Readers shouldn’t have to become detectives

The problem today isn’t a shortage of information. It’s a shortage of context about the information we’re consuming.”

David Rothstein, CEO, Newsmatics

When David Rothstein and Gina Fratto started Newsmatics more than three decades ago, traditional newspapers were just finding their way onto the web. It was a monumental shift, but unlike today, the publications behind the stories were often familiar.

David Rothstein, CEO of Newsmatics

“In those early days, you could generally trace a story back to a real publisher, with real people working in a real office,” says Rothstein, CEO of Newsmatics. “That’s no longer something we can take for granted.”

Since then, publishing has spread far beyond traditional newsrooms. Readers can encounter polished websites with little indication of who runs them or whose interests they serve. When accountable journalism becomes difficult to distinguish from content merely dressed to look like it, the uncertainty can erode trust in the media more broadly.

That concern is reshaping the company Rothstein helped build. After decades developing technology to distribute and organize news, he is steering Newsmatics toward what he calls “trust infrastructure.” Through tools such as Perspectify, the company is taking on a different challenge. Helping news reach readers is no longer enough. Readers also need to know where the news comes from.

In this Q&A with E&P, Rothstein discusses what that direction means for publishers, journalists and readers.

E&P: David, what led you to put trust infrastructure at the center of Newsmatics’ direction?

David Rothstein: The problem today isn’t a shortage of information. It’s a shortage of context about the information we’re consuming.

People encounter news through search engines, social media, aggregators and, increasingly, AI. Often they know very little about who actually produced the information, who owns the publication, what its perspective may be, or even whether they’re looking at journalism, a press release, government information or something else entirely.

I don’t think the answer is to appoint another organization to tell people what they should or shouldn’t believe. I think we should give them better information with which to make that judgment themselves. That’s what we mean by trust infrastructure. We’re increasingly applying the systems we’ve built to make the origins and context of information more visible and verifiable.

E&P: What prompted you to create Perspectify?

Rothstein: I recently read Not Exactly Lying by Andie Tucher, a fascinating history of fake news and journalism. One of my takeaways was that misinformation is nothing new. It’s been around since the earliest days of print. What’s changed is how difficult it can be to establish who’s actually behind what we’re reading.

That’s really what inspired Perspectify. I believe information deserves a clear point of origin. Who published it? Who owns the publication? Who’s accountable for it? Readers shouldn’t have to become detectives to answer those questions.

E&P: Why should publishers care about making that information easier to find?

Rothstein: Imagine spending years building a respected news organization, investing in journalists, verifying facts, and earning your readers’ trust. Then you find yourself competing against content from news outlets that may have no real journalists, no editorial standards, and little accountability. To the average reader, all news outlets can look remarkably similar. That’s a real problem, particularly for independent publishers competing against misinformation and websites masquerading as legitimate news organizations.

I believe responsible publishers should welcome transparency. They have everything to gain from readers understanding who’s behind the news. That’s what Perspectify is working toward: helping people distinguish accountable news organizations from those whose ownership, origins, and editorial practices are difficult to establish.

E&P: How could Perspectify help an editor on deadline?

Rothstein: Say you’re an editor reviewing a story about a cryptocurrency that’s suddenly attracting a lot of attention. Your reporter cites an enthusiastic article from a financial news website you’ve never heard of. Wouldn’t you want to know who owns that publication? Whether it has connections to the cryptocurrency industry? Whether it has a financial interest in promoting the story? That’s where Perspectify can help. By making information about news outlets more accessible, we help editors better understand the sources they’re relying on.

Having a financial interest doesn’t necessarily make the reporting inaccurate. But it’s something an editor should know. We’re not replacing editorial judgment. We’re helping people make better-informed decisions, particularly when they’re working against a deadline.

The Perspectify Chrome extension displays information about a publication as you read an article.

E&P: What can your tools establish, and what still requires a journalist’s judgment?

Rothstein: We can establish a great deal about the origins and context of information: where something originated, who published it, who owns a publication and, increasingly, relationships among sources and coverage. What we cannot do, and shouldn’t pretend to do, is provide a universal machine-generated verdict saying, “This is true, therefore you should believe it.”

Journalism doesn’t work that way, and neither does critical thinking. If Perspectify identifies a publication’s political orientation, for example, that’s additional context. It doesn’t mean every article from that publication is biased, inaccurate or unfair. Likewise, knowing who owns a publication doesn’t tell you whether a particular story is correct. Our job is to make relevant evidence easier to see. Judgment ultimately belongs to journalists and readers.

E&P: Speaking of judgment, how do you reach your assessments?

Rothstein: If we’re asking the news industry to become more transparent, we have to be willing to apply that principle to ourselves. Where we make assessments, our goal is to make the underlying methodology and supporting evidence available for examination rather than simply asking people to accept a Newsmatics label because we put our name on it.

E&P: Where does AI fit into that process?

Rothstein: AI is extremely useful in doing this at scale, but we don’t believe that “the AI said so” is an acceptable methodology. AI can identify patterns, organize enormous amounts of information and surface evidence. Human expertise remains important in defining methodologies, evaluating difficult cases and reviewing results. And there will be uncertainty. A credible system should acknowledge uncertainty rather than manufacture precision where it doesn’t exist.

E&P: What would meaningful progress look like?

Rothstein: I’d like to see transparency become part of the basic infrastructure of the internet. When people read something online, understanding where it came from, who published it, who owns the publication and other relevant context should be readily available, not something only a media researcher knows how to uncover. For journalists, that means spending less time investigating the origins of sources and more time doing journalism. For publishers, it provides an opportunity to demonstrate credibility. And for readers, it means having better tools for making their own judgments.

Newsmaatics products

E&P: Do the same transparency standards apply to your publications and commercial relationships?

Rothstein: The standard has to be consistent regardless of whether we’re evaluating someone else, one of our own publications, a customer or an organization with which we have a commercial relationship. That’s essential to credibility. We also have to be open to being challenged. These systems deal with organizations that change over time, incomplete information and assessments on which reasonable people may disagree.

E&P: And if a publisher says you’ve mislabeled their publication?

Rothstein: If someone believes we’ve gotten something wrong, there should be a way to challenge it, provide evidence and have the information reviewed and, when warranted, corrected. I don’t think trust comes from claiming that you never make mistakes. It comes from showing your work and being willing to correct mistakes when they occur.