Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

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!

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate