# How neutral is Alaska News? We measure our own newsroom the way we wish someone would measure every newsroom. A panel of three AI models, from three different companies, reads each article with every outlet name and byline stripped out. It scores the article against a published rubric, and the results ship here, including the weeks we lose. This page is the first public output of that scoring, and it is labeled that way: an experiment, with sample sizes shown next to every score. **As of 2026-11-01, 6 of the 11 Alaska outlets on the board, not counting the control, show a near-zero net lean on party politics.** The known-lean control, Must Read Alaska, reads right, which shows the panel can find a lean when one is there. To read the scores: lean runs from -3 to +3 and shows direction only. Quality runs from 0 to 4, and higher is better. Every score sits beside the number of articles behind it. ![How to read a score. Lean. -3. 0. +3. Direction only. Quality. 0 to 4. Higher is better. Never add them together.](/_next/image?url=%2Fimages%2Fgraphics%2Fscorecard-how-to-read-1bbd9602.png&w=3840&q=75) **Latest run: 2026-11-01.** Rubric v0.4.0. Panel: anthropic/claude-sonnet-5, openai/gpt-5.6-terra, google/gemini-3.8-flash. Jump to: [the landscape](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#field-map) · [the board](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#roster) · [side by side](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#comparison) · [fingerprints](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#fingerprints) · [same story, two tellings](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#head-to-head) · [access](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#openness) · [how we measure](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#methodology) · [plain-English terms](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#terms) ## The Alaska media landscape, mapped Two measurements separate these outlets more than any others: which worldview their framing favors, and whether official claims get tested or passed along. The map plots one against the other, with each outlet labeled in place. Politically clean but deferent sits bottom-center. Tilted but independent sits upper-left, and advocacy on the far right. The balanced middle is the middle. Positions are this page's own measured numbers and move with the daily data. \[Chart: Every tracked outlet positioned by ideological lean, source independence, and publishing volume, each bubble labeled with its outlet name\] **How to read this:** left and right is ideological tilt. Up is source independence, meaning official claims are tested rather than passed along. Bubble size is local articles per day: publishing volume, not audience reach. Dashed outlines mark the known-lean control and the out-of-market reference. The moose marks our own newsroom. Hover or tap any bubble to spotlight it and see its exact numbers. Tap again or click away to release it. ## The board, and why each outlet is on it Every outlet is on the board for a published reason. Membership is an editorial decision, never a traffic formula. No outlet leaves by quiet deletion: a change to this table is a change someone has to explain. Two rows are not peers, by design. The known-lean control is there to prove our method can detect lean at all. The out-of-state reference lets you read Alaska scores against a newsroom with no stake in Alaska. Reach context is a note, never a gate. Each entry is a fact the outlet published about itself, or a figure a measuring tool produced, with its source and date. Search interest, domain rank and circulation are three different measures, and they disagree in useful ways. __Every outlet on the board, its role, and the recorded reason it is here.__ | Outlet | Role | Why it is on the board | Reach context (sourced) | Scored (rubric v0.4.0) | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- | | [Alaska News](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-news) | the newsroom measured | The newsroom being measured; every other row exists to give this one an honest comparison. | The newest domain on this board; below the Tranco top 1M (2026-10), alongside The Alaska Current, The Alaska Landmine and Alaska Watchman. | 340 | | [Anchorage Daily News](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/adn) | peer | The state's largest newsroom and the default comparison any reader would reach for. | Alaska's largest newspaper; ranks \~16,000 among all domains globally (Tranco, 2026-10). | 134 | | [Alaska Beacon](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-beacon) | peer | The statehouse nonprofit whose beat overlaps ours most directly. | States Newsroom affiliate (2022), Tranco \~147,000 (2026-10). Its audience arrives by link and newsletter