JournalList.net is a non-profit membership organization that originated and currently maintains the trust.txt reference document. Trust.txt is a simple page of code with the goal that it would be used worldwide to distinguish legitimate news organizations from non-legitimate ones.
The idea of having a universal code that achieves mass adoption by digital platforms is not a new one. Back as early as 1994, before the internet reached widespread use, a company called Nexor initiated the robots.txt reference document to aid early search engines, like WebCrawler, Lycos and AltaVista, to correctly crawl and index page contents correctly within any Website. Today it is estimated that over 90% of global sites have this file placed within their route directly that anyone can see (https://www.nytimes.com/robots.txt, https://www.cnn.com/robots.txt ).
Just a few years ago, the ads.txt file was created by The Internet Advertising Bureau to allow online buyers to check the validity of the sellers from whom they buy for internet fraud detection.
Now comes Scott Yates, a lifelong journalist and entrepreneur. In the past three years, he has devoted most of his time and energy establishing JournalList.net with a mission to introduce and promote the adoption of a new reference document —Trust.txt. This is a file that news publishers will add to their websites to signal their affiliations with other trusted news organizations.
In this 102nd episode of “E&P Reports,” Publisher Mike Blinder speaks with JournalList.net founder and Executive Director Scott Yates about their mission to have the Trust.txt reference document adopted and utilized by journalistic sites worldwide as a means to establish their authority as a trusted, credible, legitimate news outlet.
161 One-on-one with Community Impact’s John Garrett
160 Mourning a newspaper's death through the words of the residents impacted
159 One man’s fight to return public notices to his Kansas publication.
158 A Texas newspaper acquired by local public broadcasting. A new trend?
157 Celebrating forty years! USA TODAY’s Nicole Carroll talks about four decades of reporting the news in accessible but innovative ways
156 “He runs one of the largest media operations you’ve never heard about.” Meet Kevin Dilley
155 One-on-one with Chris Stirewalt
154 1-on-1 with I Messenger Media's Cheryl Smith, 2022 NABJ Hall of Fame inductee
153 1-on-1 with Mike Barnicle, a frank discussion on covering a democracy in crisis
152 As Trust in T.V. news & newspapers continue to decline, NewsGuard offers “trust ratings” for over 7,500 websites.
151 LBGTQ+ media exec DJ Doran talks niche publishing & his run for mayor of Chicago
150 A one-on-one with Rick Rogers, now six months in as the Owner/ Publisher of Star Local Media
149 Data is fundamental to The Washington Post's “Unaccountable” series
148 Chicago Sun-Times' new executive editor covers a mass shooting in 1st few weeks
147 Meet the new managing editor of Axios Local, Delano Massey
146 Exploring The Tributary, Jacksonville's new nonprofit news outlet
145 “Abernathy Report" confirms the expansion of "news deserts" & misinformation.
144 Meet Juana Summers, NPR’s new cohost of 'All Things Considered'
143 Hearst Connecticut Media is on track to hit 100k paid subscribers
142 Checking in on The Boston Globe’s move into Rhode Island
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