Spinspotter.com and Newstrust.net are intended to help news consumers find their way in an online world with an absurd variety of choices and many examples of shoddy journalism trying to pass itself off as legitimate.
Spinspotter watches the news that you read. The toolbar, watching you everywhere you go, has options for marking spin in the news stories that you read; it tells you if the article includes spin marked by other users; it offers specific criteria for bad reporting. And there is a mention of an algorithm that detects spin. oh my, how futuristic.
The site is new, apparently, and no spin came up (even in the NYT political articles that I looked at) when I visited sites. But it's a clever tool and it could add to a news consumer's ability to interpret the news.
It may try to go too far in its thoroughness. I don't really need to have every adjective in a news article flagged for me. I wouldn't ever want to mark every little bit of less-than rigorous reporting in an article.
The Journalism Advisory Board includes a balanced mix of liberal and conservative. The political beliefs of the journalists involved are prominently displayed. I'm not sure why this matters, spin is spin, the point is that a journalist should adhere to professional standards regardless of political beliefs. But I guess this balance instills trust.
What scares me is the number of people included in the site's group of advisers that have backgrounds in either marketing or at Microsoft. What's the angle with this site? How do they plan to make money off it? And why would I want to give them a toolbar, let their algorithms into my home? Public interest, eh?
The second site, NewsTrust, is a news aggregator that ranks articles based on user reviews. It's organized well, by types of media, news vs. opinion, and by topics and sub-topics. It's a handy tool for browsing the news of the day.
This site is more to the liberal side. Content from AlterNet, Common Dreams and Democracy Now does not appear to be balanced by content from WorldNetDaily, the Media Research Center or CNSNews.com. And, aside from Roland F. Hirsch's voice in the pinko wilderness, the reviewers tend to prefer stories that lean to the left.
One site can't be everything to every body. But wouldn't it be nice to see the way the other side sees things a bit more often.
I thought, when first coming to NewsTrust, that I didn't need to have my hand held as I consumed the news; I knew where to get it and how to evaluate it, thank you very much. After 45 minutes hopping from articles in the Columbia Journalism Review to opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal to stories from the Independent, I found that I do appreciate the help.
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