NewsCred: Just How Trustworthy is Your Favorite Blog?
Jason Kincaid
45 comments »
The internet is littered with people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Common sense is usually enough to separate the junk from legitimate articles, but even the most highly-regarded publications have been infiltrated by reporters who like to make things up. NewsCred, an international startup based out of Geneva and Stockholm, is trying to address this problem by assigning a credibility rating to every big-name publisher, author, and story.
The site is currently in a private alpha, and you can grab one of 1000 invites here.
Right now NewsCred behaves like a mix between a news aggregator and Digg. Users can pick from a number of major news sources to customize their main feeds, or they can sort sources by credibility. After clicking on a story, users can choose to either “Credit” or “Discredit” the author or the article itself. These ratings are averaged across all users to determine the trustworthiness of each article, author, and publication.
NewsCred’s biggest problem is going to involve establishing a meaningful reputation system dictated by “the crowd”. For one, the obvious issue of bias comes into play - there will be no shortage of people who discredit sources for simply disagreeing with them. Most people will respond to a story with a gut instinct of, “This seems stupid” instead of, “The facts presented in this article are false”.
The system also fails to take into account the nature of breaking news. The “most credible” source might be the one that sits on the sidelines for a few days while everyone else is talking to contacts and searching for facts. Rumormongers have no business being called “credible”, but there is something to be said for sources that break stories first. NewsCred should reflect this somehow.
NewsCred has a good idea. Both online blogs and the mainstream media are full of unsubstantiated rumors, biased articles, and unsourced facts. But a black-and-white voting system doesn’t seem to be the best way establish an author’s reputation - the system will rapidly devolve into little more than a popularity contest. In order to succeed, NewsCred will need to establish a robust rating system that encourages fact-based debate. Otherwise, it won’t have much credibility itself.
The image above is supposed to show the trustworthiness of mainstream media over time, but there isn’t much data yet.
This is one of those “didn’t know you needed it until you saw it” type things …. interesting!
Thanks!
I Just made a point of going through all those old techcrunch articles that couldn’t get their facts straight and discredited them.
I don’t need a NewScred my old Scred still works fine.
“users can choose to either “Credit” or “Discredit” the author”
Oh, Arrington, you’re gonna get dugg down so much
You have no credibility at all when you’re not covering startups
Tim G, you just made my night; one of my favorite comments ever.
Meanwhile, Brijit’s already doing something similar to NewsCred with a very simple, consumer-friendly take: The World In 100 Words. Check us out at http://www.brijit.com.
Thanks,
Jeremy
Jeremy Brosowsky
founder, Brijit
http://www.brijit.com
I’ve been using this service for a couple weeks. I already have google reader set up, so I might be a bit our of their target demographics. I invited my parents on to the site, and they use it everyday now. LOL.
Jason - thanks for the writeup. You make some very fair points in your post. We’re actually enhancing our algorithm to take in ‘breaking news’ as an implicit input - basically giving additional weight to sources that break important news stories first. Also, an article’s CredRank is based on a mix of explicit inputs (user votes) and implicit inputs (past performance of author, source credibility, freshness, importance etc). We’re always looking to develop our algorithms and based on data we collect in the Alpha, we’ll certainly look to make the system as robust as possible.
Finally, just to clarify with re: to the title of the post, we track credibility for both mainstream sources and established blogs.
So far, the feedback on our Alpha has been tremendous, and we’re excited about growing our community further. This is a real problem, and I think the key to solving it is using community-based tools and putting some of the power back in the hands of the people who read the news.
Shafqat (CoFounder of NewsCred)
http://www.newscred.com
Also check out http://www.newstrust.net - a similar effort with a nonprofit mission for promoting good journalism online.
Love the clean interface.Nice job!
I’ve been alpha testing this site for a couple weeks now, and I can say that the news aggregation features are awesome. Some neat dynamic filtering options. Not sure if the credibility aspect will take off (they’ll need significant users and data), but if it does, this site might compete with the big boys.
Dumb idea… The credibility criteria is public opinion, aka a popularity contest. The audience should use their brains and decide for themselves. They don’t need people telling them what to think.. they should just THINK.
@Mogilny - we’re not trying to tell people what to think. we’re just trying to help people find high quality news online. at the end of the day, perception is reality, so public opinion does count for something. we’re also here to try and gather that public opinion and organize in a way to feed it back to journalists and news organizations. anyway, hope you’ll take a quick look at our site and shoot me an email if you want to discuss more!
@Shafqat “Perception is reality” is the type of thinking that protects bad journalism. In that line of logic, there is no truth, so what the larger crowd hears/read becomes the truth. As an app that is supposed to weed out bad journalism, i just don’t see how the fundamental concept of your app can be “perception is reality”. Good journalism shouldn’t be a democracy.
