It has been almost a year (364 days) since we first wrote about NewsTrust.Net.

What drew me to it originally was the fact that there was a rubiric to the voting process. I wrote:

“Social news sites like Reddit, Digg and Netscape tend to judge submitted news articles by popularity. Often the snarkiest headline wins.

As sites develop niche communities, stories that are promoted often cater more to the wants and whims of the group….

If the first generation of social news sites ranked stories in order of popularity, then the next wave would do well to find a new rubric of voting to separate themselves from the crowd.

Enter NewsTrust, a social news site that rates stories based on “quality journalism.” The beta site is up and running for public testing and is worth checking out.”

We followed this with several interviews with the founder Fabrice Florin. (These were done by social media expert Muhammad Saleem).

Yesterday two blogs, including TechCrunch analyzed recent data to show that Propeller (which in full disclosure I work for) was rising to become the number two social news site on the web over Reddit. Social news sites are growing and changing. Propeller, which has a USA Today, “everybody can enjoy it” sort of approach, is gaining ground on Reddit, which is typically for the niche geek crowd.

I met with Fabrice Florin last week and today I’m happy to write that they received a generous donation from the MacArthur foundation.