And though NewsTrust claimed more than 15,000 registered users by the end of 2009, most of the stories you’ll find seem to have been posted and rated by just a small handful of regulars. This is not surprising. Studies have shown that two much-bigger crowdsourced sites, Wikipedia and Digg, are the handiwork of small numbers of unusually active users.

I hope NewsTrust will continue to grow, because the idea is sound. The challenge is that crowdsourcing only works when there is a crowd.

-- Dan Kennedy

[Originally published on Dan's blog, Media Nation, on April 13, 2010 at 4:10 pm ET.]

New York City News Hunt Results

The week of March 29, 2010, we hosted our first Local News Hunt on New York City, to examine how the news media cover the recession and its impact on the city and its residents (see our earlier blog post).

Our partners for this pilot were the Huffington Post's NYC portal, its Eyes and Ears citizen journalism team, as well as the New York City magazine City Limits. Our community hosts for this News Hunt were Kristin Gorski, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington, who also wrote the detailed findings and news comparisons below. Kaizar Campwala was  managing editor.

Together, we posted 186 news and opinion stories about New York City, 61 of which received a NewsTrust rating. For a full listing of stories reviewed in this News Hunt, check all our rated stories, as well as our most trusted stories and least trusted stories, published between March 21 and April 5, 2010.

We found some great journalism about the impact of the recession on New York, from a wide variety of sources, both mainstream and independent, with a mix of straight news reports, features and analysis (news), as well as editorials, opinions, essays and interviews (opinion). The news stories were rated on a different set of criteria than opinions, as described in our review guide.  

Here are the results of this New York News Hunt.

Most Trusted Stories
For this News Hunt, our community reviewed stories from 78 different news sources, focusing how the recession is affecting the New York City residents. 

Here are some of our most trusted stories:

News

• New York's Ten Worst Landlords - Village Voice
• Uncommon Economic Indicators - WNYC
• Getting From Here To There - City Limits
• Facing Financial Pinch, Young Adults Move Back Home - New York Times
• Building on Health Reform Momentum, NYC Workers Push for Paid Sick Days - In These Times
• In Brooklyn, Mortgage Crisis Eats Away Wealth of Several Generations of Hispanics - El Diario
• Stimulus Funding Breathes New Life Into Brooklyn Family Center - Brooklyn Ink
• Will Electric Cars Give New York a Charge? - Gotham Gazette
• Payment delays on school jobs vex contractors - Your Nabe
• New York Hospitals Under the Knife - Wall Street Journal

Opinion

• Into the void - New York Post
• Elder Abuse Programs Must Be Saved - Gotham Gazette
• Can New York be Saved? - New York Times

Least Trusted Stories
As part of our News Hunt, we also looked for bad journalism, including lazy reporting or misinformation. Here are a few of the more egregious offenders we found:

• IT voucher program looks to brighten job horizon -- NY1
• New York is Broke & Broken - New York Post
• New York City Public Schools Launching 'Trayless Tuesdays' - Associated Press
• State Senator Calls For NY To 'Stop The Sag' - WCBS-TV

Findings by Medium
Each day of the News Hunt, we compared stories from different media: major dailies and wire services on Monday, independent newspapers and magazines on Tuesday, TV and Radio sources on Wednesday, online sites and blogs Thursday, and hyperlocal sites and neighborhood papers on Friday. We devoted Saturday to featuring examples of bad journalism across media type. Here's what we found, day by day:

Major Dailies and Wire Services 
National wire services and New York City's major dailies covered a range of recession-related topics. A highly rated New York Daily News article described how Bronxites must travel to other boroughs to visit food pantries. The Wall Street Journal explained how the Trump SoHo development's "glitz" is fading. The New York Post featured a compelling, first-person job-loss account written by a former editor in the hard-hit book publishing industry. NewsTrust reviewer Martha Rosler captured NYC's ubiquitous economic disparities in her comment on "Into the Void": "Just taken as it is, it is excellent—a well-written New York account of getting lucky after losing a job in a white-collar field that is imploding. But it is very class- and caste-specific." The Big Apple's stratified levels of socio-economic status, exacerbated by the recession, seemed accurately reflected in this coverage from the different media outlets we reviewed.

