Made by Journalists and Product Makers

Vett is a Swedish word that means “savvy.” Our News Tech company aims to make citizens more savvy about what they read and to create financial rewards for publishers that respect their readers. To do that, we create software as a service tools that bolster the infrastructure for digital trust while improving the bottom line for publishers. 

The Problem

The problem we are solving is that public trust in news media – similar to trust in other institutions - is at a historic low. Pew Research found 68 percent of Americans say they lack confidence in news organizations’ willingness to admit when they made a mistake. Fewer than 17 percent of digital news and information publishers had a public corrections policy according to a Trust Metrics study of 7,000 publishers. Those that do find managing corrections and reader feedback to be cumbersome and costly.

Our founders include reporters and editors from ABCNews.com, The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News and other outlets. They knew first-hand that corrections processes were clunky and didn’t translate from print age to digital age. Most news publishers – until now – didn’t have a central place to receive, track and respond to this feedback. The experience did not feel good for the readers or the journalists. It was a missed opportunity to improve the accuracy of the news report and to thank, reward and engage the reader – the paying customer – for helping in that process. 

The Solution: CX

So we built a better way for publisher to improve credibility with the public. Our Cx tool is a subscription SAAS product that enables newsrooms to collect the data in a format they need and to involve their readers in that process. We take the high standards of the print journalism era and enable quality reader feedback to function even better in the digital era. Our Cx system boosts revenue, engages audience, streamlines workflow and protects your employees.

Our team installs a small block of code – the length of a tweet – into a publisher’s CMS platform. The code surfaces a button at the bottom of every article and invites reader feedback and correction requests. When you fill out a request, the data is structured in a way newsrooms need it. The requests then move to the Cx dashboard, where workflow automation features enable an editor to more easily manage reader feedback at scale. A strength of our product is its compatibility. We have installed the Cx tool across a range of software and CMS providers. Its lightweight functionality doesn’t harm page load times.

Some History

Our co-founder, Paul Glader, wrote a post on Forbes.com in 2017 about how to determine good news outlets. That post went viral with more than 3 million page views. People began asking Glader to speak at ethical tech events and disinformation forums. Others asked him to develop solutions to improve media ecology. That led him and others to found  Vett Inc. as a Delaware C-Corp. with staff in New York and New Jersey. They’ve built two different products including the most recent, Cx. 

Our Traction  

We built our tool with a $75,000 grant from Knight Foundation in 2020 and tested it with a dozen newsroom partners. Since then, we have gained traction with more than 25 newsrooms now using our VettNews Cx system. Our button is on the bottom of 2 million articles online, more than double the number a year ago. Our clients have received more than 1,500 pieces of reader feedback and fixed hundreds of errors to articles as a result of the Cx system.