The Curious Autodidact

A few websites that are worth checking out often are PolitiFact with it’s famous Truth-o-meter. Here you will find the facts behind the many political spins that circulate around our mainstream media. If you are wanting to keep an eye on the health care reforms proposed for our country with in excess of 47 million people without health coverage this is a good place to start.

Check out ProPublica, “an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.” (from their website) They hope to put into place more investigative journalism that has lost it’s place is our fast paced 24 hour news cycle. Staff includes: Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Engelberg, a former managing editor of The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon, and former investigative editor of The New York Times, is ProPublica’s managing editor. For a sampling check out their coverage of the bailout.

NewsTrust is also a good site to keep in your bookmarks. Here readers rate the quality of the stories featured and you can find some stories you may not see in the mainstream media. From their site “NewsTrust reviewers evaluate each story against core principles of journalism, such as fairness, accuracy, context and sourcing — using our unique review tools.” Here’s a sampling of that they offer, an article on sleep paralysis. NewsTrust based in California is a nonprofit public benefit corporation with an educational purpose. They started NewsTrust to “address growing problems of information overload, misinformation and mistrust on the Internet, caused by the rise of opinion news and amateur journalism, as well as media consolidation and newsroom cutbacks” (from their website).

For international news that is more in depth check out Global Post where you will find this moving story about children born behind bars. They have quite a stable of on-the-ground journalists of superior quality. They have more than 65 correspondents in nearly 50 countries giving it a hand up in international coverage.