Reinventing the News: NewsTrust

Last Wednesday, Mike Labonte of NewsTrust to talk to us about how their website works and how we can become a part of it. NewsTrust is a site dedicated to helping people "find and share good journalism online." As a member you can upload articles that you find in news sources and review them. Other people on the site can see your reviews and also review the article or comment on how they think you reviewed the article. It is essentially a site to help people that are interested in the news and/or journalists determine what news is worth reading and what is not. 

After setting up my account I reviewed three stories online relating to the Global Economy as part of our assignment for this week; Economy boost may mean pain later,  France and Germany pledge auto aid, UK downturn is mirrored globally. I think that I am more lenient than other people when it comes to rating a story which I think is a major flaw in NewsTrust. Although some people can be harsh critics when it comes to how they rate the articles, others such as myself and other classmates can be more forgiving. It really has a lot to do with your perspective on journalism and how you relate to journalists. As journalism students we are aware of how hard it can be to gather news sources and write a well balanced and informative article so we may tend to be more lenient on rating these stories. On the other hand, journalists can sometimes be the greatest critics. 

NewsTrust is definitely a valuable tool when it comes to rating stories online. People are able to not only rate the articles on a number scale between 1-5, they are also able to include notes about their ratings in order to defend what they have rated. People are allowed to voice their own personal opinions in addition to commenting on the newsworthy element of the article. It is definitely a site I will continue to use and recommend to others.