more than by search. | 115 | | Alaska Public Media | peer | The public broadcaster. We cannot measure it until its feed works or access is granted, and it is listed so the absence is visible. | Statewide public broadcaster; Tranco \~46,000 (2026-10). | first run pending | | [Anchorage Press](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/anchorage-press) | peer | Anchorage's long-running alt-weekly, covering city politics, culture and local government. | Long-running Anchorage alt-weekly; Tranco \~396,000 (2026-10). | 38 | | [The Alaska Current](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-current) | peer | Alaska political news and commentary outlet, included so the board spans outlets across the political spectrum. | No published audience figures; below Tranco top-1M (2026-10). | 47 | | [The Alaska Story](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-story) | peer | Active Alaska political news outlet, included on its own current footprint. | Claims 30,000+ newsletter subscribers (its Substack page, 2026). | 195 | | [Juneau Independent](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/juneau-independent) | peer | Southeast Alaska's newest newsroom, added 2026-10-05 for its capital city beat. | Nonprofit newsroom launched in June 2025. | 134 | | [Fairbanks Daily News-Miner](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/news-miner) | peer | Fairbanks' paper of record and the Interior's largest newsroom. | The Interior's paper of record. | 71 | | [MatSu Sentinel](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/matsu-sentinel) | peer | Independent Mat-Su newsroom covering the fastest-growing borough. | One-person nonprofit (June 2024). LION Publishers 2025 New Business of the Year. | 58 | | The Alaska Landmine | peer | Jeff Landfield's Alaska political news site, widely read inside state politics. Our editor suggested it, and its publisher had no objection. | Below the Tranco top 1M (2026-10-06 list), like this newsroom's own domain. | first run pending | | [Alaska Watchman](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-watchman) | peer | A conservative Alaska news site with its own staff reporting. It is read as an outlet, not run as a control, and it rounds out the right side of the board beside the known-lean control. | Below the Tranco top 1M (2026-10-06 list), like this newsroom's own domain. | 70 | | [Alaska's News Source](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/ktuu) | peer | The state's largest TV newsroom. | Alaska's most-searched news brand by a wide margin (Google Trends, 2026-10); Gray Television. | 63 | | [Nieman Lab](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/nieman-lab) | out-of-state reference | An out-of-state quality anchor: a national journalism-trade newsroom scored by the same blinded method, so Alaska scores can be read against a baseline from outside Alaska. | National journalism-trade outlet; ranks \~21,000 among all domains globally (Tranco, 2026-10). | 46 | | [Must Read Alaska](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/must-read-alaska) | known-lean control | The known-lean control. Independent media-bias raters rate it right-leaning, and it is scored as a check that the blind panel can detect lean. It stays regardless of audience. | Self-reported 5.8M visits from 1.8M unique visitors in 2024 and 33,000 newsletter subscribers (its own year-end posts), corroborated by Tranco presence (\~364,000). | 79 | ## Every outlet's fingerprint, drawn The same lean data as a picture: one panel per outlet, every panel on the same -3 to +3 scale. It includes the control and reference outlets that the comparison table leaves out on purpose. Seeing Must Read Alaska's profile beside the mainstream outlets is the fastest way to see what our method detects, and how unusual a flat profile is. \[Chart: Alaska News: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: Anchorage Daily News: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: Alaska Beacon: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: Anchorage Press: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: The Alaska Current: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: The Alaska Story: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: Juneau Independent: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: MatSu Sentinel: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: Alaska Watchman: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: Alaska's News Source: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: Nieman Lab: lean fingerprint across five axes\] \[Chart: Must Read Alaska: lean fingerprint across five axes\] _Reading the marks: the solid marker is the net lean. The pale band spans the average per-article swing in both directions, which is strength. A