Slashdot Mirror
NewsTrust Founder Fabrice Florin Answers Your Questions
1) News to me?
by conner_bw
Why haven't I heard about your site until reading this on Slashdot five seconds ago?
Fabrice:
NewsTrust kept a low profile during our first year's beta phase, so we could grow the quality of our service with a select group of founding members. We're now getting ready to launch a new and improved site in coming weeks, and will be promoting it extensively this fall. In the meantime, the word is getting out quickly, and our traffic is doubling every quarter, thanks to our first partnerships with leading news and information providers like PBS, Huffington Post and Scientific American. We've also received some great advance press coverage from many prominent journalists and bloggers. As a result, our nonprofit news site has rapidly gained momentum with concerned citizens, journalists and educators, and we expect to expand rapidly in coming months. To find out more, please sign up on our site.
2) So why should I trust your 'users'?
by anomnomnomymous
What's there to assure me that these newssites rankings aren't being astroturfed?
Fabrice:
NewsTrust is unique in that it involves experienced journalists (over 24% of our members have 5+ years of news experience), along with educators and thousands of news consumers. By using NewsTrust's state-of-the-art news review tools and interacting with professionals, our reviewers can effectively evaluate fairness, evidence, context and other core principles of journalism -- based on quality, not just popularity. Independent research by the University of Michigan confirms the reliability of our review process.
To insure the reliability of our feeds, we rate our reviewers based on performance, expertise, transparency and recommendations from our staff and other members. We then weigh their ratings accordingly, so that trusted member ratings count more than new member ratings. The weights used in rankings are posted on our site, and you're most welcome to test the math used by our sophisticated computer algorithms.
NewsTrust's innovative evaluation methodology brings together the diverse fields of journalism, content analysis and computer science. We are the first to combine these disciplines into an integrated, effective review process, which is designed to help the public gain a deeper appreciation for good journalism.
3) Forgive me if I seem a bit jaded
by 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?
3a) Re: Forgive me if I seem a bit jaded
by zappepcs
Wow, I agree with dedazo. How will you foster a user base that is news centric rather than lolcat centric?
It's casual common sense to understand that the MSM is not going to go in-depth on news stories. Musharraf's resignation is huge, but there is (so far) no in depth analysis of this news. Anything that vaguely smells of conspiracy gets all too much of the wrong attention. How will you avoid falling foul of these types of news ruts?
Fabrice:
We share your concerns about the low information quality of
first-generation social news sites like Digg or Reddit.
Thesepopularity-basedservices are too unstructured to be
reliable, and threaten to displace quality news and information with
a growing stream of hit-driven infotainment and misinformation -- in
our view, this trend jeopardizes good journalism and puts democracy
at risk.
NewsTrust
offers a smart, practical and well-designed alternative to these
popular entertainment sites. A quick comparison between the NewsTrust
home page and Digg's on any given day makes this very obvious, as
noted by numerous industry observers.
NewsTrust
is very different from these mob-based social news sites. We offer a
novel solution to help people find good journalism - by tapping
into a growing network of reviewers that sharethe same
journalistic values. Our community creates its own front page of
quality news and opinion from trusted sources, combining nuanced
computer algorithms with professional and consumer reviews. And to
extend the quality of our service, we partner withtop news and
information providers, independent journalists and digital media
innovators.
4) Re: Javascript
by _xeno_
It would be nice if there was actually content displayed without turning
on javascript.
It's
especially retarded because if you view the source, the content is
all already there. The reason it doesn't show up is because of the
little tab thingies. Rather than have a single tab already visible,
it has all the tabs initially unselected and then selects one of the
tabs when the page loads, thereby making a single tab visible.
There
are several ways to solve this. Method A is to have a tab selected in
the HTML and just accept that the tabs will be broken if JavaScript
is broken (the easy way). Method B would be to have JavaScript create
the tabs, and default to having all content displayed in a list. This
is arguably "the right way" unless NewsTrust really has to
have those tabs. Then they could use Method C, which is to allow the
generating page to display different tab content based on query
strings and linking the tabs appropriately as a fallback when
JavaScript is not available.
But
displaying nothing by default is kind of silly. The content is
already in the page, it just needs to be made visible.
