Spreading 'trust'worthy news

I begin the day with the following four tabs on my Firefox browser: G-mail, Google Reader, The New York Times, and MSNBC. (After reading my G-mail there often is a fifth tab: Facebook.)

While these all lead to important and interesting stories, I need more variety in my daily news intake. Sometimes I'm linked to other news Web sites through E-mail but for the most part I'm in a rut and it's time for me to expand my news sources.

That's why, NewsTrust may become my new best friend. The site, which prides itself on being "Your Guide to Good Journalism," allows readers to submit and rate the top stories of the day from all over the web. While it's similar to Digg, the rating system is more complex and NewsTrust bases the top stories on quality, not just popularity. According to the site:

NewsTrust reviewers evaluate each article against core journalistic principles such as fairness, evidence, sourcing and context.

In addition, reviewers can write comments about the story and explain why they gave it a certain rating. They can also link to similar stories that were done better or that provide context to their ratings.

What's even more interesting about the rating system is that the site takes into account the person doing the rating. In order to comment on a story, you have to register for the site and provide certain information like occupation and political views (not all this has to be made public in your site profile). The more information a person provides, the more "transparent" NewsTrust finds them and this influences their overall rating of a story. Additionally, the more stories a person rates, the more they are trusted.

I like that the site is broken down into different sections like World, Politics, and Health in addition to a more general Today's Top Pick on the homepage. It looks like there also is a weekly topic for readers/submitters to focus on if they like.

Overall, the site is very user-friendly and easy to figure out. My only complaint is it runs a bit slow sometimes.

While I admit I'm still a bit intimidated to start submitting my own stories, I'm starting to make more comments and I find critiquing other articles is a good way for me to work on my journalism skills.

Plus I now have something more diverse to read with my cup of morning coffee.