marker in the middle of a wide band means the outlet's articles lean both ways and cancel. A marker riding the band's edge means a steady house tendency. A hollow marker means the row rests on fewer than 5 articles. Direction is position, never color. Hover any row for exact numbers and sample sizes. On a computer, hovering a row also shows them in the panel's corner._ ## Alaska's top outlets, side by side The largest outlets, one column each. The lean rows come first, from -3 to +3, and show direction only. Each shows two numbers: net is the average direction, and strength is how far articles lean, whichever way. The quality rows follow, from 0 to 4, where higher is better. [How we measure](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#lean-axes) explains every row. __Panel-median scores by outlet, Alaska Media Bias Scorecard. Data last updated 2026-11-01.__ | Dimension | [Alaska News](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-news) | [Anchorage Daily News](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/adn) | [Alaska Beacon](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-beacon) | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | [Partisan lean (-3 Democratic to +3 Republican)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-partisan "Party favoritism. Negative = Democratic-coded framing, positive = Republican-coded, 0 = none detected. Requires actual party-relevant treatment, not vibes.") | 0 (near-zero net lean) | \-0.5 (leans left) | \-0.4 (near-zero net lean) | | Partisan lean strength (0-3, direction ignored) | 0 | 0.8 | 0.5 | | Articles with no partisan lean detected | 333 of 340 | 78 of 134 | 74 of 115 | | [Ideological tilt (-3 progressive to +3 conservative)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-ideological "Worldview rather than party: whose assumptions and policy logic the framing favors. Negative = progressive, positive = conservative.") | 0 net, 0.1 strength (n=292) | \-0.4 net, 0.8 strength (n=128) | \-0.6 net, 0.7 strength (n=113) | | [Institutional posture (-3 deference to +3 skepticism)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-institutional "Whether official accounts are passed along or tested. NEGATIVE = deference (official accounts carried as fact), POSITIVE = skepticism (institutions treated as interested parties). Alaska News's negative score here means we center and trust official records more than anyone on the board. We publish it as the thing we are working to change.") | \-1 net, 1.1 strength (n=340) | 0 net, 1.1 strength (n=131) | 0 net, 0.8 strength (n=113) | | [Establishment-populist framing (-3 establishment to +3 populist)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-populist "Whose voice is the default lens on power. Negative = establishment (expert, official and incumbent views), positive = populist (outsider and ordinary-person grievance). It is separate from left and right, because populism comes in both flavors.") | \-0.7 net, 0.7 strength (n=319) | \-0.1 net, 0.9 strength (n=130) | \-0.2 net, 0.7 strength (n=113) | | [Conservation-development framing (-3 conservation to +3 development)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-landuse "On resource and land stories, whose costs get counted. Negative = conservation framing favored, positive = development framing. It is scored only where the topic applies, which is why its n is smaller.") | 0.1 net, 0.4 strength (n=137) | 0.2 net, 1.2 strength (n=46) | \-0.4 net, 1 strength (n=49) | | [Evidence fairness (0-4)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-evidence "0 to 4. Whether each claim gets scrutiny in proportion to its evidence. There is no manufactured balance for unsupported positions, and no burying of supported ones.") | 3.3 | 2.4 | 2.8 | | [Sourcing (0-4)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-sourcing "0 to 4. Whether the story shows where its facts come from: named sources, linked records, checked numbers, and the affected people heard. A one-sided account of a contested matter caps at 2.") | 2.7 | 2.4 | 2.7 | | [Source independence (0-4)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-independence "0 to 4. Whether interested parties' claims are tested rather than passed along. An article can sound perfectly neutral while adopting an official's framing whole, and that scores low here. This is Alaska News's weakest score and our active work.") | 1.9 | 1.8 | 2.3 | | [Analysis labeling (0-4)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-labeling "0 to 4. Whether interpretation is marked as interpretation. News, analysis and opinion should never blur inside news copy.") | 4 | 3.9 | 3.3 | | [Language neutrality (0-4)](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-language "0 to 4. Whether the wording stays out of the way: no loaded