NewsTrust

NewsTrust is an interesting experiment: it isn't journalism per se, it is more ingrained in the study of journalism, and dissecting what goes in to a good piece of journalism. It asks its reviewers and visitors to go out and find pieces of journalism to be submitted to the community for review. It is unique in the fact that, while numerous sites allow stories to be rated and commented on, NewsTrust really centers on this aspect, trying to identify strong journalistic pieces, and organizations which can be trusted to deliver good journalism.

The latest News Hunt for the site was on the global economy. I helped out by finding and rating three stories on the net. This piece, posted on Green Inc., a blog associated with The New York Times, discussed the proposed auto industry bailout from an environmental point of view. The next work I reviewed was a report, witten by the Associated Press and hosted by MSNBC, on a recent meeting of Pacific Rim nations, where some leaders were optimistic that the recesion will be over in 18 months. Finally, another AP report discussed how the global finiacial crisis has resulted in Japan's first recesion in seven years.

NewsTrust does some verygood things and has a good idea behind it, but has some flaws and shortcomings. Firstly, the site is mostly dependant on submissions from visitors, so when visitors are not submitting topics, the site has very little content. And since the site community is still very small, it needs the few reviewers it has to submit whatever they can. Also, though this may be nit-picking, since the site is essentially an expanded comments section, then the ratings are subject to the whims of whoever the reviwers are. If reviewers are not doing their job, the site suffers. Fortunately, NewsTrust recognizes and tries to remedy this by rating reviewers as well, giving more weight to reviews submitted by trusted reviewers. All in all, NewsTrust is an interesting experiment that will be well worth watching how it develops.