One of the final steps to launching Newsridge is finishing up our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. We have worked with OMLN in the past, and tapped into them again to help us find a lawyer. Paul Kritzer with the Bucher Law Group in Delafield, WI, answered the call and is generously offering to assist us with this matter. As a bootstrap start up, we extremely appreciate the work that Paul and OMLN have done for us.
Newsridge will be at ONA12 on September 21st and 22nd. We are extremely excited to be included in the midway and look forward to working with a large group of innovative journalists.
At our booth we will have an operating demo of Newsridge. We are working hard to have the demo be as close to the beta functionality as possible. So if you’re curious to see what the first release of Newsridge may be like, this would be a great place to find out.
If you’re at ONA12, please stop by and visit us! We hope to see you there!
Mistakes happen. It isn’t a goal that anyone strives for, but they can still creep up on the best reporters. Journalism is a fast paced, deadline driven world and sometimes a name may be misspelled or a percentage could be off. Regardless of how innocent a correction is, or how thorough the reporting is, having that edit blemish can influence a news site’s credibility.
At beta launch, Newsrdige will have a feature that will allow users to analyze corrections in reporting. When an error is caught, it will be tracked in our database, counted on the journalists profile, and allowed to be measured by the audience. How will it be measured? Like other features on the site, we allow it to be categorized. In this case, it is categorized by severity.
We feel don’t feel that all corrections are created equal. Each time a correction is posted, we give the audience the power to determine if the corrected portion of the article is a minor error or a major error. This is then turned in to data that we can use for a journalist’s metrics. Not only do we know that an error was made, but we know the severity of it. With this information everyone can more clearly analyze the journalists reporting. Journalists with low error rates will be much easier to trust, while journalists with high error rates will be looking to solidify their reporting and bring that rating down.
At Newsridge we are always trying to find more ways to be credible and put the power of determining credibility into the audience’s hands. To sign up for the beta launch visit www.newsridge.com.
At beta launch Newsridge will include a feature that will allow the audience to measure a source’s relevancy to a story, and track that source throughout other stories to find out how he or she is being used elsewhere. Not only do we try to find ways to measure the news through sources, but we like to find ways to get the audience involved with that process
Sources may be cited for specific reasons. They may be an expert on the issue, involved in the story, or simply accessible and related to the story. They could also be anonymous for important reasons. These all have varying degrees of relevancy and importance to the story that create opportunities to measure sources. Using these opportunities to measure the news is exactly what we love to do.
A lot of time is spent collecting source information when reporting a story. Conducting interviews, sifting through reports, or attending speeches are examples of ways journalists can collect information. At Newsridge, we understand it is one of the key components of credibility and we spend a lot of time trying to understand how we can make it more relevant in reporting.
We feel that being credible with our sources is important to being credible overall. If you are interested in features like this, sign up to be a part of the beta launch to be notified when we go live.
One of the primary goals of Newsridge is to establish methods to measure news. We feel that through measuring a journalist’s metrics (such as their correction rate and source ratio) along with audience reactions to their work (like source relevancy and perceived bias), we can achieve credibility through hyper-transparency.
To put this data together we lean heavily on user interaction, and the data we collect gives us insight into what you think is objective (or not), what is incorrect, and ultimately what is important. It also gives you, our readers, something to participate in and be a part of. Since our audience is a part of our transparency, we feel we will be a more credible source of information. Simply put, if you don’t trust yourselves, who will you trust?
Here is a brief overview of some of the data points we would like to share with you:
This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as measuring Newsridge content goes. What ways do you think we should measure our articles and journalists? We’d love to hear your feedback. Please leave us a comment, tweet us a suggestion @newsridge, or drop us a line at social[at]newsridge[dot]com.
OMLN has been instrumental in helping Newsridge start. They were able to connect us to a great lawyer who was eager to help structure our LLC paperwork and gave us the confidence that our idea was legally sound. As we move forward in proving a new model of hyper transparent journalism, we’ll be looking to OMLN for additional assistance. We encourage any journalism venture seeking legal assistance to consider OMLN.
Some late night reading
Today in Miami, we’re gathering 17 journalists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to help us review the applications in the latest Knight News Challenge, on data.
By the end of the day, we hope to have 10-12 finalists that we’ll examine more deeply over the next few weeks. We expect to bring…
