Ask NewsTrust Founder Fabrice Florin About NewsTrust — Or Anything Else

NewsTrust is, to quote from the site's header, "Your guide to good journalism." Specifically, NewsTrust links to stories published both by well-known media and by less-known blogs, and asks its users to rank and review those stories on accuracy, balance, context, evidence, fairness, importance, information, sources, style, and trust. It's an ambitious effort with an impressive group of advisors, that is starting to be taken very seriously by a growing number of people who follow media matters closely. Founder Fabrice Florin is reasonably impressive himself. He's been a leader in online multimedia content for many years, and if you remember the excellent mid-1980s documentary film Hackers, he's the guy who directed and produced it. Fabrice is kind of a "behind the camera guy," so there aren't a lot of interviews with him out there. Usual Slashdot interview rules apply.

Comments

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Forgive me if I seem a bit jaded

[dedazo]

But after a quick look-see on Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, Propeller and a few other "important" social websites, I see that the prevailing majority is still parroting the usual "OMFGWTFBBQ BUSH 9/11 ANTHRAX MSM MIKKRO$AFTZ RON PAUL SHEEPLE TAH POLICE R BAD" line.

On the other hand, Musharraf stepping down hardly got a peep from them as of this morning, probably because most of them can't figure out the importance of that event. Lots of funny lolcat links though.

How exactly are your users any different from these?

Re:anything else?

[genner]

I'd like to find a girlfriend. She can't be fat, ugly, old, crippled, etc, and must like tossing salad, fisting, scat, and watersports. What should I do????

You wake up from that dream and settle for the emotionally broken girl who doesn't believe she can do any better than you.

Judging political ballance.

[jellomizer]

How do you really judge what is considered balance.
If you are Left leaning then the balance will be towards the left. If you are right leaning then the balance will be to the right. Fox News "Fare and Balance" is from people who are right leaning, and saw the media and thought it didn't give their side appropriate thought. NPR the same thing but to the left. Being that it is the internet and it tends to attract more clique then a truly diverse set of people who is to say the ranking isn't done by a bunch of people to the left who feel that Fox News and other right outlets has tilted news to the Right so they group up and say the Left articles are fair or vice versa.

Then there is the statical correlation between Liberal and Conservative (And I am talking about the brawedest sense of the words), being the Liberals want to change things while conservatives want to keep things as they are. So in general Liberals make the news more then consertivies as they are trying to change things, vs. trying to keep things they way they are tends to be less news worthy.
Think about it what is a better article.

People Protest to lower the speed limit on the interstate in their state to 55mph.
or
People Protest to keep the speed limit as it currently is.

There is more news in the first as there is the question of why the change is needed what benefit and tradeoffs it will gain. vs. the second which we generally know what is happening.

Re:Judging political ballance.

[Hatta]

And of course, there's the problem that reality has a well known liberal bias. There are times when "balanced" coverage is really not representative of the truth. Think of the coverage of the intelligent design controversy. If you were to give each side the coverage it is due based on the facts, you'd have a pretty one sided article. But the ID proponents are loud, and likely to skew the coverage in their direction, just because they're loud.

Re:Judging political ballance.

[RingDev]

Being that it is the internet and it tends to attract more clique then a truly diverse set of people who is to say the ranking isn't done by a bunch of people to the left who feel that Fox News and other right outlets has tilted news to the Right so they group up and say the Left articles are fair or vice versa.

If the majority of the population segment leans "left" then the balance IS left. If the two primary stances being argued in the mainstream media for the population segment is over what form of socialized health care to introduce, the balance is a blend of those points of view. The balance would not be those points of view vs privatized health care.

Then there is the statical correlation between Liberal and Conservative (And I am talking about the brawedest sense of the words), being the Liberals want to change things while conservatives want to keep things as they are.

That is a quaint understanding of the terms 'Liberal' and 'Conservative' and as much as I wish it were true, it has long since died. The terms Liberal and Conservative have changed dramatically over the years to have had a wide variety of meanings to the point now where people just lump huge groups of odd political categorizations together and label them according to their opposition of their current opinion.

