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.

A frequent theme at NewAssignment.Net has been the proliferation of socially driven news sites into offbeat territories. Sites like Digg, Netscape and Newsvine have changed the way people find news stories – but now the technology is being harnessed to do much more.

The latest? Do The Right Thing, which quietly went public last week. Although at first glance it appears to be another Digg-clone, a closer look reveals a different purpose all together.

DoTheRightThing.com is a community driven site that collects information about the social impact of a company’s behavior. For example, if you want to find out if Wal-Mart has “done the right thing” – you would have to search for information that is scattered all across the Web. At best one can turn to an official scorekeeper, like the Dow Jones’ sustainability index. But these top-down self-appointed judges of a company’s behavior have come under scrutiny lately. A recent Harvard Business Review article by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer had this to say:

While rigorous and reliable ratings might constructively influence corporate behavior, the existing cacophony of self-appointed scorekeepers does little more than add to the confusion…. The result is a jumble of largely meaningless rankings, allowing almost any company to boast that it meets some measure of social responsibility - and most do.

Last week NewAssignment.Net interviewed Fabrice Florin of Newstrust about his experiment in rating the news online. In this post our correspondent, Muhammad Saleem, shares how this relates to blogging.

Blogs are not governed by the same principles that govern traditional journalism. In fact, they are not governed at all. This is because most bloggers don’t consider themselves to be journalists reporting the news, rather they are providing an outlet for conversation and promoting dialogue.

This means bloggers are able to write things that would be impermissible in traditional media outlets, and this information can be without any factual basis and rife with bias, which raises an important question. How can you know if a particular site is trustworthy?

To Fabrice Florin of NewsTrust, the difference between a journalist and a blogger is irrelevant.

“After a certain point, it is not even about being a good journalist. It is about being a good citizen. I think the basic rules of public discourse imply that fairness, evidence, and such principles are really what make a good citizen, not just a good journalist.

Earlier this month a new type of socially driven news site launched. NewsTrust (covered here by NewAssignment.Net), lets users judge a story on journalistic merit — not mere popularity. The endeavor is lead by former journalist Fabrice Florin.

NewAssignment.Net caught up with Florin to learn more about this leap in social news, where the ethics and standards of journalism as a profession can be analyzed and scrutinized by the wisdom of the crowd.

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Q: What kind of funding do you have, and how do you plan on monetizing your project? I see you accept donations, is that the only method (a-la Wikipedia)?

Florin: Our biggest restriction right now is funding. I have personally funded this out of my pocket, with a small grant, and one donor. We are severely underfunded and so are going very slowly.

We see three sources of revenue for NewsTrust over time.

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. Recently this lead to some fake stories reaching the front page of Digg.

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.