E-Media Tidbits

Newstrust, the online community that rates the quality of mainstream an independent news stories, just debuted several new features with its site redesign. I'll confess that until now I hadn't explored this site much because it seemed too cluttered and involved too much of a learning curve. But with the redesign, I think it's much more inviting and accessible.

Here are a few new features I find especially intriguing...

Israeli man-of-all-media Yair Lapid has an interesting lament in his latest column. In today's column, The News You Want, he tells the tale of the "good news" segment he insisted on putting in his new TV show.

It was a nice idea -- especially in Israel, where the country's mainstream media tend toward the tabloid. Lapid points out he created the special items in exact response to people who complained to him that the media only report "bad" news. However, Lapid recently decided to kill his good news feature. Why?...

News organizations have substantial strengths and resources that they can put to creative use -- that is, if they're committing to thinking flexibly about their future, and to moving quickly in new directions.

This morning, by chance, I had the privilege of sitting in on a meeting of independent newspaper editors and publishers. (I'm not kidding about the "by chance" part -- Gazette Communications CEO Chuck Peters, one of the meeting's organizers, literally spotted me on the street in Boulder, Colo. last night and asked me to drop by.)

Something that struck me about this meeting is how deeply dissatisfied many newspaper publishers have become with Associated Press -- which keeps upping its rates for member papers, while delivering increasingly questionable value to state and local papers.

This got me thinking...

Tonight I'll be watching the vice presidential debate with friends at a local bar -- and I'll have my iPhone out, because I'll be keeping an eye on Washingtonpost.com's Fact Checker blog. During the first presidential debate, Michal Abramowitz, Michael Dobbs, and Glenn Kessler did a pretty good job of fact-checking several of the candidates' claims soon after they were uttered on live TV.

I'll also be watching Politifact, a resource from the St. Pete Times. Editor Bill Adair told me that tonight they'll have a team of five journalists watching the VP debate and choosing some facts to check immediately. They will be publishing full truth-o-meter reports on these statements as soon as possible. "We hope to get at least three or four of these up while the debate is happening," said Adair.

I was just looking around to see who else might be offering live fact checking during tonight's debate. I was surprised that I couldn't find much else...

This year, WIREDNextFest has come to Chicago -- it started Sept. 27 and runs through Oct. 12. This event is bills itself as a "premier showcase of the global innovations transforming our world." The exhibits are solidly interesting, but not extraordinary. The NextFest tent is pitched in Millennium Park and admission is free. A visit is interesting, though not as mind-blowing as previous shows.

Any tech show veteran will tell you there is a pattern to these events: they track the larger economy. A strong economy means lots of new gadgets -- but when the economy tanks, tech shows retrench a bit. This year, NextFest is definitely in sync with the jittery economy...

Jeff Jarvis says journalists need to think beyond articles to make topics the "atomic unit" of today's news. Also: Google News debuts a service comparing candidates' statements, there's a new online ethics wiki for news media, and more...