Ratings for News Sources
Shimon often talks about rating blog posts to facilitate blog discovery. I never really understood his reasoning, but the lightbulb went on the last time Google News sent me to a questionable news source in my search results. As part of my investigations into these questionable sources and whether they’re actually a site for a legitimate news organization, their authenticity, their reliability, and their viewpoint, I realized that having a ranking system for them could be incredibly useful. Just because a Web site tells me in its about section that it is the best news source about potatoes, doesn’t mean that it actually is. The claim by the Web site means nothing to me. A rating system would help me figure out what other people think about the source. It could be a completely legitimate news source, but because I know nothing about potatoes and don’t follow the field, I haven’t heard of or visited the site before. A ratings system could indicate a few people think it’s a reliable source for potato news or that the largest grower of Idaho potatoes thinks the site is full of … fertilizer.
It’s similar to knowing many of my colleagues read The New York Times and think it’s a good newspaper. But when I have to make these quick judgments on my own, to whom or to what do I turn to get that kind of reputation information?
Oh, sure, this could open up all sorts of issues about who’s doing the ranking. Maybe someone wants to blackball the publication. What do you do in the case of conservative publications that might get negative comments from liberals and vice versa? But it’s an idea all the same.