And
I disagree that the parent is offtopic. It's a legitimate complaint,
and the article is about the website. There are a ton of ways to
browse the web these days, and not all of them fully support
JavaScript if they support it at all. For example, if I pull the page
up on my cellphone, which supports enough CSS to hide the stories but
not enough JavaScript to support the tab JavaScript, I get an
effectively contentless page.
Since
this is an interview, I'll make this a simple question: why don't you
add "sel" CSS class to the first tab? That should fix the
problem without breaking the JavaScript tab system. (It's Method A
above.) Note that, as with all Slashdot advice, I haven't actually
tested that.
Fabrice:
Thanks
for your thoughtful recommendations about improving our web site. I'm
not an engineer, so I cannot respond directly to your concerns -
but I have forwarded your suggestions to our engineering team and we
will address this issue in the next version of our site.
In
the meantime, keep in mind that we're a small, underfunded
nonprofit startup, with a couple part-time engineers - and we are
outspent 20-to-1 by other, well-funded commercial news sites. As a
result, our technology is not as slick as theirs, and it takes us
longer to develop it. Thanks in advance for your understanding.
5) Rewards?
by eldavojohn
How
do you reward your users? What mechanisms will/do you employ to
promote meaningful and thoughtful tagging and discourse?
How
is this better or different than the 'diggs' or 'mod points' people
on other News sites acquire?
Naturally,
I am concerned with positive reinforcement being given to those that
deserve it and the ability to overlook the inevitable negative
material the internet is so adept at producing en mass.
Fabrice:
Most of reviewers appreciate the informational value of our service
and are happy to contribute to our cause because our collective
evaluations make us all better informed.
They
also find our review process useful for their personal development,
because it helps them tell good journalism apart from misinformation,
making them more discriminating news consumers and growing their news
literacy skills.
Besides
these important benefits, we reward our top reviewers by featuring
them prominently on our home page, our blog and email newsletters. We
also invite them to participate in regular nationwide conference
calls, where they can talk to experienced journalists and help define
our editorial and community objectives.
The
most active and trusted reviewers are invited to become hosts, and
the best hosts can also become editors. At each step of the way, they
are entrusted with more privileges and recognition. As members gain
trust in our network, their member levels rise and their ratings are
weighted accordingly, giving them more influence and a greater stake
in our community.
6) Accuracy over Fairness or Balance
by internic
It's
clear that some news sources are just plain bad at getting the facts
correct. It's also true that many of us feel there are news sources
out there that are very biased in their presentation of matters, in
some cases (e.g. with state media) becoming little more than
propaganda. But in talking about issues of fairness and balance isn't
there a danger of getting bogged down in these more subjective
matters, to the detriment of a focus on more objective things like
factual accuracy?
It
seems to me that any community rating system on "balance"
or "fairness" runs a big risk of falling prey to
groupthink. For one thing, if a majority of users favor one sort of
bias, users with a minority viewpoint may feel marginalized and
eventually stop contributing. I haven't seen any systematic research
on the topic, but I think many of us feel we see this happen on
various user-driven sites. It isn't even clear to me how one can have
an objective standard for fairness or balance.
To
put a fine point on it, I am part of the group that loathes Fox News
(among others) for their exceedingly bad news coverage. People seem to
focus on the issue of bias, and this argument usually quickly
devolves into a a stalemate between ideological camps, with people
arguing about, for example, whether Fox News is worse than CNN. I
wish people would just focus much more on all the facts they get
wrong or make up: Obama's so-called "terrorist fist bump"
and labeling Mark Foley as a Democrat come to mind as two examples. I
think most reasonable people can agree that these are simply false
and constitute bad journalism, and we can agree to work against any
source prone to such errors on that basis.
Fabrice:
Thanks for sharing your insights on this important topic. We agree
with you that accuracy and factual evidence are the most important
criteria for determining the quality of news and information.
However, these qualities take much longer to evaluate, because they
require extensive fact checking, which a casual reviewer doesn't
have the time or the resources to conduct regularly.
So
we have designed a review process that helps people quickly and
reliably evaluate information quality by looking at how that
information was gathered. Our diverse rating criteria reveal a great
deal about a reporter's professional standards and methods, based
on core principles of journalism.
