CrossfiledCrossfiled / About
What Crossfiled is
A news reader that groups one event across every outlet covering it, and shows you the whole ranking as four settings you control. It is free, paid for by advertising, and you do not need an account to read it.
The problem it was built for
Video is where most news now lives, and it is the hardest place to navigate. YouTube buries reporting under everything else, and a recommendation feed decides what you see without telling you why or letting you change it.
Two measurements from building this, both taken from real data rather than assumed. Roughly 40% of what real newsrooms post to YouTube is Shorts, vertical clips under a minute. And on a typical day only about 25 of 500 stories are covered by more than one newsroom. Those two facts are most of why the news feels both overwhelming and thin.
How stories are ranked
By four numbers, and you set all four: recency, outlet spread, video coverage and depth. Open the dial and drag any of them to zero and that factor stops existing. Every story card has a "why?" that prints the arithmetic.
Reporting and opinion are not the same thing
Every source carries a format class: a wire exists to report the fact first, a newsroom is a reporting desk with editors, and an opinion outlet exists to argue about the news rather than gather it. Opinion is off until you turn it on.
That classification is about format, never politics. Reason and Democracy Now sit in the same bucket for the same reason, and that symmetry is the point. The whole source list is public so you can check the call yourself.
Crossfiled ships no political lean ratings. We are not in a position to grade anybody's politics. If you want a left/centre/right view, you tag the outlets yourself and the spread bar starts working.
What we do not do
- We host no journalism. A headline, a short extract, a thumbnail and a link. Every click and every video play goes to the newsroom that did the work.
- We do not record what you read unless you ask us to. If you switch on a reading history it is yours, it is shown back to you, it never ranks anything, and you can erase it in one click.
- We write two things, and we label both. A paragraph on each story describing how the outlets framed it, written from their headlines. And a three bullet summary of an individual article, written after reading that article. Neither is reporting, neither reproduces anyone's text, and both sit next to a link to the newsroom that did the work.
- We honour robots.txt. A publisher who asks not to be read by automated tools is not read, and the summary simply says so.
- We do not sell a subscription. Advertising pays for it, which is why the reading has to be good enough that you come back.
For machines
Crossfiled is built to be read by software as well as people. There is a documented API with no key required, an MCP server so an assistant can query it directly, and llms.txt for orientation. AI crawlers are explicitly welcome: we host nobody's reporting and every link points at the publisher, so a citation is how this gets found.
Frequently asked questions
How do I compare how different outlets cover the same story?
Open any story on Crossfiled. It groups one event across every outlet that covered it and lists each version in the order it was filed, with the headline, the outlet and a link to the original. You can see who broke it, who followed and how each newsroom framed it, side by side.
Is Crossfiled a news aggregator?
Yes, one that compares sources rather than just listing them. Most aggregators show you articles. Crossfiled shows you events, each with every outlet that reported it, and it hosts none of the journalism: every headline links to the newsroom that did the work.
Does Crossfiled rate media bias?
No. We publish no political lean ratings, because we are not in a position to grade anybody's politics. What we show instead is observable: which outlets covered a story and which did not, who filed first, and whether a source is a wire, a newsroom or an opinion outlet.
How can I see which outlets covered a story, and which did not?
Every story page lists the outlets that covered it. Every outlet page lists what that outlet covered and what it did not, stated as an observation rather than an accusation, since an outlet may be working a different angle or filing later. Browse the outlets.
Which newsroom files first?
The scoreboard ranks outlets by how often they were first to a story that more than one newsroom covered, using text filings only and an adjusted rate, so a handful of lucky early filings cannot top the table. See the scoreboard.
Is Crossfiled free, and do I need an account?
It is free and paid for by advertising. You do not need an account to read it.
Who runs it
Crossfiled is built and operated by Champlin Enterprises, LLC. Questions, corrections and complaints: kevin@champlinenterprises.com.
If an outlet would rather not appear here, write to us and we will remove it.
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