adjectives, partisan cues or smuggled judgment.") | 4 | 2.9 | 3.4 | | Articles sampled | 340 | 134 | 115 | _Small samples, honestly labeled: these are early numbers, not verdicts. The sample grows daily, and every score above will move as it does. We cannot measure Alaska Public Media with our current open-crawl method. Its advertised RSS feed carries no items, and its robots.txt disallows article pages for all crawlers. The door stays open. A working feed or granted access would add it to this table._ ## How often a lean is detected at all This table asks the simplest question: in what share of scored articles did the panel find any lean at all? Averages can hide real differences. A mild lean in a third of articles and no lean in any article can produce similar averages. So this table drops the size of the lean entirely. It is the single view of the data that separates outlets most. __Share of articles with any detected lean, by axis, 2026-11-01.__ | Axis | Alaska News | Anchorage Daily News | Alaska Beacon | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------- | -------------------- | ------------- | | [Partisan lean](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-partisan "Party favoritism. Negative = Democratic-coded framing, positive = Republican-coded, 0 = none detected. Requires actual party-relevant treatment, not vibes.") | 2% of 340 | 42% of 134 | 36% of 115 | | [Ideological tilt](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-ideological "Worldview rather than party: whose assumptions and policy logic the framing favors. Negative = progressive, positive = conservative.") | 12% of 292 | 59% of 128 | 49% of 113 | | [Institutional posture](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-institutional "Whether official accounts are passed along or tested. NEGATIVE = deference (official accounts carried as fact), POSITIVE = skepticism (institutions treated as interested parties). Alaska News's negative score here means we center and trust official records more than anyone on the board. We publish it as the thing we are working to change.") | 87% of 340 | 79% of 131 | 71% of 113 | | [Establishment-populist framing](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-populist "Whose voice is the default lens on power. Negative = establishment (expert, official and incumbent views), positive = populist (outsider and ordinary-person grievance). It is separate from left and right, because populism comes in both flavors.") | 75% of 319 | 77% of 130 | 67% of 113 | | [Conservation-development framing](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality#term-landuse "On resource and land stories, whose costs get counted. Negative = conservation framing favored, positive = development framing. It is scored only where the topic applies, which is why its n is smaller.") | 37% of 137 | 76% of 46 | 67% of 49 | ## Same story, side by side Sometimes two tracked outlets cover the same story, and we hold both texts. Then the panel also ranks the two blinded accounts against each other. This is the most sensitive comparison we have, because differences that average scores smooth over show up when the event is identical. An adjudicator matches story pairs and records a one-sentence reason for every match. There are 118 same-story comparisons so far. A win counts only when a majority of the three judges agree. __Head-to-head wins by category, 2026-11-01. Appearances: Anchorage Daily News 28, Must Read Alaska 38, Alaska Beacon 63, Alaska News 22, The Alaska Story 45, The Alaska Current 16, Alaska's News Source 19, Anchorage Press 10, Juneau Independent 28, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner 3, MatSu Sentinel 20, Alaska Watchman 38.__ | Category | Wins | | ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | fairest evidence treatment | Alaska Beacon: 31 · Anchorage Daily News: 17 · Alaska News: 15 · Juneau Independent: 15 · MatSu Sentinel: 13 · The Alaska Story: 9 · Alaska's News Source: 5 · Must Read Alaska: 4 · Anchorage Press: 2 · The Alaska Current: 2 · Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: 1 · Alaska Watchman: 1 | | best sourced | Alaska Beacon: 36 · Anchorage Daily News: 22 · Juneau Independent: 12 · Alaska News: 11 · MatSu Sentinel: 11 · The Alaska Story: 6 · Alaska's News Source: 5 · The Alaska Current: 3 · Must Read Alaska: 3 · Anchorage Press: 2 · Alaska Watchman: 2 · Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: 1 | | most independent of official framing | Alaska Beacon: 34 · Juneau Independent: 20 · Alaska News: 13 · Anchorage Daily News: 8 · The Alaska Story: 8 · MatSu Sentinel: 8 · Alaska's News Source: 6 · Alaska Watchman: 5 · The Alaska Current: 4 · Must Read Alaska: 4 · Anchorage Press: 1 · Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: 1 | | most editorialized | Must Read Alaska: 21 · The Alaska Story: 21 · Alaska Watchman: 14 · Juneau Independent: 12 · The Alaska Current: 9 · Anchorage Daily News: 7 · Alaska's News Source: 7 · Alaska Beacon: 7 · Anchorage Press: 6 · MatSu Sentinel: 6 · Alaska News: 1 | _Small numbers, honestly labeled. Head-to-head pairs exist only when outlets cover the same story in the same window, which is rarer than it sounds. The counts grow daily._ ## Access and distribution practices These are facts about each outlet's publishing choices, and anyone with a terminal can check them. They are not neutrality or quality scores. Blocking AI crawlers is a legitimate choice, not a journalistic failing. Full-text RSS means the outlet's journalism arrives without a site visit. The AI column counts the crawler user-agents that robots.txt turns away entirely. __Openness facts by outlet, checked 2026-11-01: paywall, RSS, and crawler policy.__ | Outlet | Paywall | RSS | Full-text RSS | AI crawlers blocked | Readable without JS | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------- | ------------------------------------------------ | ------------- | ------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | | [Alaska News](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-news) | none | yes | no | 0 | yes | | [Anchorage Daily News](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/adn) | metered | yes | yes | 7 | yes | | [Alaska Beacon](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-beacon) | none | yes | yes | 11 | not checked (our crawler got HTTP 403) | | Alaska Public Media | none | none we could find | no | 9 | yes | | [Anchorage Press](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/anchorage-press) | none | yes | no | 10 | yes | | [The Alaska Current](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-current) | none | yes | yes | 0 | yes | | [The Alaska Story](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-story) | none | yes | yes | 0 | yes | | [Juneau Independent](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/juneau-independent) | none | yes | no | 0 | yes | | [Fairbanks Daily News-Miner](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/news-miner) | metered | unreachable from our collection point (HTTP 429) | no | 12 | not checked (the site rate-limited us today) | | [MatSu Sentinel](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/matsu-sentinel) | none | yes | yes | 0 | yes | | The Alaska Landmine | none | unreachable from our collection point (HTTP 403) | no | 0 | not checked (our crawler got HTTP 403) | | [Alaska Watchman](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/alaska-watchman) | none | yes | yes | 10 | yes | | [Alaska's News Source](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/ktuu) | none | yes | yes | 10 | yes | | [Nieman Lab](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/nieman-lab) | none | yes | yes | 0 | not checked (our crawler got HTTP 403) | | [Must Read Alaska](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news/neutrality/must-read-alaska) | none | yes | no | 0 | yes | _Our own row is not spotless. Alaska News's feed is excerpt-only, while Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Beacon publish full text. Publishing that fact here is the point of the scorecard. A performance measure, Google PageSpeed, joins this table once its API access is set up._ ## How we measure **How the numbers are computed.** Each judge scores each article once. The per-article score is the median across the three judges. An outlet's number is the mean of its per-article scores, shown to one decimal. Per-article scores and judge disagreement are in the raw data download. One boundary, stated plainly: the panel assesses the text, not the world. It scores whether claims are attributed and whether the article shows its checking. It does not verify facts, and it produces no factuality rating. A model reading one article about a brand-new local event has nothing independent to check it against. Pretending otherwise would be the exact overreach this page exists to avoid. ### The five lean axes and the quality scores Since rubric v0.3, lean is measured on five separate axes, because partisanship and ideological tilt are different things. An outlet can favor no party while still favoring one worldview's institutions, sources and framings. Alongside party favoritism, the panel scores ideological tilt, deference or skepticism toward institutions, conservation or development framing, and establishment or populist framing. Each is scored per article, in both directions. Every axis reports two numbers. Net is the average, which can hide opposite leans that cancel. Strength is the average size of the lean per article, whichever way it points, which cannot hide them. Read them together. A net near