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.

The reason NewAssignment is interested in this space: It is a direct way in which the public can inform and steer the news. Particularly with NewsTrust which isn’t about “popular” stories, but “quality” news stories. NewsTrust will never be as popular as Digg, of course, but it does serve an important function: Media literacy.

When you engage the public to “digg” acts of journalism, it appears they steer towards finding amusement in the news. When you engage the public in grading journalism, they are forced to think critically and this will serve the greater purpose of journalism.

The grandfather of all this is of course Del.icio.us. But as Social news sites have continued to mature, so has the attitude towards it. In my mind Digg is a teenage version of what social news sites will become. Granted, Digg has become the “cool kid on the block,” but we all know what happens to those teenagers when they grow up. I’m not predicting anything for Digg - just recognizing that the space is growing and the demand to use social news sites for serious inquiries or pursuits of the news will only grow, especially as the audience matures.