Newsy: Multi-Sourcing Its Way Out of Media Bias?

Newsy.com is a startup headquartered across the street from the Missouri Journalism School that is betting that a curatorial approach to video-based media stories is the way to ensure unbiased coverage.

This post from ReadWriteWeb gives an overview on the company’s founder, business model, and approach– specifically it’s off-to-the-races iPad app. A quick browse through Newsy’s site yields a range of short video clips that explore U.S. and global news stories like congressional efforts to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and fraying relations between North and South Korea. And then there are the slightly more frivolous stories ranging from partisan attacks to frog invasions.

Newsy’s structure of piecing together clips from a range of news sources and then posing a question dodges any useful journalistic attempt at analysis, but if used as a discussion launcher or a starting point for a more in-depth exploration of a given topic, these clips should be a useful tool in the classroom.