Consumers Union Project Picks Advisers

By: The Consumers Union of Yonkers, N.Y., has named the board of advisers for Consumer WebWatch, a project that aims to monitor and improve the credibility of information on the Web, including news.

Beau Brendler, director of the project, said the board's "diverse perspectives on disclosure and transparency ... will make sure our project is not only useful, but that it reaches its goals" -- which include defining best practices for improving consumer trust in Web sites.

Among the board members are Robert Aglow, executive producer for news coverage at MSNBC.com; Jack Balkin, founder and director of the Information Society Project and Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Yale Law School; Janice Castro, assistant professor, new media, Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism; Rich Jaroslovsky of The Wall Street Journal and founder of the Online News Association; Eric Newton, director of journalism initiatives, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; Jakob Nielsen, online user advocate; Carol Nunnelley, project director, APME's National Credibility Roundtable; Larry Pryor, executive editor, Online Journalism Review; Tom Rosenstiel, director, Project for Excellence in Journalism; Sreenath Sreenivasan, associate professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; and Stuart Wilk, vice president and managing editor of The Dallas Morning News. Consumer WebWatch will launch a Web site this spring, which will be home to the project's research and analysis on issues of credibility.