About Us

NewsTrust helps people find and share good journalism online, so they can make more informed decisions as citizens.

Our nonprofit news service provides a wide range of tools that empower citizens to access quality news and information -- and learn to separate fact from fiction about important public issues. We promote good journalism, news literacy and civic engagement -- and we welcome donations to support our service.

Programs

NewsTrust.net, our social news network, features a daily feed of quality news and opinions from mainstream and independent sources, based on ratings from our reviewers. Our web review tools enable people to rate stories for accuracy, fairness, sourcing, context and other core journalistic principles — and become more discriminating news consumers in the process. We also rate our reviewers based on performance, to increase the reliability of our reviews and help them grow their own news literacy. Besides our social news site, we offer a range of practical online tools, such as Truthsquad, a community fact-checking service -- and MyNews, a personal filter that lets you find news that matters to you, by following favorite topics, trusted sources, as well as recommendations from your friends on Facebook and Twitter. We also host regular News Hunts to get citizens better informed about important public issues -- and help teach news literacy through a variety of online guides, teacher guides and student guides.

Community

Our community is growing rapidly and includes news consumers, experienced journalists, educators and students, who share a passion for quality news and information. In the last twelve months, we served over 1.4 million unique visitors through our website and widgets, with nearly 20,000 registered members to date. Our traffic keeps growing steadily, and we expect this trend to continue as we sign up more partners.

NewsTrust's Executive Director is Fabrice Florin, a former journalist and a digital media pioneer at Apple and Macromedia. Our team includes experienced journalists, technologists and community organizers. Our advisors include Dan Gillmor, Craig Newmark, Howard Rheingold and other innovators from organizations like FactCheck.org, Google, the Poynter Institute and Stanford University.

Partners

Our partners include leading media organizations like USA Today, PBS, Huffington Post, PolitiFact, Link TV and the Washington Post — as well as journalism teachers and students in schools like Stanford University, Northeastern, Stony Brook, University of Nevada, San Francisco State University and the University of Santa Clara, to name but a few.

Our funders include the MacArthur Foundation the Omidyar Network, Open Society Foundations, Ashoka, the Sunlight Foundation, the Mitch Kapor Foundation, the Ayrshire Foundation and the Tides Foundation, as well as Craig Newmark, Doug Carlston, Hap Perry, Terry Gamble and many other private donors.

History

Founded in 2005 and based in Mill Valley, California, NewsTrust is a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) public benefit corporation. We started NewsTrust to address growing problems of information overload, misinformation and mistrust on the Internet, caused by the rise of opinion news and amateur journalism, as well as media consolidation and newsroom cutbacks. We launched our first public beta website for NewsTrust in November 2006 and keep expanding our service to serve a broader community.

Please consider a donation to support our work. We are largely funded through grants and donations from people like you. To sustain our service, we also provide consulting, curation, licensing and other custom services for institutional partners.

More Info

• Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and on the NewsTrust blog.
• For the best experience, join our community and sign up for our free newsletters.
• Once you've signed up, review a story. Check our quick review guide — or our FAQ.
• For more info about NewsTrust, check our blog — or read our full 2009 Report.
• For a visual presentation, check our NewsTrust Slides (or download our PowerPoint).
• If you like our free public service, make a donation to support our work.
• To add NewsTrust to your site, help yourself to our free widgets, buttons and tools.
• If you're a news provider, visit our partners page for info on partnerships.
• If you're an educator, check our teacher guides for classroom use.
• If you're a journalist, check our online press kit to learn more about us.
• if you like our free public service, make a donation to support our work.

• For more info, .