At first I was incredibly skeptical of NewsTrust. It seemed as if it was simply going to be a site that anyone could post one without having any sort of differentiation about who was a qualified poster and who was not. It would have been somewhat useful for people to be able to post reviews of articles as a way of allowing them to be more involved with media outlets. However, I believe that it is very useful that the people who are reviewing articles on the site are reviewed as well. Doing this allows there to be a far greater element of credibility to the site rather than having it be made up of people who trash articles that they do not agree with.
I think the system that requires members to build up their credibility is very important given that as can be seen many places on the internet, that there are people who are not necessarily qualified to comment on certain subjects. Consequently, I would not change anything about the site. In it’s current state there seems to be enough oversight. If the site flourishes as it should, however, there will obviously be a need for greater oversight.
I feel that in order to help the site thrive and attract more traffic, the management of the site should try to establish relationships with media outlets around the country that will allow for there to be a NewsTrust link on every story on the media outlets’ websites. In addition to raising the profile of the website, it would also help out the news organizations providing the links because they are openly having their writers work examined.
I am very interested in finding out the political leanings of the people who review different articles, how they choose to rate them and how the higher level members of NewsTrust view their reviews. This would be an interesting topic to look at given that I feel that there is a huge risk for people to give stories negative reviews based on what they believe.
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