Journalism Enterprise.com

Skewz.com

January 13th, 2008

Rating:
What do they say it is?

“Skewz is a place to find out how News articles are skewed. These articles are submitted by people like yourself and then voted on by the rest of the Skewz community. You can submit any news article you want, from the mainstream media to the most obscure blogs. Skewz is also a great place to exchange view points and debate on the issues of the day.”

What do I say it is?

Think a political Digg that goes both ways. You can submit any news story and the community can vote on how “liberal” or “conservative” the story is. Until now however, there is not a lot of discussion, most stories only have a few, if any, comments.

What’s great about it?

The site has a very clean and simple design, and “skewing” stories can be done easily by dragging a handle to the left or the right. You can not only “skew” stories, but also comments from other users. There are several widgets and share options for each stories. And - my favorite tool - there is a Media Comparison Kit which shows you, based on the submitted stories and ratings, how biased the sources are on different subjects.

What could be better?

Well, first of all there should be more active users writing comments and discussing, and for my (European) taste the site is too US-centric. But the fundamental problem seems to be that skewz.com is rather a cool feature than a a full-blown news site. Although I like the idea of “skewing” stories and being able to compare biases of different sources, it is something I’d rather have integrated with the news aggregation sites I’m already using. And finally, although this is not directly related to the service: I expect people working in online journalism to be more communicative. The last blog entry from the skewz.com team dates from November, and my e-mails asking for additional information haven’t been answered yet.

How is it going to make money?

I guess from advertising. There are no ads on the site at the moment, but their Terms of Service mention the possibility of placing ads. But I seriously doubt that advertisements will ever create enough revenue to run the site.

Should I pay it any attention?

Yes, you should, because the basic idea as well as the execution are great. And if you’re the webmaster of an established news site looking for cool new features, maybe you should even write the guys from skewz an e-mail (and hope that they’ll write back this time).

by Nico Luchsinger

 Share

Sphere: Related Content

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized