August 2009
1 post
New tools for living in the Era of Opinion
We are living in what we here at FairSpin like to call the Era of Opinion. Traditional news institutions are being supplanted by smaller, independent writers and publishers who increasingly take a perspective on the issues they cover. Perspective-based news is rapidly becoming the norm as more and more news producers turn in that direction as a means to compete for audience. And the very...
July 2009
1 post
2 tags
Transparency in politics and media: FairSpin...
This week we attended the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City. Now in its sixth year, PDF gathers together over 1,000 technologists, journalists, and political organizers to explore how technology is changing politics. We felt that attending this popular conference would be a way for us to learn more about what others are doing in this space, as well as to get feedback from some deep...
June 2009
2 posts
3 tags
Iran in the media: a diversity of opinion
We built FairSpin with the goal of revealing the bias behind today’s news and opinion, believing that this could both provide a more compelling news-reading experience and also help bring transparency to the media. The site has now been up and running for a couple of months and we’re very encouraged by the response it’s getting.
At the same time we’re also starting to...
2 tags
Tweeting the news, from left to right
FairSpin now offers a new way to get the news you’re interested in — via Twitter. We are operating three new Twitter accounts, each one tracking a different slice of the political spectrum as judged by FairSpin users:
fairspinleft — Left-leaning news and opinion
fairspinneutral — Unbiased and factual news
fairspinright — Right-leaning news and opinion
Each tweet...
May 2009
3 posts
2 tags
Revealing bias in real-time with FairSpin and...
One of the more interesting trends in media these days is the mass migration of journalists and bloggers to Twitter. It seems like nearly everyone has an account, from professional writers to TV pundits to entire newsrooms. While some of these feeds simply echo content that is already available elsewhere (for example, tweeting a newspaper’s headlines), many of them are in fact very...
2 tags
You spoke, we listened: some new improvements
Since FairSpin launched a few weeks ago we’ve been constantly gathering feedback from our users and looking for ways to improve the service. A few common themes have emerged, and today we’re taking action on them by making some improvements to FairSpin.
New condensed layout
FairSpin’s homepage now features a 3-column layout instead of the original 5-column approach. It...
2 tags
Tweet the vote
FairSpin is now integrated with Twitter. After you vote on a story you’ve read, you’ll be given the option of tweeting your vote:
Your FairSpin tweets include the title and URL of the story, and also indicate how you voted (left, right, or neutral). Here’s an example:
Twitter integration makes it easy to share interesting stories — and your opinions about...
2 tags
Now integrated with Facebook
We’ve just rolled-out integration between FairSpin and Facebook. You can now sign-up for FairSpin with just a few clicks using your Facebook account. Or if you already have an account on FairSpin, you can easily link it to your Facebook profile. Just look for the Facebook button on either our homepage or login page. Once you’re connected via Facebook, you’ll gain access to...
April 2009
3 posts
Good questions, and some answers
Since FairSpin’s public launch yesterday we’ve received lots of positive comments, constructive feedback… and votes! Thanks to all of you who have tried it out so far.
We’ve also seen a few really good recurring questions that we wanted to take a moment to answer here.
“How are the bias ratings on FairSpin determined?”
They are calculated automatically...
1 tag
FairSpin: breaking through the bias
We’ve just opened FairSpin to the public. Check it out at http://fairspin.org and let us know what you think! What’s FairSpin? Following politics in our country is not easy. It’s getting harder to tell “news” from opinion, fact from spin, journalist from blogger, reporter from pundit, and sometimes even left from right. Even more confusing is the fact that many of...