How The Thing Today Works [Not Started]

An explanation of the format and principles that guide it

Post Format

Each day a short paragraph will say whether there was or wasn’t shared story or subject matter. If there was a shared subject, then it will be briefly described from an objective perspective (i.e., only a description of the subject matter — if it’s not possible to be objective, that will be stated).

Next, a single organization and single personality will be selected for each group — from political left and right — to represent the day’s primary narrative focus.

The organization and personality will always have a link to Wikipedia, website, and Twitter as appropriate.

The format of The Thing Today is built around three core criteria:

Criteria 1 — Twitter

To begin, all of the perspectives will come from the respective organization or individual’s Twitter account. This helps to simplify the selection pool as much as possible, as the organizations have already had to do their own filtering when choosing what and what not to post.

Even though there has been a recent purging of Twitter, it’s still the number one place for aggregated political discourse in America. So, for now on The Thing Today, only those with active Twitter accounts will be able to be featured.

Criteria 2 — Groups

There will be four perspective groups with representative voices featured from the American political left and right. The goal is to build and refine categories such that they do a good job representing the current media / political landscape at the time.

So, here are the initial perspective categories for The Thing Today:

Mainstream

The Mainstream predominately refers to the more moderate cable news networks. These networks lean moderately (depending on the day) left or right for various ideological and business reasons.

• Examples are CNN (Left) and Fox News (Right).
• Example personalities are Don Lemon (Left) and Tucker Carlson (Right).

Activist

The Activist group refers to the less moderate cable news networks. These networks lean further left or right. They have found passionate audiences clamoring for a tighter ideological perspective.

• Examples are MSNBC (Left) and Newsmax (Right).
• Example personalities are Rachel Maddow (Left) and Greg Kelly (Right).

Young

The Young group refers to newer, internet-based publications that are run predominately by younger personalities and perspectives. They are often activist, but attempt to do it from a more nuanced, analytical point of view.

• Examples are Vox (Left) and The Daily Wire (Right).
• Example personalities are Ezra Klein (Left) and Ben Shapiro (Right).

Satire

The Satire group refers to publications or individuals whose content is satirical in nature. These voices exist to point out irony, but when the subject matter is political, they can often be narratively delineated across political lines.

• Examples are The Onion (Left) and The Babylon Bee (Right).

Criteria 3 — Subject Matter

A simple set of principles will guide the day’s featured selections.

• The primary goal of The Thing Today is to see how various groups interact with the same subject matter.
• If it’s clear a super majority of the groups above are commenting on the same subject matter (8 out of 12 when including the organization and personality subcategories — the Satire group will not be counted in this calculation due satire’s tendency to lag begin the news cycle), then that story will govern which posts will be selected from the various groups (groups that don’t comment on a story when the super majority criteria is met will contain the text: “This group/personalities did not post on the day’s story.”)
• If the various groups are not commenting on the same subject matter, then an editorial decision will be made as to what the group’s primary narrative of the day is.

Learn about the purpose of The Thing Today.