zero with high strength means the outlet swings both ways on that axis, story by story. Net and strength nearly equal means a steady house tendency. Partisan lean also reports how many articles show no lean at all. Lean is direction only, not quality. A lean-free article can still be badly sourced, and that is what the quality dimensions measure, from 0 to 4, where higher is better. Evidence fairness rewards scrutiny in proportion to the evidence, not equal time. Source independence asks whether official framing was tested or passed along. This newsroom watches that dimension on purpose. Its articles are drafted from public meetings and records, which is exactly where a newsroom is most likely to take on an institution's framing without noticing. Judges may mark a dimension not applicable where it has no meaning: a weather brief is not penalized for lacking opposing sources. The judged sample covers each outlet's own local journalism: news, politics, business and opinion, sorted by the same rule for every outlet. National wire stories, sports and syndicated lifestyle columns are left out. So an outlet's numbers describe its journalism, not its content mix. ### The panel and the blinding **Partial blinding.** Before any model sees an article, a rule-based pass with no AI in it strips outlet names, bylines, self-references and boilerplate. A guard refuses to score any article where a known identity string survives. This removes explicit identity, not every clue. House style, subject matter or distinctive passages could still hint at the source. So we call it partial blinding, rather than claiming the judges cannot know. **The panel.** Three models from three vendors (anthropic/claude-sonnet-5, openai/gpt-5.6-terra, google/gemini-3.8-flash), each scoring on its own at temperature 0\. The headline number is the panel median. Disagreement between judges is data we keep, not noise we hide. No single human rater sits above the panel. One person's read is one set of priors nobody can audit, while the panel's disagreement is published. ### Validation checks and limitations **Can our method detect lean at all?** A judge that scores everything "center" is broken. So every run includes a control outlet with a widely documented political lean: Must Read Alaska, rated right-leaning by independent media-bias raters. Blinded, the panel has read it clearly right under every rubric version (v0.2: +1.5, n=17; v0.3: +1.2, n=24; v0.4 so far: +1.6, n=79), while the outlets above read near 0\. The gate stands: if the control stops registering, publication stops until a person has looked. One known-lean outlet is a necessary check, not a sufficient one. The next validation step is article-level controls in both directions, including neutral articles from partisan outlets and slanted ones from mainstream outlets. **External cross-check.** The panel never sees outlet names, and on the question that matters most its reads agree with the established raters. [Ground News](https://ground.news/interest/anchorage-daily-news) aggregates Anchorage Daily News as Center and [Alaska Beacon](https://ground.news/interest/alaska-beacon) as Lean Left. Our panel reads both close to level, at partisan \-0.5 and \-0.4. So the two measures agree that neither is a partisan outlet. The raters' step between Center and Lean Left is finer than the panel separates today. Where lean is strong, the panel finds it blind: it reads the known-lean control clearly right, as every rater does. **An outside read of this newsroom.** In August 2026, [Media Bias/Fact Check](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/alaska-news-bias-and-credibility/) independently rated Alaska News **Least Biased**, with **High factual reporting** and **High credibility**. They credited neutral language and primary-source reporting, the two things these charts measure, and found no failed fact checks. Their one reservation is the model itself. A high-volume, AI-assisted newsroom is new, and it has not yet shown over time that it avoids the errors automation can introduce. They judged that concern substantially mitigated by our primary records and transparent sourcing. We agree it has to be shown. This page is how we intend to show it: it scores a fresh sample of every outlet's coverage every day and publishes the weeks we lose. Human readers and a blinded model panel, two measures that share nothing, reached the same reading. ### How the rubric changed, and why - **v0.3, 2026-09-20: lean split into five axes.** Story-by-story human audits found that a single left-right axis under-reads outlets whose house style is institutionally neutral. Their language carries no partisan tells, while the framing still favors particular institutions and worldviews. So v0.3 separates party favoritism from ideological tilt and scores the worldview axes directly. - **v0.3, 2026-09-20: local journalism only.