At Ad Fontes Media, our goal is to rate all the news, and that means rating content from wherever the general public gets their information. That’s why we rate traditional forms of journalism, such as newspaper websites, wire services and TV news shows, and newer platforms like YouTube channels and podcasts.

We’ve also dedicated our efforts over the past several months to rating content published on Substack, an online publishing platform where writers can share articles, newsletters, and other content. A lot of news and news commentary is now being published there and shared via email and on social media. In fact, my social media feeds contain Substack articles shared by my friends every single day.

Many well-known writers, commentators and journalists now publish on Substack (and on similar platforms such as beehiiv and Medium) — people like Timothy Snyder, Taylor Lorenz, Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich, Seth Abramson, Jessica Yellen, Dan Rather, Matt Taibbi and Chris Cillizza. We’ve fully rated articles from 35 Substacks so far, and 11 of them appear on the December edition of the Media Bias Chart® for Web/Print that we’re releasing today:

• Big League Politics | Substack
• Current Revolt
• HEATED
• Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson
• Racket News | Matt Taibbi
• So What by Chris Cillizza
• The Gold Report
• The Hartmann Report
• The Redneck Intellectual – C. Bradley Thompson
• Thinking About… by Timothy Snyder
• To the Contrary by Charlie Sykes
  

Substack is also the home for some podcasters and video content producers, and our team has rated several of those, as well. Many of these content producers fall within the category of “news influencers.” Vanessa Otero, founder and CEO of Ad Fontes, talked about our analysis of news influencer content in this short video released last month.

We plan to rate more content published on Substack and on similar platforms in the months ahead, so watch for those on future editions of the Media Bias Chart®, or search for them on the Interactive Media Bias Chart® on the website or on our free mobile app for Android or Apple. Do you have a favorite Substack that you’d like us to rate? Let us know at info@adfontesmedia.com.

In addition to the 11 Substacks listed above, this edition of the Media Bias Chart® for web/print sources features 101 of the 2,790 web/print sources we’ve rated so far. We know it’s hard to read all of the source logos on the chart, so we’ve provided a list of those 112 here. We curate a list of sources to include on each month’s chart because it’s impossible to put all of them in a single image (the logos would overlap and appear on top of one another, and the result would be an image that is impossible to read).

Sources in the green box (top middle) of the chart have been rated by our team to be minimally biased and to provide fact-based information. You might notice that none of the 11 Substacks listed above fall within the green box. That’s because much of the content there is analysis and opinion.

Here’s a list of the sources from the December chart that fall within the green box (many more web/print sources fall within the green box, and they will be included in future releases of the Media Bias Chart®):

• 1440 Newsletter
• Ballotpedia
• Barrett Media
• Bellingcat
• Boston Herald
• Center for American Progress
• Christianity Today
• CNN (website)
• CTech
• Defense News
• El Especialito
• Flagler Live
• Fortune
• Fox Business (website)
• Hong Kong Free Press HKFP
• News 8 WROC Rochester
• Newsweek
• NPR (website)
• Pew Research Center
• Prison Legal News
• Puck News
• Quillette
• RealClearDefense
• Reuters
• Roll Call
• San Francisco Chronicle
• South Florida Sun Sentinel
• Straight Arrow News
• The Advocate – Baton Rouge
• The Gazette
• The New York Times
• The Reload
• The Week
• TheGrio
• Upworthy
• USAFacts
• Wall Street Journal
• Washington Post
• World News Group

Eleven sources make their debut on this month’s chart:

• Conservative Brief
• Conservative Firing Line
• Daily Express
• LADbible
• News 8 WROC Rochester
• San Francisco Chronicle
• So What by Chris Cillizza
• South Florida Sun Sentinel
• The Gazette
• Thinking About… by Timothy Snyder
• To the Contrary by Charlie Sykes

If you don’t see your favorite source on the December chart, that doesn’t mean we haven’t rated it! You can search for it on the Interactive Media Bias Chart®. It’s free, but you can access only 250 sources, and there are limits in how many searches you can conduct per day.

To get expanded access, you’ll need a News Newbie or News Nerd subscription. Our subscribers can search all sources our team has fully rated (websites, podcasts and TV/video), with other added benefits!

You can also search all sources we’ve rated on our free mobile app for Android or Apple. Daily search limits apply.

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