(Credit: News Trust, screenshot, highlight added)

In a January post, NewsTrust’s Fabrice Florin announced NewsTrust was closing.

The site identified itself as a “nonprofit news service” that “provides a wide range of tools that empower citizens to access quality news and information — and learn to separate fact from fiction about important public issues.”  It was created in 2005.

Florin explained he is leaving NewsTrust “after six years” for a job at Wikimedia.  He noted that he has “been funding [NewsTrust] personally since September 2011, when our funding ran out.”

Florin wrote:

“Our goal is to continue to offer NewsTrust as an educational service, but no longer as a consumer destination, so the news listings on our home page and topic pages will only be available through the end of February 2012. We are now planning to donate our assets to a trusted nonprofit organization which will provide that educational service, and we expect to make an announcement next month.”

We wrote in November 2010 about NewsTrust’s project TruthSquad, which Florin described as “a community fact-checking service that helps people verify the news online, with professional guidance.” We have written to Florin asking for more information about the closure and will update with any response.