Author: Scott Yates
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trust.txt is now visible in the fight against disinformation
The trust.txt system has been working away in the background of the internet for several years now. As of today, it is also now operating in a way that can be viewed by real people. The heart of the trust.txt idea is that trust is shared among groups. If, for example, the Texas Press Association…
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Trust.txt emerging from the background?
In the four years since the board of JournalList first approved the specification document that is the heart of the trust.txt system, there has been an understanding that the whole system operates only behind the scenes. It is not private or secret, it is actually totally transparent and makes clear relationships that may not have…
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Trust.txt Goes Global with GFMD and Impress
We at JournalList are thrilled to announce two groundbreaking new members of our trust.txt initiative: the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), the groundbreaking umbrella organization representing the media development community, and Impress, the esteemed English organization with standards for news outlets. While we have always technically been global, our membership had been largely based…
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JournalList Board Approves New Version of Spec
The board of directors of JournalList unanimously approved publishing the first new version of our specification document in more than two years. As we wrote about before, the main motivation for the change was to include a new element of the document to deal with the robots that work on behalf of Large Language Models…
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New tool to deal with AI
In a box somewhere, I have a book from early in my professional career: Computer Assisted Reporting. That’s how old I am. The idea of using a computer to help a reporter gather the news was new enough that it warranted a book. If a cub reporter today saw that book she might quip, “What’s…
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How to use the trust.txt WordPress plugin
This post will show you how to use the trust.txt plugin in WordPress. (If for whatever reason you can not use the plugin and want to post your trust.txt file directly into your root directory, the instructions for that are here.) Before you get started, you will need two things: Your WordPress login Your trust.txt…
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2023 Year-end update
The last year was another difficult year in the world of journalism. We saw that first-hand because a number of our members are associations of publishers, and they had to make adjustments to their trust.txt files. Still, it was a positive year for JournalList as we saw significant growth in the number of associations and…
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2023 Ecosystem Update
Here is a glimpse of the ecosystem of trust.txt files currently published. In short, this is how a robot from a search engine or an ad network sees the sites that have trust.txt files. Image map created by yEd www.association.com www.publisher.com www.vendor.com missing_trust.txt_file www.101spanking.com www.kinkytom.com www.155-dot-apnews-int.appspot.com www.ap.org www.66hoursingrants.com www.etypeservices.com www.aaa-spanking.com www.aan.org chico.newsreview.com www.alibi.com www.austinchronicle.com www.bendsource.com…
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JournalList.net joins with RJI to spotlight trusted news sites, names new executive director
The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism has reached an agreement to collaborate with the nonprofit JournalList Inc. to expand its automated system designed to elevate and monetize trusted news outlets and their official social media feeds. As part of this new collaboration, the JounalList board and RJI appointed Mark…