You
are correct that some subjective rating questions like fairness and
balance can sometimes be hard to answer - and that answers can be
influenced by the reviewer's pre-existing viewpoints. But we
provide helpful review
tips
to make the task easier, and increasing our reviewers' impartiality
and news literacy is a major part of our mission. On average, our
research shows that our group ratings are generally quite reliable,
because we carefully weigh each rating criteria based on its
importance for the story under review, as well as each reviewer's
overall member level.
7) Partnerships with left-leaning organizations
by guanxi
I happen to lean left myself and I've read Newstrust daily almost since
it came out; it's an excellent resource. But I think it's clear that
the selection of articles leans left:
For example, see this list of the most highly rated
posts. You see the NY Times, Wash. Post, NPR, Huffington Post, The
Nation, Alternet, FAIR, which range from moderate to liberal. What is
missing is right-leaning publications, like the Weekly Standard,
National Review Online, OpinionJournal, etc.
Also, a few months ago, NewsTrust formed a partnership with a partisan liberal publication, The Huffington
Post to find news about John McCain. Not
surprisingly, the articles that were posted leaned very heavily left.
What
can NewsTrust do to address these issues?
Fabrice:
Thanks for your kind words about NewsTrust. I am glad that you find
it an excellent resource, and am grateful that you have used it
regularly since it came out.
Your
point is well taken that many of the articles featured on our site
tend to reflect liberal values. This is not intentional, as we try
hard to run a nonpartisan news evaluation service. This temporary
leftward tilt may be caused by the fact that some our early adopters
share liberal views, a trend shared by many other popular Internet
sites.
But
we plan to address this issue in coming months, in a variety of ways.
First,
we already state our nonpartisan policy clearly on our site,
encouraging our members to check their ideology at the door and
review the news with a neutral viewpoint. When we find reviewers who
systematically rate stories in a partisan manner, we contact them and
politely remind them of our nonpartisan mission, encouraging them to
adjust their review style, so we can increase their member level
accordingly. Until they do, we keep their member levels low, so their
ratings have little influence on our service.
Second,
our staff submits every day many stories from publications that
appeal to political viewpoints from the right and center. As a
result, we've seen ratings for publications like the Wall Street
Journal increase in recent months, which suggests that our members do
appreciate the quality of their coverage, given an opportunity to
review it.
Third,
we are reaching out to many publications from the right and center to
partner with NewsTrust as we have with the Huffington Post.
Specifically, we have contacted or started discussions with editors
at Fox News, InstaPundit, the Moderate Voice, National Review, Real
Clear Politics, TownHall.com, USA Today, U.S. News & World
Report, the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard, to name but
a few. We hope that several of these publications will partner
with us this fall to engage their communities in a shared quest for
quality information. Partnering with NewsTrust can help the public
develop a better appreciation for quality news and opinion from these
leaders -- and support the journalistic values we all share.
8 - 12) Echo Chamber?
by 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 (Little Green Footballs), 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?
Fabrice:
Issues raised in this question have already been addressed in
previous answers.
We
believe these issues will be solved over time, as we broaden our
community to make it more representative of the public we serve.
We've started discussions with several large online portals who
have told us they can solve that concern with just one flip of a
switch, by sending more visitors to our site.
In
the meantime, we welcome a wide range of political viewpoints on our
site, and constantly invite individuals with diverse perspectives to
sign
up
and play a leading role in our community. We are delighted to have a
mix of republicans, independents and democrats as advisors, hosts and
members: they have all made significant intellectual contributions to
this project, and we are thankful for their willingness to put their
differences aside to work on this common cause.
By
focusing on factual evidence and constructive dialog, we hope
NewsTrust can bring Americans closer together and that we can all
learn from each other, across party lines.
-----
These two statements:
and
Seem diametrically opposed. If their reviewers aren't expected to fact check, how can the claim to be focused on factual evidence?
--MarkusQ
"By focusing on factual evidence and constructive dialog" Don't expect many slashdotters on your site. Maybe add a car analogy generator?
It's actually a two parter..
#1] What the fuck is NewsTrust?
#2] Why the fuck should we care?
Thank you.
However, these qualities take much longer to evaluate, because they require extensive fact checking, which a casual reviewer doesn't have the time or the resources to conduct regularly.
So we have designed a review process that helps people quickly and reliably evaluate information quality by looking at how that information was gathered.
