I was just reading this (currently front page) article on Times of India, and came to realize a feeling of general appallment. When I was living in India (upto 3 years ago), I always regarded the print version of this paper as world-class(deceptively aided by a self-advertisement that the BBC rated them among the top 6 in the world). But, once you get on the internet and visit online presence of other publications, you see the shortcomings in the quality of journalism of a particular publication, since you can immediately compare and contrast. Although everyone’s tastes are different, I’m hoping that someone or some group out there (on or offline) has an evaluations and ratings system for various written media outlets on the basis of accuracy of reporting, slant (as perceived by evaluaters), comprehensiveness of a topic’s coverage, comparision to other outlet’s coverage and in general, overall standards of journalism. Is there any such undertaking?
Anyone?
Will I have to start one on my own? 
Now that I’ve a new thread title, another bump
Well, let’s get some nominees and maybe some people can comment on newspapers they’d read:
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Los Angeles Times
The Chicago Tribune
The London Times
Le Monde
The Globe and Mail
The Jerusalem Post
The Sydney Herald
Any other nominees?
Read all about it:
This site links to newspapers all over the world:
Somehow, I’m getting the feeling that the point has been missed.
Is there any project that evaluates and/or compares & contrasts written news outlets from around the world?
In terms of
[ul]
[li]Thoroughness of coverage [/li][li]Bias[/li][li]Accuracy[/li][/ul]
I’ll take the answer as No then.
But, I’m really curious as to why no one / no group has sought to setup such a scheme. If professionally done, I can see a lot of interest in it.
Recently I did come across a site that lists periodical news publications by geographic area and allows members to rate them according to such criteria. Unfortunately I don’t remember the site.
And these guys have had a go.
If anyone has done it, the Columbia University Journalism Review is going to know about it. Try searching here.
You could also probably check with the Annenberg School at USC.
The CJR list seems to be the closest to what I’m looking for.
The problem is that it’s based on peer evaluations from 104 editors, whose judgement isn’t revealed. And it toes the populist sentiment (which isn’t really a strong reason to discard it, though)
Looks like the model that I was looking for, probably doesn’t exist. Oh, well…
I nominate the Christian Science Monitor… not really what it sounds like, more of a U.S.-centric world news review.
No offense to anyone and probably the fault of my OP’s prose, but I’m not looking for SDers to rank newspapers or list them. I’m looking for organizations,websites,committees…etc that have done or do so, in a relatively transparent and comprehensive manner. It seems, so far, there are none.
Gyan, you took the words out of my mouth!! In my line of work, I have to read all the English newspapers of India, and I am appalled at the language of the newspaper. The BBC rating was mostly based on te amount of readership that the newspaper commands, and has nothing to do with the kind of news reported. In term of news coverage, the Indian Express is quite far ahead, and so are Asian Age and The Hindu.
I feel that there are no tests to measure the quality of a newspaper, as quality is hard to define. There may be a lot a biases involved in judging the quality.
But if you must, i just found out a site that has attempted to judge the newspaper (not in the entire world, but regionally). You may or may not agree with them:
http://www.virtourist.com/newspapers/
The system I had in mind was a collaborative, critical analysis effort. Using a wiki-like system, you could focus on the coverage of a single prominent topic (you would have several topics spanning various sections, covered in parallel). Contributors would introduce and then comment and rate a newspaper’s coverage of that topic in terms of factual detail, prose, slant…etc The points would be tallied up. The important thing is that the process is transparent and the views/analysis of all raters is available to see. You then build a ‘karma’ system for the raters and the newspapers.
The London Times has lost most of its authority since it was taken over by a media mogul.
The Guardian is owned by a trust. Its most famous editor said “Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”
The Sydney Morning Herald is a rag. A once-great newspaper, but no more. It’s been crap for a decade or more.