Independent Newspapers and Magazines
We reviewed a number of stories about the recession from independent publications. Emily Keller's "Getting From Here To There" from City Limits covered concrete alternatives to multiple cuts faced by many working class neighborhoods. Kristin Gorski praised how Keller included "reps from...grassroots organizations...that often don't get quoted." Patricia L'Herrou liked the "specific relevant information."

Eva Sanchis's series in the Spanish language paper El Diario La Prensa, reported on the mortgage crisis for Hispanic homeowners in Brooklyn "who contributed to Bushwick’s rebirth from poverty and crime following the 1977 blackout...[and now] face the loss of the only wealth accumulated during a lifetime." Jon Mitchell found the "multimedia approach ... really hits home both factually and emotionally." 

We also recommend Elizabeth Dwoskin's entertaining piece in The Village Voice "New York's Ten Worst Landlords" and Michelle Chen's, "NYC Workers Push for Paid Sick Days" from Chicago's In These Times magazine. 

Television and Radio
As home to many of the country's most influential media companies, it's no surprise that New York City is covered by a wide range of TV and radio news sources, both national and local, public and private.  We reviewed stories from across this spectrum, and recommend these four stories, each of which shows a different aspect of the city in recession.

Non-profit public radio station WNYC explored the impact of the MTA's decision to lay off 450 subway station agents, telling the story through a range of personal interviews.  This piece was controversial among NewsTrust reviewers; Curt Barnes called it "good grassroots journalism," while Martha Rosler thought it a "shallow... human interest story."

On the national TV program Democracy Now, a panel discussion on the merits of charter schools brought together concerned parents, activists, educators, and public officials for a tense, sometimes heated discussion.

In local TV news, ABC affiliate WABC gave a remarkable 25-minute special report on finding jobs in the city.  Reviewers gave it high marks for thoroughness and appreciated its high production value for a local news channel.

One of the most engaging TV pieces from the News Hunt was "Close to Home", an hour-long special from PBS's Frontline.  Through interviews at an Upper East Side hair salon, producer Ofra Bikel weaves an intimate story of how the recession has impacted New Yorkers at all levels of society.

Online News Sites and Blogs
We reviewed a number of New York City's many blog posts and stories from online-only publications. Bobbie Sackman and Mara Schecter in Gotham Gazette asked about Mayor Bloomberg's plan to eliminate funding of non-profit elder abuse programs: "What will happen to the 80 percent...not eligible [for public services]?" Elizabeth White-Nadler found their arguments "compelling... One million dollars is a relatively small amount... there are economic reasons to continue the funding in addition to the obvious moral ones.”

Women's Voices for Change published Diane Vacca's account of Nancy Ikeda who "sold her house in October, put the contents in storage, packed her two cats into the car and drove to New York City” to move into her daughter's studio apartment” reversing the trend for young adults to move in with parents.

John Petro, in Drum Major Institute's blog, opined "As New York City emerges from this recession...city officials must find a way for developers to contribute to financing new infrastructure." And on April Fools' Day, we featured this humorous fake news release from the Develop--Don't Destroy Brooklyn blog on the Atlantic Yards construction,  "The Arena Can Wait. Affordable Housing Now!"

Hyperlocal Sites and Neighborhood Newspapers
We also looked for "hyperlocal" stories about the recession in each of New York City's five boroughs, where coverage varied widely. Manhattan news was ubiquitous, and Brooklyn boasts an impressive range of competing neighborhood newspapers and blogs. But coverage of the recession was more scarce in other boroughs. For example, the Staten Island Advance was the only consistent source of news on this topic which we could find from "the forgotten borough".

The Brooklyn Paper was one of many NYC sources to cover the MTA's planned cutbacks in subways and bus routes, but this local weekly paper did an exceptional job providing both local impacts and bottom-line data for Brooklynites.

However, some of the hyperlocal papers were so centered around their neighborhoods that it seemed to skew their reporting. This coverage of the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on jobs in the Bronx from the Riverdale Press contended that unspecified "people who are convicted criminals and... poor people" were receiving stimulus aid denied to unemployed people in Riverdale and Kingsbridge.  While the article made the case that these Bronx neighborhoods indeed have high unemployment, it was scant on real information about other areas.

Bad Journalism
One of our goals for this News Hunt was to identify "bad journalism" (e.g.: stories that are particularly superficial, biased or irresponsible). We found a number of questionable stories, which shared common characteristics.

