<p>In the 2009 national comparison of popular news syndicates, The New York Times, the longtime grandaddy and de facto standard of journalistic expertise, was ranked below one of the newest and least popularized internet news providers. The Fontaine Index is a ranking of over 100 popular print, broadcast and internet based news providers. Qualities such as, investigative integrity, brand name recognition, "badass design staff", and "yellowest journalist" are analysed by a team of experts and then compiled into a ranked index by a sophisticated arbitrary ranking algorithm.</p>
<p>According to Rupert Mudoch, "the Fontaine Index is the industry's standard arbitrary comparison.