** The judged sample narrowed to each outlet's local journalism. A feed that is one-third syndicated advice columns and national wire pulls every score toward neutral. - **v0.4, 2026-09-29: headlines judged too.** Feed-collected outlets had been scored on article bodies alone, while page-fetched ones included their headlines. The gap surfaced when one outlet's partisan headlines sat atop more restrained bodies. - **v0.4, 2026-09-29: a defined scale.** The lean axes gained a ladder defining what separates a 1 from a 2 from a 3\. The v0.3 scores showed judges almost never used the ends of the scale without a definition. Each change came from a measured gap. The axes were added to measure tilt the old rubric could not see, not tuned toward any expected result. Every outlet is scored by the same prompt, still blinded. Scores from different rubric versions are never mixed, so each version's numbers build fresh from its start date. Every version's final numbers stay published below: a version change restarts the count, never the history. \[Chart: Each outlet's net partisan lean under rubric v0.3.0 and under the current v0.4.0\] _Open circle: the outlet's final net partisan lean under rubric v0.3.0. Arrowhead: the current v0.4.0 read. A single dot means the read did not move. A rubric change is an experiment on our method itself. Drift would move every outlet together, while a real difference moves the slanted outlets apart and leaves the level ones alone. Under v0.4.0, 5 of 9 outlets read further from level than they did before, and every outlet that read level under v0.3.0 still reads level._ __Score lineage across rubric versions: each version's final partisan lean per outlet (sample size in parentheses).__ | Outlet | v0.2.0 | v0.3.0 | v0.4.0 (current) | | -------------------------- | ------------ | ------------- | ---------------- | | Alaska News | \-0.1 (n=36) | 0 (n=35) | 0 (n=340) | | Anchorage Daily News | \-0.3 (n=37) | \-0.2 (n=40) | \-0.5 (n=134) | | Alaska Beacon | \-0.3 (n=23) | \-0.5 (n=113) | \-0.4 (n=115) | | Anchorage Press | \- | \-0.2 (n=43) | \-0.3 (n=38) | | The Alaska Current | \- | \-1 (n=34) | \-1.2 (n=47) | | The Alaska Story | \- | 1.2 (n=36) | 1.6 (n=195) | | Juneau Independent | \- | \- | \-0.5 (n=134) | | Fairbanks Daily News-Miner | \- | \- | 0 (n=71) | | MatSu Sentinel | \- | \- | 0 (n=58) | | Alaska Watchman | \- | \- | 1.7 (n=70) | | Alaska's News Source | \- | 0 (n=18) | 0 (n=63) | | Nieman Lab | \- | \-0.2 (n=28) | \-0.1 (n=46) | | Must Read Alaska | 1.5 (n=17) | 1.2 (n=24) | 1.6 (n=79) | _Versions are never mixed in any aggregate. This table exists so the break at each version change is visible rather than hidden. v0.2 scored whole feeds. v0.3 onward scores each outlet's local journalism only, and v0.4 adds headlines to the judged text. So differences between columns reflect changes in our method as well as in the outlets._ **Calibration baseline, and where it came from.** The panel was first run against a frozen 14\-article reference set. Its provenance matters, so here it is in full. The reference audit was produced by an AI assistant and reviewed by a human in conversation. The rubric's scoring anchors were derived from that same audit. So agreement with the seed set shows the judges reproduce a documented read, not independently established truth. Every article scored since then is one the rubric has never seen, which is the ongoing check that matters. Each seat's average miss on bias against the seed set, its mean absolute error over 2 runs per seat: anthropic 0.2, openai 0.1, google 0.1. Any change of models or rubric re-scores this set, and the break is published. **Collection ethics.** Our crawler identifies itself honestly and respects robots.txt. It never gets around a paywall, and we republish no competitor text. Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Beacon are read from the full-text RSS feeds they publish. Scores describe the text, never anyone's intent. **Conflicts, stated plainly.** This page grades our own newsroom, and we operate it. The safeguards are the blinding, the cross-vendor panel, and publishing our losses, as the openness table does. One panel seat runs a model from Anthropic, whose models also draft Alaska News articles. The other two seats exist so that seat never rules alone. **Raw data.