About

Two things happened to the news together: engagement became the business model, and outrage became the most reliable engine of engagement. Both ends of the spectrum now run the same play. The only variable is who you're being aimed at.

The Spine is one integrated story per topic, drawn from outlets across the political spectrum, with the shared facts first and the framing differences shown without commentary. A way of reading the news that doesn't ask you to pick a side before you've seen the story.

What it is

Each morning, The Spine pulls top stories from ten mainstream outlets (left, center, and right of center) and asks Claude to produce one integrated story per cluster of related coverage. The shared facts lead. The narrative flows. Where coverage diverged, the divergence is called out inline, not in a separate "what each side is saying" box. Where both sides missed something, we flag it. Every source is linked.

The article layout is the product. The left side of every story is a "spine" tracing the verifiable facts of the piece: vote tallies, dollar figures, dates, direct quotes. You can read just the spine to get the factual skeleton, or read the right-side narrative for the full picture.

What it isn't

The Spine is not a replacement for reading the original reporting. It is a morning brief that saves you the labor of comparing six versions of the same story. Every source is linked; if a synthesis raises a question, click through.

It is also not a neutral omniscient narrator. Large language models have their own tendencies. We publish the full synthesis prompt on the methodology page so you can see exactly how the sausage is made.