News Bias Tracker for Independent Journalists

Independent journalists and fact-checkers work without the editorial infrastructure of large newsrooms. They read across sources fast, and they carry the same risk every reader does: unconsciously anchoring on outlets that confirm their priors, missing coverage angles, and publishing work that shows a lean they never intended. There is no lightweight, always-on check that tells a reporter, in the moment, how a given article scores on political lean and what perspectives are absent from their reading diet.

News Bias Tracker is a SaaS tool that puts real-time political lean scoring on any article. Paste a URL or install the browser extension, and the reporter sees a lean score, the reasoning behind it, and a running picture of their own filter bubble across everything they have read this week. The product name signals the job directly: track bias, on your own work and on your sources.

The solution splits into two loops. The first is per-article scoring so a journalist can vet a source before citing it. The second is the personal blind-spot dashboard that aggregates reading history and flags when someone has spent days inside one side of a story. This second loop is the differentiator against AllSides, which primarily rates outlets and curates left-center-right story panels rather than scoring the individual writer's own consumption.

MVP: a browser extension plus a paste-a-URL web app that returns a lean score and a short rationale for a single article, backed by a text classification model. Ship the individual-article check first because it is the atomic unit of value and the cheapest to validate.

Revenue: individual subscription at a low monthly price for solo journalists and fact-checkers, with a team tier for small independent outlets and newsletters. B2B SaaS pricing anchored to the reporter's workflow.

GTM: reach independent journalists directly where they publish and organize, through newsletter platforms, journalism Slack and Discord groups, and fact-checking networks. Offer a free single-article check to drive trials.

Growth loops: shareable bias score cards embedded in articles and social posts create inbound curiosity; each reporter who cites the score exposes their audience to the tool. Team accounts pull in collaborators.