Credible Reporting eh?
I use Digg (on occasion), StumbleUpon and sometimes Google News. The New York Times and Techmeme satisfy the rest of my needs.
I didn’t really think I could be interested in yet another crowd-powered news aggregating website… Mixx, Reddit, Regator, Social Median, Soshable, Propeller, Sphinn even… whether they’re the next Digg I have no idea… but it sure isn’t worth the time signing up in my opinion.
I was very interested in the announcement yesterday however, that a new service called ‘NewsCred’ was launching with the aim of gathering and aggregating articles based on their credibility over blind crowd popularity.
It’s a fantastic objective, one which anyone who has used Digg over the last few years would probably love to see… it’s all too common where completely bogus stories are voted for so that they appear right on the front page (and sometimes consequently removed by the "invisible hand’ of non-existent editors').
Crowd’s usually vote based on personal preference and opinion as well… a story about Microsoft may be brilliant, well-researched and accurate… but is buried by Apple fans purely because they dislike Microsoft.
Whether or not NewsCred can get around this hurdle will be interesting to see, although it isn’t the first to attempt this strategy; NewsTrust has been around for a few years (although I had never heard of it before) and has had slow but steady growth.
The most useful and interesting thing about NewsCred is the analytics option… you can examine the credibility of a publication based on how it fared on NewsCred. Just one indicator sure… but with time it should really be a good measure of the reporting quality of various news sources.
You can also customize the NewsCred front page based on your interests and the publications you prefer. In many ways, even if the credibility factor doesn’t worry you, it’s still a good source of daily news much like Google News.
This is related (loosely) to ResearchBlogging.org which allows bloggers who write about peer-reviewed research to add the full citation to the original research and label their posts as such.
heej Joshua, I really like the design of your new site. Especially how the category buttons is done, is an excellent idea! I will check it out.
While Digg may have started out as a great way to share important stories, it soon evolved more into a way to share interesting tidbits. Like you say, there are enough people on Digg to bury a great story and say, digg one about goldfish. It’s why I only look to digg when I’m bored and need a laugh.
Mixx on the other hand (the only one I actually use out of your list) is a little more open. The fact that it seems to have a relatively small userbase means that people still see the things that don’t get voted up. It’s still in those “pre-digg” stages, where it makes sense to visit it.
Thanks for the link to News Cred. I’ve never heard of this one, normally I stick with Techmeme and a few other blogs as well for my intake of daily news.
I’m leaving Digg, there’s too many Apple fanboys there that keep digging every single story about iPhone. Digg comments tend to get very stupid too (but still smarter than YouTube’s :p).
If you want to read good contents and clever comments, Reddit. If you want to procrastinate, read this: http://www.reddit.com/r/procrastination