The media is dividing us on purpose. We cover how.

Here is what we believe. The media is not polarized by accident. Taking a side is the most reliable way to keep an audience, and every publisher, podcaster and newsletter writer with a dashboard has worked that out. The algorithms did not need to radicalise anyone. They only needed to notice what brings the same person back tomorrow, and the answer was agreement, grievance and an enemy. The people inside these audiences are not stupid. They are being managed.

The Blog Herald exists to show how it is done. Some weeks that means one outlet, show or newsletter taken apart on its own: what it tells its audience about itself, how it keeps them, what the audience learns to count as evidence, and who the enemy has to be for the business to work. Other weeks it means the machinery itself: what the feed rewards, why neutrality stopped paying, what it costs to leave a side, and what happens inside a person’s head when disagreement starts to feel like an attack. And every week it means data, because we are keeping score.

The machine is not left or right. It runs the progressive podcast and the right-wing streaming service, the wellness feed and the doom newsletter, the manosphere and the tradwife, the prayer app and the finance guru, and the mainstream centre that insists it has no side. We ask all of them the same questions, and we do not take their side or the other one. We take the reader’s.

We also keep score. The Polarization Map tracks hundreds of outlets on how hot they write and how sealed their world is, updated every week and open for anyone to embed.

The Blog Herald was founded in 2003 to cover blogging, the moment anyone could publish. It turns out everyone did, and most of them published to one side.

Founded by Duncan Riley in March 2003. Published by Brown Brothers Media. Read our editorial policy, or write to us through the contact page.