The New York Post editorial "New York is Broke & Broken" offers no original perspectives and is not persuasive in presenting its arguments, with no logical thread.

The NY1 TV report "IT Voucher Program Looks to Brighten Job Horizon" reads like a press release for Microsoft, features no objective sourcing, context, or comparison to make the story verifiable or compelling. Reviewer David Ziegenhagen comments: “This is pap journalism, an obvious advertorial that the writer fell or bought into.”

The New York Daily News report "Queens politicians rally around jobs creation" is only four sentences long, lacks substantial facts, quotations from key stakeholders, context and valid sourcing.

This unfortunate "genre" of "bad journalism" appears regularly, misinforming and confusing those who read it, containing little to help news users make sense of their world. Its authors do not follow basic tenets of journalism, even though they are often seasoned and well-known journalists.

News Comparisons
Throughout the 186 news stories we found on the effects of the recession in New York, there were several themes that news organizations returned to again and again. Across media types, we saw multiple stories about public transportations cuts, reductions in government services and unemployment. 

Here are some brief news comparisons on these important public issues for New Yorkers.

Jobs and Unemployment
New York City's unemployment rate has hovered above 10 percent during much of this recession, but unemployment has declined slightly since January. Our News Hunt turned up plenty of stories about persistent joblessness in the city, cutting across demographic lines, but we also learned about many innovative efforts to create jobs and retrain workers for new opportunities.

Two reports from local cable news channel NY1 cover job training programs that teach fundamental skills for 21st century workers. One profiles a Bronx organization that retrains former inmates for "green" jobs, and the other outlines Microsoft's new "Elevate America" program, which provides vouchers to teach job seekers essential computer skills (note that we consider this second report to be 'bad journalism,' as outlined above). Local TV provided much of the positive coverage of employment that we found during the News Hunt.  WABC's special report on jobs goes to great lengths to cover a range of job opportunities and tips for finding work.

Unfortunately, many of these positive stories seemed to treat their subjects too lightly, and our reviewers found them lacking in journalistic substance. The gritty stories of unemployment and underemployment tended to get the highest ratings on this topic. One standout example from the New York Times is this investigation into the stagnant pay of city sewage workers. It combines human interest with thorough historical inquiry, looking critically at both the city and the unions.

Our partners at City Limits gave us a deeply researched story on jobs that looks toward the future. It considers various perspectives on how to train New York's young people for the workforce. The tension in this story is over whether to train youth for existing jobs right now or prepare them for future careers. That conflict between short-term fixes and long-term planning underscores some key issues about this recession.

Public Transportation
How New Yorkers move throughout the city greatly affects their quality of life. A constant theme arose on this recession-related News Hunt: consequences of recent cuts in service by the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), made in an attempt to balance city and state budgets. 

Many neighborhood-specific bloggers and publications from across the five boroughs – like TheVillager.com, the Bronx Times Reporter, and BrooklynPaper.com – reported on what would happen if bus lines are either rerouted dramatically or eliminated entirely; these pieces contributed solid ground-level portraits of citizens left without ways to get to work, school, shopping, family/friends, and medical services. Reviewer Patricia L'Herrou commented on one story: “...Included are examples of individuals among the thousands who will be affected by this, in their need to find new transportation or do without. It appears that those who are elderly and/or disabled will be most affected.” 

New York City's local NPR affiliate WNYC told about disappearing station agents, often the only MTA employees offering assistance and guidance to wayward or needy straphangers in the city's vast subway system. 

While the major dailies, wire services, and local TV news outfits also covered the transit cuts, their reporting has routinely mentioned only the most general facts of the issue. Independent online paper City Limits distinguished itself by offering practical and informative advice on transportation alternatives – with plenty of links to additional sources – as part of its original analysis of MTA-cuts worst-case scenarios.

These stories show how crucial public transportation is to the city's overall health and spirit. Those most negatively affected by transportation cuts live in the outer boroughs, often in areas farthest from the main hub of Manhattan; these New Yorkers would bear the greatest hardship of this recession, as their lives and livelihood would be most directly affected.

Cuts in City Services
We found many sources examining the effects of the city's fiscal policy during the recession in areas other than transportation. While the Wall Street Journal covered budget cuts to hospitals, Brooklyn Ink's Jack Mirkinson wrote about the positive effects of stimulus funding to Brownsville Multi-Service Family Health Center, which Assemblyman William Boyland said had been founded "at a time when there was no health care." Reviewer Lynn Caporale provides insight on how managed care poaches on public health and neighborhood clinics and suggests, "I would have liked more context about that somewhere in this article on this important topic."

Bronx Ink's Sunil Joshi wrote about public funding secured by Union Grove Church for affordable housing.

Many sources covered the emergence of the Progressive Caucus on City Council--an attempt to influence Mayor Bloomberg's fiscal policies. David W. Chen wrote for the New York Times and the co-founders explained in The Nation, "Bloomberg...has done little to confront inequality, preferring....a trickle-down economic approach. [He's failed]... to partner with New Yorkers in developing solutions." A caucus member submitted a bill for paid sick leave, as noted by New Yorker Michelle Chen. Reviewer Chris Finnie praised Chen's "spot-on" writing. "I've had experience on this issue as an employer and an employee ... Not only do sick employees risk the health of customers, but of fellow employees. The productivity loss can be enormous -- much more than if one sick employee took a few days off." Ben Ross added, "Rare reminder in the press of the crumby condition which is everyday life for most of the people..."

Some stories questioned fiscal priorities:  the Gotham Gazette regarding cuts to elder abuse programs and Erin MacCarthy's on shortages at Bronx food pantries in the NY Daily News. Marcus A. Winters, in Manhattan Institute's City Journal made thoughtful suggestions for better use of education funds than indiscriminately firing teachers.  The New York Times covered poor fiscal controls over spending for the homeless.

Thanks to our partners
We'd like to thank our partners at the Huffington Post's NYC portal, its Eyes and Ears citizen journalism team, as well as the as well as the New York City magazine City Limits. Both partners went out of their way to promote this News Hunt to their readers in New York City, bringing in thousands of visitors and over a hundred new members to participate in this experiment. It was a pleasure to work with Huffington Post citizen journalism editor Adam Clark Estes and New York City editor David Weiner, who helped organize this project and spread the word in their community. We're also grateful to City Limits publisher Walter Fields and project manager Mark Thomas for their great contributions to this project.

This project was made possible in part by a generous grant from Omidyar Network, which is funding a six-month investigation of new ways to help people separate fact from fiction online. We're very grateful for their support, as well as to our other backers at the MacArthur Foundation and Ashoka.

Thanks to our reviewers
Our deepest appreciation goes to our amazing hosts Kristin Gorski, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington, for their tireless work in finding and reviewing so many stories about New York City. We also greatly appreciate their detailed findings and news comparisons: Kristin wrote the sections on Major Dailies, Bad Journalism and Public Transportation; Jon wrote about TV/Radio, Hyperlocal and Jobs; and Beth wrote about Independents, Online/Blogs and Cuts in City Services. Thank you all for your hard work and great insights!

Last but not least, we're grateful to our NewsTrust reviewers for participating in this first Local News Hunt, particularly those who do not live in New York but contributed anyway to this important experiment.

Join the Global Economy News Hunt
Now that we have covered the local effects of the recession, we would like to turn our focus to its global impact. How is the economic crisis affecting people around the world?

To find out, join our Global Economy News Hunt, starting April 19, 2010. For a week, we will look for the best and worst news coverage on the human impact of the global recession, using NewsTrust as a ‘story bank’ for this topic. Our partners for this News Hunt are Global Voices and Link TV, as well as 90 students from San Francisco’s International High School.

Hope you will be able to participate in this exciting pilot as well. See you online!

 

What do you think?
We would love to hear your thoughts about this first Local News Hunt -- or NewsTrust in general. To share your views, please leave a comment below, or email us.

-- by Kaizar Campwala, Fabrice Florin, Kristin Gorski, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington

Photo: Heymynameispaul / Flickr

Local News Hunt on New York City

How are the news media covering the local impact of the recession?

To find out, join our first Local News Hunt on New York City.
(Update: see full results in our next blog post)

This week, NewsTrust is turning its spotlight on the Big Apple and its news media: we are looking for good (and bad) journalism on how the recession is affecting people in New York City.

