Analyzing a Nerd Wallet article for credibility
This week I am analyzing the article 8 African American Financial Gurus to Follow in 2020 for credibility.
The article was published by Nerd Wallet on February 5th. It’s unique because few articles cover financial literacies for minorities from an educational perspective. Most media on this topic is written about minorities, not for them.
Let’s first take a look at the credibility of Nerd Wallet, the platform this article is published on.
Nerd Wallet claims to provide objective expert advice to help their audience make smart financial decisions. They offer some transparency about the products and services they recommend on their About Us page:
“In some cases, we receive compensation when someone clicks to apply or gets approved for a financial product through our site. However, this in no way affects our recommendations or advice. We’re committed to helping you make your smartest money move.”
At the top of every article, readers can click to read their Advertiser Disclosure and view a full list of partners. Readers can easily locate information about security and their privacy policy on the website.
Another positive feature of this website is that they provide easily accessible information about their executive team, the board of directors, advisors, and investors on their Leadership page. You can easily identify who is behind the company and discover more about them.
The authors of this article are Laura McMullen and Amrita Jayakumar. Their bios are included at the end of the article and readers can click through to their author pages to find that both are qualified in journalism and focus their writings on finance. Contact information for both authors is provided.
Based on this information and the topic of the article I would trust that the authors did their background research and selected credible gurus. The intent of the article is to connect readers with African-American financial experts who would add value to their audience.
The authors asked the gurus one of the following questions:
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- What are your financial goals for 2020?
- What was your financial situation 10 years ago, and how does it compare to now? What did you learn in that time?
- What is one aspect of personal finance you wish people would pay more attention to?
The questions do not appear to be loaded with an agenda, but within the article itself, the authors chose to only link to other Nerd Wallet posts. An “About the gurus” section provides website and twitter links for each featured expert. I do not see that any products or services are being directly promoted within the article.
Overall Credibility Grade: A-
I think it serves as a great point to connect readers with experts who provide financial literacy education for minorities and beyond and allows people to share their personal experiences, potentially expanding perspective for readers. However, it is a bit self-serving in that it does not link to other sources and the contact information of those featured is withheld until the end of the article.