Anyways, you sound genuinely nice. I will check out your website some time and look you up on your blog.
@mogilny I agree with you. My perception is reality comment we not referring to the quality of a news article. I was speaking more about the aspect of author or source reputation, which is also something we are tracking. Anyway, we look forward to having you (and all the other readers!) join our community.
Hey the site is down now. Seems it was unable to handle the 1000 customers that techcrunch reommended
@Tim G, actually I was just discussing that on their blog last night and this morning I noticed they’re on TC (congrats guys). Basically we, as developers of Scred, had a bit of a WTF moment when we first saw the URL. Luckily we’re in totally different markets so hopefully there’s not too much confusion …
The interface is really clean and slick (well done on that!).
For news the primary problem is getting a rich source of good interesting well written news stories. Credibility is a secondary problem. Digg and Reddit are great for the first problem and while there is a credibility issue with some blogs but it doesn’t really concern me as much. If I was going to rely on a story then I would look for it in multiple sources.
Consider TechCrunch. A number of the rumors reported turn out to be false and some predictions are off the mark but it is exceptionally well written, passionate and opinionated. Would I swap that to trudge through the NYT Tech section which probably has a higher credibility rating. No chance!
Great concept, great sleek and clean execution.
NewsCred should help bringing transparency, justice and fairness in the Medias.
Medias are obviously critical in forming everyone’s perception of the World’s realities.
Initiatives such as this one should help reaching out to Humanity 2.0 with less wars, more tolerance and understanding.
Peace and long life to NewsCred !!!
Nice looking site, very interesting idea. Lets give these guys a chance - it looks promising and the vision is certainly one that I support.
@15 - I tried just after seeing your comment, and it worked fine for me. Are you sure it was down? Looks OK to me.
I’m loving the user experience on Newscred private-alpha. It meets all my requirements for a news aggregator and the credibility aspect is a huge BONUS
- one that could potentially make it a great news source. Though the balance between credibility and popularity is a difficult one to manage in the long run- an algorithm that can tip it on the side of credibility would definitely be a Media Revolution as you call it 
Good luck !!
I’ve been an alpha user for a little while now and I love the simplicity of the site as a news aggregator.
I am in agreement though, that “credibility” can very likely be construed by the general public to be “agreement” and hence become a very subjective measure. If that happens, Newscred will simply reflect the views of its demographics and not necessarily become an objective & accurate reflection of media credibility (favor sources/authors that share the same views as the user base). Another scenario I could see NewsCred run into is the herd-mentality where a source or author, once gets to the top, stays on the top (in line with Mogilny’s comments above) which is the risk you take when creating a ranking system for the public.
One possible way to avoid this is to not make the action of deeming credibility so black & white and effortless (currently akin to Digg’s voting system) as Jason points out here but create a more sophisticated method of deeming credibility (with the tools required for someone to do so built right in). By making this action less effortless, it becomes a more self-selective method of picking only the people most earnest & passionate about finding and determining credibility.
This is a metric much needed for the journalism industry and the blogosphere. I am excited to see this application being created and eager to see where it goes. Kudos for the great work thus far!
this sounds like Michael Arrington’s worst nightmare — a way to demonstrate how credible or incredible his posts are. I welcome this kind of technology.
For comment
with the proliferation of blogs and all forms of rapid digital media, credibility of content and quality of writing are probably two of the biggest challenges facing journalism right now. in my mind, because of the digital onslaught, it’s the mainstream media whose credibility has suffered tremendously in recent times as they try to compete with rapidly evolving digital outlets by resorting to increasingly yellower journalism and purpler prose. a way of keeping both these sets of guys accountable is probably the single most improtant thing that contemporary journalism and media needs, and despite all the questions and concerns brought up here (a lot of which i agree with) newscred seems to be the most credible attempt to answer this need…
These guys are trying to do something big. Looks like they are getting a lot of support as the underdog. Good luck to them!
What can you do if you see a news source that you rely on isn’t there? Like usnews.com?
Is there any system to measure the cred of the users who are ranking the stories? E.g discrediting sources otherwise found credible (out of spite or simple disagreement) would lower the impact of that user’s ratings or something similar? This might lead to conformity bias but then again, there’s always some sort of a bias there.
The black/white -rating is of course easy to use but that rarely reflects reality - many otherwise “credible” stories might have some mistakes, the whole article could get rated down due to a typo in the first paragraph etc. I’m interested to see how this works, will it just become another digg and lose its relevance or will it actually work.
this idea completely fails. we competitive intelligence consultants regularly deal with these issues surrounding information reliability and credibility. the model can not be outsourced to a crowd. only experts are able to research and qualify particular tones, slants, relationships and so on.
for a better example of how this works, take a look at silobreaker.com’s news sources for enterprise clients. that is OSINT. this is NOT osint. this is silly.
