Can Publishers Reclaim Trust? Lessons from Straight Arrow News
Inside a nonpartisan model for journalism—and the business behind it
According to Gallup, trust in the media is at an all-time low, with more Americans saying they have no trust in the media (36%) than those who say they have either fair or a great deal of trust (31%). Straight Arrow News (SAN), an independent digital outlet launched in 2021, believes it has a remedy: present facts in context, cut the surrounding noise, and avoid telling people what to think.
Founded by Joe Ricketts, SAN is self-funded and based in Omaha, Nebraska. It employs 75 staff, including a 35-person newsroom. Its leadership includes Chief Revenue Officer Ken Shapiro, formerly of CNN and Morning Brew, and Chief Content Officer Derek Mead, previously of VICE and Motherboard.
SAN’s redesigned platform introduces features like media landscape graphs that show how left, right, and centre outlets cover stories, “Fact Cards” embedded within articles, and timeline views for tracing developments. The goal is to help users escape the partisan echo chambers shaped by algorithms.
The redesign also streamlines navigation and foregrounds features like timelines and source transparency, reinforcing SAN’s mission to provide clarity in a cluttered media landscape.
“We don’t use sensational language, we don’t do takes. The cultural commitment to facts feels unique.” Derek Mead
Building credibility
While many outlets claim neutrality, SAN backs it with internal and external validation. A rotating internal bias committee reviews coverage, and organisations like AllSides and NewsGuard independently assess SAN’s work. “Our goal is to reduce noise and tell audiences what they need to know, not what to think,” says Mead.
Each story includes tools to help readers assess coverage, such as media spectrum views, context summaries, and the Bias Breakdown series. “We equip readers to understand how facts become narratives,” he adds.
But can news ever be truly neutral? Mead concedes that every editorial decision carries implicit bias. “Every editorial choice is a human one,” he says. “But we can minimise and balance bias through process and design.” The aim, he argues, is not to achieve an impossible purity but to transparently acknowledge the potential for bias and counter it structurally.
Critics might ask how SAN reconciles its mission with its founder’s background. Joe Ricketts is a well-known conservative and GOP donor. Yet his vision for SAN reportedly emerged from a conversation with a politically liberal friend, where both questioned why civil, fact-based dialogue had become so rare. Whether that origin story is rooted in altruism or brand strategy, SAN insists its editorial approach remains fact-based and unbiased.
Though news is increasingly consumed through individual influencers, SAN resists relying on personal brands. Mead argues engagement algorithms favour loud voices, not necessarily truthful ones. “We’re conversational, we’re human—but we don’t want to tell people what to think.”
Publishers looking for alternatives to polarising engagement might see SAN’s middle-ground tone—clear, credible, and non-didactic—as a useful model.
A neutral space for advertisers
Having launched its monetisation strategy in 2025, SAN also sees neutrality as a commercial asset. “Advertisers want to avoid controversy,” says Shapiro. “We offer a growing, neutral environment.”
SAN’s business model is multi-pronged, building revenue through advertising, subscriptions, events, proprietary data, and branded content. Native advertising integrated with editorial features like Fact Cards is designed to preserve editorial integrity while enabling scalable growth.
Shapiro draws contrasts with his time in big media. “At a public company, earnings drive every decision,” he says. “At SAN, we have more freedom to experiment.”
The redesign offers a modular, user-focused experience that publishers might consider: features like “Common Ground” and “Diverging Views” frame stories without inserting editorial bias, while topic pages provide deeper background.
Tackling AI and algorithmic distortion
Mead sees algorithmic content delivery as a major distortion in how audiences perceive news. “The whole system is designed to show people only the slice of news they’ve previously engaged with,” he says.
SAN uses AI tools sparingly—for summarisation and supporting Fact Cards—always with human oversight. Mead warns of a future where AI agents package misinformation scraped from the web. “We need to remind readers why human journalism still matters.”
What’s next?
Can SAN’s model scale? Early signs suggest yes: between September 2024 and February 2025, the publisher saw a 531% increase in page views and 476% growth in unique users.
For publishers navigating media fatigue and polarisation, one takeaway is clear: there’s growing demand for clarity, context, and alternatives to outrage-driven content. Whether through product design, transparency, or diversified revenue, SAN offers one possible route forward.
Still, questions remain. Can true neutrality grow in a media ecosystem built for clicks and confirmation bias? Can trust really be engineered through process alone? Even the most principled models must contend with public doubt and algorithmic pressure. For publishers, that’s both a risk—but also an opportunity.