Navigating the News with Vanessa

Join the Ad Fontes Media founder as she leads weekly sessions about navigating the news landscape

Author:

Vanessa Otero

Date:

05/13/2026

I’m excited to offer a weekly series called Navigating the News with Vanessa where you and I can talk about the biggest current news stories together. I’d like to help all of the “news nerds” to be savvy media consumers by giving you a crash course in what our analysts do every day.

This free Navigating the News series is exclusively for our paid subscribers – News Nerds, News Newbies, News Navigators and News Nurturers, as well as Campus Pro/Classroom Premium members (i.e., all paid subscribers of Ad Fontes Media including legacy subscription types). If you aren’t a subscriber yet, please consider signing up for as little as $5 per month. Once you’re a member, you’ll be able to register for any of these sessions to attend live, and/or you can watch the recordings later. Learn how to be a News Nerd or News Newbie here.

Here’s what you can expect: First, I’ll will give a 10-minute media literacy lesson on a particular topic related to our methodology in rating the news. Those who attend the session live will then participate in News Club (like a book club, except to talk about the news). I’ll answer your questions about our rating process or the complex media landscape, or what’s going on in the news. And I’ll dissect a specific piece of content, likely from our weekly Topic of the Week exercise. The discussion is often the most fun part of these sessions, but participation is optional. If you’d rather just listen, that’s OK, too!

These Navigating the News sessions will be presented weekly and alternate between a daytime session and evening session in order to give more people the opportunity to attend live. Each session lasts for one hour, and a recording of each session will be emailed to paid subscribers.

Here’s a list of upcoming sessions and their topics:

Thursday, May 14, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Subfactors of Reliability
Friday, May 22, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: Subfactors of Bias
Thursday, May 28, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Lateral Reading, Text/Claims, Images/Videos, AI
Friday, June 5, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: Likelihood of Veracity & Fact-checking
Thursday, June 11, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Fact-Analysis-Opinion Continuum
Friday, July 3, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: Original, High-Effort, and Investigative Fact Reporting, and Thorough Fact Reporting And Fact-Dense Analysis (49-64 for Reliability)
Thursday, July 9, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Middle and Balanced Bias (-6 to +6 for Bias)
Friday, July 17, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: Use of Quotes
Thursday, July 23, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Fact Reporting and Mix of Fact Reporting and Analysis (40-48 for Reliability)
Friday, July 31, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: Skews Left and Right (-6 to -12, +6 to +12 for Bias)
Thursday, Aug. 6, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Guests and Hosts on Video and Audio Content
Friday, Aug. 14, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: Analysis or Other Issues (32-40 for Reliability)
Thursday, Aug. 20, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Strong Left and Right (-12 to -18, +12 to +18)
Friday, Aug. 28, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: Opinion or Other Issues (24-32 for Reliability)
Thursday, Sept. 3, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Hyper-Partisan Left and Right (-18 to -30, +18 to +30 for Bias)
Friday, Sept. 11, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: Selective or Incomplete; Unfair Persuasion (16-24 for Reliability)
Thursday, Sept. 17, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Most Extreme Left and Right (-30 to -42, +30 to +42 for Bias)
Friday, Sept. 25, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: Contains Misleading Information (8-16 for Reliability)
Thursday, Oct. 1, 5 p.m. MT, Topic: Contains Inaccurate and/or Fabricated Information (0-8 for Reliability)
Friday, Oct. 9, 1 p.m. MT, Topic: AI-Generated Content

I hope you’ll join me as we navigate the news together.

Vanessa Otero is a former patent attorney in the Denver, Colorado, area with a B.A. in English from UCLA and a J.D. from the University of Denver. She is the original creator of the Media Bias Chart (October 2016), and founded Ad Fontes Media in February of 2018 to fulfill the need revealed by the popularity of the chart — the need for a map to help people navigate the complex media landscape, and for comprehensive content analysis of media sources themselves. Vanessa regularly speaks on the topic of media bias and polarization to a variety of audiences.