Our partners for this pilot are the Huffington Post's NYC Portal, its Eyes and Ears team, as well as the New York City magazine City Limits, -- and NewsTrust members like you. From March 29th to April 4th, 2010, we will join forces to rate news media coverage of local economic issues ranging from unemployment to government cutbacks. The following week, we'll feature some of the best and worst coverage we found together, here on the NewsTrust blog.

Joining the News Hunt is easy and fun -- and you can contribute in just minutes, by reviewing stories on our New York City page. You can also post related stories we might have missed on this topic (be sure to type "New York City" in the topic field).

As you review these stories, you will learn more about important local issues, and you will become more aware of the quality of the news you consume. This unique experiment, funded by Omidyar Network , invites citizens and journalists to help survey how different news sources are covering one of the most dynamic cities in America: New York City.

News Hunt Schedule
Here's a day-by-day schedule for this week:

• Monday: Major Dailies/Wires
• Tuesday: Magazines/Independents
• Wednesday: TV/Radio
• Thursday: Online/Blogs
• Friday: Hyperlocal/Boroughs
• Saturday: Bad Journalism

UPDATES: Each day this week, we have updated this blog post with more stories for review, to survey a wide range of news sources covering NYC.

Monday: Major Dailies/Wires

• New York Hospitals Under the Knife - Wall Street Journal
• 12 New York City Council Members Form Liberal Bloc - New York Times
  
• Bronxites takes long rides to stock up at upper West Side food pantry - New York Daily News
  
• Into the void - New York Post
• NYC recession proves shallower than expected - Reuters
• New York Helicopter Commute for $200 a Day Signals Revival - Bloomberg

Tuesday: Magazines/Independents

• Getting From Here To There - City Limits
• In Brooklyn, Mortgage Crisis Eats Away Wealth of Several Generations of Hispanics - El Diario
  
• New York's Ten Worst Landlords - Village Voice
• Building on Health Reform Momentum, NYC Workers Push for Paid Sick Days - In These Times
  

Wednesday: TV/Radio

• The Phantom Token Booth: MTA Cuts Station Agents - WNYC
• Do Charter Schools Worsen Inequality of Two-Tiered Education System? - Democracy Now
  
• In Your Neighborhood: Jobs - WABC 7
• Close to Home - Frontline
  

Thursday: Blogs/Online

• Elder Abuse Programs Must Be Saved - Gotham Gazette
• Time for Developers to Contribute to the City’s Infrastructure Needs - Drum Major Institute
• Judge tells Bloomberg "Not So Fast" - Huffington Post
• Unemployed Over 50: A View from the Ground - Women's Voices for Change
• News Release: "The Arena Can Wait. Affordable Housing Now!" - Develop--Don't Destroy Brooklyn

Friday: Hyperlocal/Boroughs

• Bronx: Bronx Church Fights Gentrification Trend That It Created - Bronx Ink
• Bronx: Residents rail against transit cuts - Hunts Point Express
• Queens: Payment delays on school jobs vex contractors - Your Nabe.com
• Staten Island: Schools chancellor gets an earful - Staten Island Advance
• Brooklyn: Artists Offer a Visual Dialogue on a Changing Brooklyn - Gotham Gazette
• Brooklyn: Unkindest cuts! Boro subways and buses are slashed by the MTA - The Brooklyn Paper
• Manhattan: L.E.S. bus routes will get 'restructured,' and M8, cuts - The Villager

Saturday: Bad Journalism
One of our goals for this news hunt is to identify 'bad journalism' -- stories that are particularly superficial, biased or irresponsible. Are the stories below good or bad journalism?

• IT voucher program looks to brighten job horizon - NY1
• New York is Broke & Broken - New York Post
• New York City Public Schools Launching 'Trayless Tuesdays' - Associated Press
• State Senator Calls For NY To 'Stop The Sag' - WCBS-TV

Join the News Hunt
Help find the best (and worst) in local journalism, and learn about how the recession has affected one of America's most dynamic cities.

To participate in this project, sign up (or login) and review any story our New York City page. Anyone can participate in this collective news evaluation -- even if you don't live in New York.

And if you come across good stories we're missing on this topic, please post them on our site (be sure to tag them "New York City" under Topics, so they will be listed in our News Hunt page).

Please join us for this fascinating experiment, along with our co-hosts Kristin Gorski, Jon Mitchell and Beth Wellington -- and other NewsTrust members like you.

Happy Hunting!

-- by Kaizar Campwala and Fabrice Florin