Quickly and accurately - wouldn't that be nice if it were true. If the reviewer doesn't have many facts and has to do it fast, then the reviewer's review is completely bogus.
Quote from their About page: "We rate the news based on quality, not just popularity. NewsTrust reviewers evaluate each article against core principles of journalism, such as fairness, evidence, sourcing and context."
Then they have links to Media Matters and the Huffington Post right there as trusted media on the front page, calling them "Independent Media." Even if you enjoy and agree with these sources, you are being disingenuous if you tell me they exhibit core principles of fairness, evidence, sourcing, whatever. They are partisan organizations with specific goals. There's noting wrong with that, and they exist on both sides of the aisle (i.e., Newsmax, Newsbusters, etc.). But to label them as trusted news is a sad commentary on the state of our news media.
First, thank you for your thoughtful answers, Fabrice and thanks for responding to my question. They have given me much more confidence in NewsTrust than I previously had.
Many answers mention that NewsTrust relies on its staff to maintain the quality of the site. For example, the staff posts right-wing material to balance the content and warns users who are too partisan.
My question is, why should readers trust your staff's judgment and fairness more than they trust other readers? Who watches the watchers? There is no perfect solution, of course. At the end of the day, every institution is run by humans, not angels, but how do you manage this issue?
Thanks again.
Than fully automated sites like Daylife.com
(over 24% of our members have 5+ years of news experience), along with educators and thousands of news consumers.
5+ years of news experience. The slanting of news has been an issue a lot longer then that. 5+ years makes sure they have solid arguments for their side.
Educators oh that Unioned group isn't political bias. I was given a textbook for a class that talked about unions a whole chapter was on the benefits of union, A paragraph on the negitive effect, with most common argument stating not enough information for this is evaluated (to me meaning we didn't want to risk our findings so we didn't study that angle) And Teachers who want to give a balanced view often do so in a hushed tones in their voice. The most blanced class I ever had was American Government taught by a adjunct who is a Citizen of an African Country (We never asked where).
Thousands of people who are protesting Fox News Fair and Ballanced, Granted that Fox New isn't balanced and it is very right based. But the people who are protesting it and finding other sources tend to be to the left. As people who are to the right would feel that it is more balanced as it covers the areas they feel strongly about.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Here's an incomplete list of cliches, techno buzzwords, and salesman speak from the replies. Enjoy!
Actually, that turned into a pretty good summary
First, we already state our nonpartisan policy clearly on our site, encouraging our members to check their ideology at the door and review the news with a neutral viewpoint.
Good luck with that. I realized long ago that political ideologies are mental illnesses of varying degrees of severity. Most people *can't* check their ideology at the door because it's too deeply entwined in their thought processes, such as they are, like some sort of alien brain parasite.
I consider it *worse* then religion, because I have seen far more people lose their religion than I have seen lose their precious political POVs. You just have to look at how similar political and religious ideologies are. They both think they have some sort of monopoly on the truth, deviations from the gospel are never accepted, they demonize the opposition and they tend to try the same failed approaches over and over while expecting a different result (which is a type of mental illness all by itself).
Pragmatism and realism are dead, dead, dead. Color them dust.
Picture: A Republican and a Democrat prepare to debate each other.
I don't care about his assurances, I have read his site since the time it was posted here and its just another way for journalist to claim professional and unbiased view points all without actually living up to it. Its one thing to claim it but he is undone by the stories and his companies associations. The problem is that he doesn't see the bias because its just every natural to think that way.
I really think he has no clue as too how little trust many people put into media people anymore, having five plus years of experience to me means they are probably biased to an extreme already because even the freshest minds out of college are beat down by hardliners in the industry. Educators. Well lets just say, his two support categories all lean left and lean left hard.
So I've been there, laughed it off really quick. I will still read it this week and see what the stories are like compared to when the republican's have their convention. I seriously doubt they will change. Let alone the fact I didn't see any stories related to OTHER parties.
Being without bias first requires knowing what you like isn't necessarily right.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The trouble is that people who follow satire know more about the news than people who read the actual news. So eventually we'll all be reading UnNews and fake news sites!
