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.
101 Radically Rural: Focusing on small-town America
100 What You Need to Know About Launching a News Website
99 Meet the New CEO at The Center for Public Integrity
98 They're Hiring 250+ Journalists for 50+ New News Outlets
97 New Book Follows 50+ Years of Community Journalism
96 The Time is Now to Support the Local Journalism Sustainability Act
95 The GNI Ad Transformation Lab: Helping Black and Latino News Publishers Grow Digital Revenue.
94 Steve Mattingly Speaks on the Future of Print
93 Hearst CT Media: +1000% Growth in Digital Subscribers & Now Going Statewide
92 Selling on the Backside of COVID
91 Reporting in Galveston as Juneteenth Achieves Global Prominence
90 ‘Unpublishing’ Our News Content
89 Serving Lattes & Brews Funds The Sentinel Newsroom!
88 E&P checks in with Ken Doctor, CEO and founder of Lookout Local, a startup that offers a new local news model.
87 Covering George Floyd’s Death Transforms a Newsroom
86 Swap Your Ads for Shares in Start-Ups
85 At 89, Raymond Joseph is Still Publishing and Fighting for the Haitian People
84 Johnson Brings Back a City's Newspaper
83 Digital Disruptor Colorado Sun Takes Over Denver Weeklies
82 New Study Details Covid-19's Impact on Print Circulation & Digital Subscribers
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Jim & Bill (It‘s Another Day)
HauntingLive
Dr. Paul’s Worldviews
The Ben Shapiro Show
Morning Wire