** Every number on this page comes from [one downloadable JSON](https://communities.news/data/alaska-media-scorecard.json), with aggregates and sampling frames but no article text. It was last updated 2026-11-01, and the page and the download update together. The data and the analysis on this page are licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): reuse them freely, with credit to the Alaska Media Bias Scorecard by Communities News. [Back to the Alaska News profile](https://communities.news/communities/alaska-news) · [Alaska News](https://alaskanews.com) ## The terms, in plain English Every dotted-underlined term on this page lands here. One rule covers most of it: the lean axes measure **direction**, and the quality scores measure **craft**. Never add them together in your head. A story can point nowhere and still be built badly, or point somewhere and be built well. On every lean axis the signs are written out below. A signed number you have to guess the direction of is a number we have not really published. Panel The three AI models that score every article. They come from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, and each scores on its own, so no single vendor's model decides. Blinded The judges do not see who published the article. Outlet names, bylines and self-references are stripped first, so the panel judges the text, not a reputation. The blinding is partial, because style or subject can still hint at the source. Rubric The published scoring rules. When the rubric changes, scores from different versions are never mixed. Each version's final numbers stay published in the lineage table. Sample size (n) How many articles stand behind a number. A bigger n means more confidence. A small n is an early read, not a verdict. Net The average direction across articles. Articles leaning opposite ways cancel out, so a net near zero can mean level or can mean both ways. Strength tells you which. Strength How far articles lean on average, whichever way they lean. High strength with a near-zero net means the outlet swings both ways. Low strength means its articles are level one by one. Partisan lean Party favoritism. Negative = Democratic-coded framing, positive = Republican-coded, 0 = none detected. Requires actual party-relevant treatment, not vibes. Ideological tilt Worldview rather than party: whose assumptions and policy logic the framing favors. Negative = progressive, positive = conservative. Institutional posture Whether official accounts are passed along or tested. NEGATIVE = deference (official accounts carried as fact), POSITIVE = skepticism (institutions treated as interested parties). Alaska News's negative score here means we center and trust official records more than anyone on the board. We publish it as the thing we are working to change. Conservation-development framing On resource and land stories, whose costs get counted. Negative = conservation framing favored, positive = development framing. It is scored only where the topic applies, which is why its n is smaller. Establishment-populist framing Whose voice is the default lens on power. Negative = establishment (expert, official and incumbent views), positive = populist (outsider and ordinary-person grievance). It is separate from left and right, because populism comes in both flavors. Evidence fairness 0 to 4\. Whether each claim gets scrutiny in proportion to its evidence. There is no manufactured balance for unsupported positions, and no burying of supported ones. Sourcing 0 to 4\. Whether the story shows where its facts come from: named sources, linked records, checked numbers, and the affected people heard. A one-sided account of a contested matter caps at 2. Source independence 0 to 4\. Whether interested parties' claims are tested rather than passed along. An article can sound perfectly neutral while adopting an official's framing whole, and that scores low here. This is Alaska News's weakest score and our active work. Analysis labeling 0 to 4\. Whether interpretation is marked as interpretation. News, analysis and opinion should never blur inside news copy. Language neutrality 0 to 4\. Whether the wording stays out of the way: no loaded adjectives, partisan cues or smuggled judgment. Local An outlet's own journalism: its news, politics, business and opinion sections, sorted by the same rule for every outlet. Wire stories, sports and syndicated lifestyle columns are left out. Local means the outlet's own reporting, not stories set in Alaska, which the coverage map counts separately. Near-zero net lean The label for a net lean closer to zero than 0.5\. From 0.5 up to 1.5 the label is "leans", and 1.5 or more names the side outright. These are cutoffs for labeling, not statistical tests, so read the number beside the label: a -0.4 and a -0.5 differ by a tenth. Known-lean control Must Read Alaska's role: a widely known leaning outlet, scored by the same blinded method. If the panel could not detect its lean, the method would be broken. Detecting it is what makes everyone's zeros credible. Out-of-state reference Nieman Lab's role: a national journalism-trade newsroom with no stake in Alaska, scored the same way. It lets you read Alaska scores against a baseline from outside Alaska.