What if the left wing (let us say) are wrong? What if we do our science, and discover that the earth really was created in 4004BC? What if we do a survey of the world's economies and discover that universal health care really does drain the economy and produce a less healthy, less productive workforce? What if education is bad for you? What if studies show that an 80 hour work week really is better for you than a 30 hour work week? What if we are heading into an ice age and the only way we can save ourselves is by burning all the oil as soon as possible? What if it can be scientifically and objectively demonstrated that the US electoral system is the freest and fairest ever devised and should be forcibly imposed on the rest of the world, and reimposed whenever an election produces a leader who won't do what America says?
What then is the purpose of 'balance'?
Because, you know, the American center is so far to the right it makes the rest of the world's heads spin.... There might be a reason, might there not, why those who are trying to do a good job seem to be 'biased' towards the left?
I'm impressed with what I've seen so far. At the moment though it seems to be very USA-centric.
I live in a country (the UK) that does not have much in the way of unbiased, free and fair media. The BBC is government run and notoriously a vehicle of propaganda, most other media is to some degree or other run by Rupert Murdoch, and the remainder by similar plutocrats. It would be great if you can establish connections to similar journalists in the UK, so that fair, free reports can be published about what's going on here.
I'd welcome any opportunity to have a free press that can begin to try to re-establish democracy in the UK.
The one-eyed man is a "conspiracy theorist."
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Is it me, or did the answer to my question get lost in marketing speak?
Sorry, I need more than relying on the "sophisticated computer algorithms" you guys get from your "state-of-the-art news review tools" to get an assurance that the site is not being/going to be astroturfed.
Even "insuring" the reliability of feeds by selfappointed staff/trusted members, doesn't make me believe that this site will be (or already is) leaning one side or the other.
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
I wasn't really expecting my "question" to be posted - I just kind of hoped it might get forwarded along so that someone at NewsTrust can fix the JavaScript issue.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
This interview, that stresses ego stoking platitudes over actions, and then claims they can fix it by paying other sites to send them traffic, makes me laugh. Actions speak louder than words, just do it, and word of mouth will build your site for you. Profit!
I tried to check out some reviews on their site, but failed. Every link, 'see all reviews' took me to another page that had links to 'see full review' which then took me back to a page with 'see all reviews'. I could view the individual reviewer profiles, pretty pictures and all. Opera 9.21, Firefox 3.0.1, & IE 7.something.
Your mother must be proud.
In other words, NewsTrust can not be trusted because it will have a bias. Only unbiased information can be trusted.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Fabrice: Issues raised in this question have already been addressed in previous answers.
Thank you for taking the time to not provide an answer to my questions. I will spend just as much time considering your site in the future. In fact I'm happy to tell you that I'm already done!
Fabrice, I don't know if you'll read these comments, but thanks for your forthcoming reply to my question. I forgot to add in the text of my question that I think what you're trying to do is very important, and I wish you the best of luck. I'll certainly be playing with the site to see how things develop. That being said, I think the problem of avoiding groupthink and ideological homogenization on user moderated sites is probably a really difficult problem, and I'm not at all confident you'll succeed with your current model. I think there probably have to be some good automatic feedback mechanisms to deal with it, if it's possible at all, and it probably requires a model that looks for broad consensus rather than "majority approve" or "majority disapprove".
It would probably be really interesting to the Slashdot audience to hear about the technical details of the algorithms and such that were mentioned in the interview. If the NewsTrust people are willing to talk about them, that might make for a good follow-up story.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
http://crowdnews.eu/ is an alternative news site
which is also try to break free of the mob mentality.
But the way crowdnews try to do it is very different from NewsTrust.
On Crowdnews you subscribe to the all reviewers you like, and every user can act as a reviewer.
I that way you can subscribe to those reviews which you think provide quality stuff.
Crowdnews is openid enabled and in early beta.
You guys have hit the nail on the head. I don't care about opinions. I want a list of solid facts. As such, I'd like a service that takes any web based news article and splits it into a list of sentences. People can then add True/False/Opinion to each line along with references showing the truthiness or falshoodity of each line.
Once that is done, I can just set my threshold to ignore opinion and only accept items that have not been overwhelmingly marked false.
The biggest problem in America today is that people present opinions as if they were facts and repeat them ad nausium until they are believed. It has got to stop.
Want to sign up to help me build a service like that? Send me a message and we'll build an open source, citation-required, zero-opinion news system.