NewsTrust.net home page. Click to go to the site.

NewsTrust.net helps people find and share good journalism online. This non-profit organization offers an integrated online service, which includes a quality news filter, media literacy tools and a civic engagement network. Their free web site features a daily feed of quality news and opinions from mainstream and independent sources, based on ratings from their reviewers. NewsTrust.net members rate the news based on quality, not just popularity. Their web review tools enable members to evaluate fairness, evidence, sourcing and other core journalistic qualities.

“The explosion of new media outlets on the web, along with the consolidation of big media and the decline of public trust, have created a range of problems for democracy: information overload, misinformation, mistrust and civic apathy,” said founder and executive director Fabrice Florin, a former journalist and digital media entrepreneur. “NewsTrust.net offers a practical solution to these problems, by providing online tools to filter news reporting, evaluate information quality and share trusted content with other citizens.”

Unlike other social news sites, NewsTrust.net features news and opinions rated by its members based on quality -- not just popularity. The non-partisan site’s unique review tools empower the public to evaluate fairness, sourcing, context and other core journalistic principles. NewsTrust.net tracks quality ratings and reputation for each news publication under review, to help identify trustworthy sources. The service also ensures the reliability of its evaluations by rating its own reviewers and validating their expertise.

The Ayrshire Foundation gave NewsTrust a $15,000 grant in October 2006, to help launch its beta site offering its news aggregation and media literacy services to the general public. Ayrshire board member Terry Gamble wrote this testimonial about why they supported NewsTrust.net:

“Newstrust addresses in a nonpartisan way the dearth of thoughtful discourse in this country by presenting a model of ‘citizen journalism’ that can be easily accessed, utilized and scaled up by its participants in the way that Amazon, eBay and Craigslist have been. As a parent and a citizen of this country, I am longing for ways to educate our children and each other to discern fact from fiction, truth from ‘truthiness.’”

The Ayrshire Foundation is delighted that NewsTrust recent received a multi-year grant from the MacArthur Foundation, to help bring its non-profit social news network to a broader community.

To find out more about NewsTrust, visit their site: www.NewsTrust.net