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There’s a common criticism that floats around the popular conscious: news sources, on the whole, are biased. It’s an easy conclusion to draw when comparing explicitly partisan channels like Fox News and MSNBC, but much of this disenchantment derives from the lack of original outlets with a truly bipartisan agenda.
Can that gap realistically be filled? That’s a question the founders of Parallax World hope to answer.
Launched in January, Parallax World provides news on international and domestic politics and relations, business, and the environment. Subverting the traditional one-to-one relationship between headline and article, the site publishes three perspectives for each headline, discussing the rationale behind differing forces involved in current issues.
“After reflecting on [partisanship] in news, we asked ourselves, ‘If we could design the news ourselves, how would it look?’ We took pen to paper and it eventually evolved into what you see on ParallaxWorld.com today,” said co-founder Sean Daley.
For instance, the site recently published a story entitled “Wikipedia Sues the NSA.” Some context: the ACLU recently filed a lawsuit against the NSA on behalf of several groups including Wikipedia, claiming that the NSA’s online surveillance program is unconstitutional. The article comprises summaries of three perspectives: one from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, one from the ACLU as plaintiff, and one from the NSA as defendant.
(Daley said the same writers cover all three perspectives for each story they write – a result of having a staff of just nine. He hopes to reevalute this model once the company grows.)
While there’s an infinite number of stories to cover, Parallax World channels its editorial efforts into an average output of one per day. To be published, Daley said, a story must meet three criteria: “1) The nuance provided will make better voters or global citizens, 2) Whether it impacts a large audience, 3) Whether the topic is better covered by the Parallax format.”
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“There are certain examples of stories, like Kim Kardashian, that fit some of these criteria (i.e., impacts a large audience) but not others (i.e., makes for better voters) that we would pass on. Our editors sift through stories and analyze against these criteria with some analytic tools and a daily story pitch session,” he added.
Of course, the concept of delivering bipartisan news stories isn’t new; sites like AllSides.com and Bipartisan Report have been presenting news from varying perspectives for years. But these sites are news aggregators, reposting articles from an array of left-wing, centrist, and right-wing news outlets. Parallax World, Daley said, puts the demand for bipartisan news in the hands of an actual editorial staff; its writers compose original work and take curated angles, specifically focusing on newsmakers’ perceptions of the events in which they’re involved.
“Our core goal is different. Parallax World...is less concerned with understanding how various news agencies cover a story, but rather is focused on how decision makers act and perceive those events. We want to know how President Obama, Speaker of House Boehner, or Senator Ted Cruz differ in their views,” he said.
Daley hopes this ideology will inspire citizens to think more independently, relying less on party labels, stereotypes, and reputations, and more on nuance. He aims to encourage critical thinking in every civic act from the specific and momentous – like learning what’s at stake in the 2016 Presidential Election – to the general and quotidian – like understanding global environments and the people who inhabit them.
“Our goal with Parallax World is to make a news resource that gives news readers no excuse for being blindly partisan,” he said. “Our hope is that Parallax World, and bipartisanship, will be a key tool in the news tool belt as readers begin to revolutionize how they interact with information and politics.”