If Liberal and Conservative meant what you feel they mean, why would Liberals be protesting to maintain Roe vs Wade while Conservatives protest to over turn it? Honestly, the two labels are almost worthless.

-Rick

Re:Judging political ballance.

[pilgrim23]

Sorry I do not currently have mod points. Well said. in 1982 I stopped watching ALL network news and never got the habit again. Yes media gives you moving pictures of what is (may be?) happening and a reporter with just the right amount of wave to their hair. I prefer black and white print. I have found that a blend of the reportage of US News as reported in Singapore, Hong Kong, New Delhi, and Wellington is FAR more reliable then anything the Alphabet Nets produce. I do miss a lot of drug commercials that way but I think I cankive (longer?) without that.

Re:Judging political ballance.

[RingDev]

I do miss a lot of drug commercials that way but I think I cankive (longer?) without that.

Interestingly enough, a friend with a life-long condition was recently introduced to a new drug treatment option through one of those direct to consumer adds (on that thar moving picture box). She looked it up on the internet after seeing the add, took that information in to her doc at her next appointment. He did some research on it and wound up giving her a perscription for it. Turns out that drug has had a huge effect on her life and she has gone from popping pain pills multiple times every day to taking a single pill and having none of the major issues related to her condition.

I'm still torn on the idea of DTC advertisements for drugs, but after working in the medical industry for a while now, I have come to the conclusion that a large number of idiots have found there way through medical school and are in charge of peoples health. That is a rather scary thought, and if some consumer education/awareness can help the issue, so be it.

-Rick

Exercise in Futility

[Greg_D]

The secret societies of politically biased internet kooks will tear that site apart.

Unless the entire point of the site was to get all these idiots to continue to drive up the number of page views (and ad revenue) as they try to spam the ratings mechanism, then it's going to be fairly worthless in the long run.

Hackers?

[Bogtha]

if you remember the excellent mid-1980s documentary film Hackers

Is that a prequel to the excellent mid-1990s documentary film Hackers?

Echo Chamber?

[PoliTech]

Will this site be encouraging homophily, or will there be a negative feedback mechanism such as LibraryThing's UnSuggest to encourage more dynamic balance?

Are the News stories and blog posts themselves subject to this "balance" or is it the "perceived credibility" of the source news outlet that determines ratings and discussion?

For example if a given story is from LGF, ones preconception may be that the news presented will be heavily slanted to the right regardless of the facts, and if the source were Daily KOZ one may expect the opposite.

Do you think that "balance" is currently reflected in the site's "front page" results?

Is any evident "political" bias currently on display subject to any editorial change or negative feedback mechanism in the future?

Is this to be simply another clone of politically leaning news/blog conglomerations like Pajamas Media or Village Voice?

Do you think that all social networks are eventually destined to become echo chambers in one form or another as evidenced by Digg's deterioration, and as currently on display at NewsTrust?

absolutely correct

[Quadraginta]

I saw NewsTrust when it first came out, and was one of the "founding" user-editors. I spent quite a lot of time seriously reading stories and rating them, particularly focussing on stories in my area of professional expertise (physical sciences). But I gave up in disgust after a few months, as it became clear the community (or at least that segment of it fanatical enough to spend the time necessary to push its agenda) could have been imported whole from digg.com. A crowd of folks apparently amazingly shallow, with a microscopic attention span, a taste for the sensational and paranoid, and whose moral viewpoint is so unimaginative and monolithic that it would make any totalitarian dictator sob with envy oh! if only I could get my subjects to march together in such perfect lockstep groupthink.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that the concept of the "community-driven" news site is an abject failure. Allowing a free-wheeling democracy to pick your top stories is basically just a method for discovering the lowest common denominator in taste, discovering what an electronic edition of the National Enquirer would publish, more or less. It's most definitely not what the inventors thought they'd get, which is the better discovery of unusual, underreported, or controversial stories. You get the very opposite of intellectual diversity, ironically enough.