“the model can not be outsourced to a crowd. only experts are able to research …”
Reminds me of the manner in which many commentaries started (and still start) on the topic of Wikipedia.
The biggest rumormonger I know on the web is Mihael Arrington.
@28 - “only experts are able to do research” - do you really believe that? Sounds like you’re from the pre-web days and trying to hold on.
I’m not sure if these guys will be able to reach the critical mass they need to succeed (they might surprise us all), but your elite view of the world is quite something. “us competitive intelligence consultants” - get off your high horse and accept the new web.
Curious about all the sources? hehehe.. no problem… check out a list of all sources:
http://www.newscred.com/images/sources.png
*note, not all these sources are actually available for “selecting” in the area where I can pick my favorite sources… but might be a fun .png to keep an eye on if you are curious about when they add new services. (the way their gianormous CSS file is equipped i’m guessing they will just be adding new sources at the bottom over time.)
First, Jason thanks for a great writeup. You highlight many of the challenges NewsCred will face as we grow.
Second, on behalf of the whole NewsCred team - thanks to everyone posting comments and voicing your opinions. In essence, that’s what NewsCred is all about.
@Mogilny - “The audience should use their brains and decide for themselves. They don’t need people telling them what to think.. they should just THINK.” What you’re suggesting is exactly what our vision for NewsCred is. However, we also believe there should be a public site where people can voice their opinions about articles, authors and news sources. That’s what NewsCred is. In turn, your opinions can help other fellow news readers decide if the news they are reading is credible or not.
@dave - Interesting argument. At NewsCred, we believe that reading the news is enough ‘qualification’ for having the right to voice and share your opinion about it.
@Russel and @Matt - We’re constantly adding more news sources. Just shoot as an e-mail if you have any suggestions for new ones.
We really appreciate ALL the feedback. We welcome everybody to our community and hopefully together we, the news readers, will finally have a part to play in the media industry.
Iraj (Co-founder of NewsCred)
http://www.newscred.com
I checked out NewsCred a few weeks ago. Great interface design and very easy to use.
I see this as part of the evolution of how news is distributed…initially radio, then TV, now on the web…i.e. the more choice we have, the more we need guides/intermediaries that help us sort through the stuff we care about and tell us the truth/facts. So, clearly a big problem here to solve. The challenge will be will be getting people to switch from their current news aggregator to NewsCred…what will be the hook?
Don’t necessarily agree with the ‘breaking news’ comment. I’m happy going to CNN.com to get the breaking news, just so I can be aware of the event….then wait a day or so and get the facts from a credible source.
Cheers,
Faraz
Hey Jason, thanks for this good report, it’s great to hear about NewsCred!
Hello Iraj, congrats on your new venture!
I’m the founder of NewsTrust.net, a nonprofit social news rating site devoted to good journalism. Sounds like we have many shared interests ;o)
I’d love to hear more about NewsCred and see if there are ways we could work together. Would you like to connect offline? You can reach me through our partner page:
http://www.newstrust.net/partners/
In the meantime, here’s a bit of info about us … we should definitely compare and test our respective methodologies. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but do have many of the questions ;o)
NewsTrust helps people find good journalism online, so they can make more informed decisions as citizens. We publish a daily feed of quality news and opinions from trusted mainstream and independent sources, based on ratings from our reviewers. Our web review tools enable the public to evaluate fairness, evidence, sourcing and other core journalistic principles — and become more discriminating news consumers in the process. Our news literacy service gives them a practical way to filter the news on important issues ranging from climate change to human rights — collectively selected by our reviewers based on journalistic quality, not just popularity.
To expand our community, we’ve started collaborations with media partners like Scientific American, the Huffington Post and Mother Jones — and we’re now discussing similar partnerships with major news providers. There are a number of ways we add value to their readers — by engaging their community in collaborations between citizens and journalists, using our our buttons and widgets on their site. For example, we now organize weekly “news hunts” with our partners, where we jointly invite our members to help find quality journalism on a hot news topic we’re both interested in.
For example, check out this week’s news hunt on the Middle East, in partnership with Council on Foreign Relations, Global Voices and LinkTV. Read more here:
http://blog.newstrust.net/2008.....topic.html
Hi Fabrice - we’re big fans of NewsTrust and have many of the same common goals! As you mention, our approach is slightly different, but I think all efforts in this space are worthwhile and could add a tremendous amount of value to newsreaders and those producing the news as well.
We’ll get in touch!
kinda like nobosh’s publishers corner, but with data
http://nobosh.com/publishers-corner/
Looks like I’m a bit late to the party, but this is a pretty neat site. They need to add some new sources (only 1 business blog?). I don’t use some of the other ‘hip’ news aggregators, but this one i like. they sent me back a long response to my feedback, so the founders clearly care about their users!