Bad journalism. Too much opinion. For example, the author claims: Won’t work. They’ll never find all the bad stuff. but provides no justification. Not even the staple quote from an expert. As we speak many people are working on exactly this problem, so it is a bit premature to claim that it wont work. Also, his point about finding the good stuff contradicts his "Wont work" argument. The best stuff comes from credible sources. Again, typically. So, there is so much stuff that ... More »

Controversial opinion piece about credibility in journalism, and new initiatives that aim to track that credibility online, through services like NewsCred and NewsTrust. (Disclosure: I am NewsTrust's Executive Director) The author makes the case that the quantitative methods used by both sites may not be as effective as purely qualitative, conversational methods. One can understand the author's hesitation with 'binary' approaches, but he doesn't offer other much in terms of ... More »

Jarvis' post, like the TechCrunch post it begins by citing, is more of an idle speculation of what people tend to be like online than a serious review of the services he discusses. The thesis of both posts boils down to "where there are rating systems, there are trolls," which is true enough. But does no one use ratings for genuine praise, or to celebrate great journalism? Of course people do. He then makes a leap to suggest that Daylife, specifically by not asking readers to ... More »

Jarvis makes some good points about the hazards of attempting to rate credibility. For the life of me, though, I can't see how his proposal - promoting good stuff rather than penalizing bad stuff - would be any more useful or free of bias.