Recent research suggests that web users are pretty catholic in their news reading habits. Conservatives read liberal sites and liberals read conservative sites. Slate wants to check this theory out, so they produced an applet that tells you just how isolated you are, news-wise:
Here’s how it works: When you click on the “Profile Me” button, we will check which news sites you’ve visited recently. Then, using the same Web site rankings Gentzkow and Shapiro used in their research, we’ll tell you how “isolated” you are….We do not save the information, just your overall score, which will be used solely to compare you to other Web surfers and possibly, if enough of you try it out, other Slate readers.
My score is on the right: I clock in at +14, which means I visit more conservative sites than liberal ones. What an open-minded fellow I am!
Except for one thing: the vast majority of my reading is done via RSS — and most of it is liberal blogs. What’s more, when I head off to Drudge or Michelle Malkin, it’s mostly in hopes of finding something I can mock, not because I’m really interested in what they have to say.
Still, Slate says I’m officially open minded. Hooray for me!
