News in Library Universe.

I imagined a news page that shows news from a broad political spectrum: left, right and center. But in doing so I don't want to be a platform for some of the current right wing ideas such as xenophobia, racism, islamophobia, gender discriminatory ideas etc. What I want to achieve is to foster critical thinking.

For example in Germany nobody talks about politics in daily life. I only see it at some demonstrations, in some bars as stickers like "f. AfD" etc. It is as if it is acceptable to ridicule the other. I find this wrong. Because when you call "the other" people idiots, you burn all the bridges to communicate and then they show you who the idiot is in the election booth. In this shouting, blaming language the real fears, concerns, ideas, being human gets lost.

I mean let's think about a doctor who maybe saved someone's life was deeply troubled with some right wing ideas like islamophobia maybe. But he was a good doctor and treated you well. Is he a complete idiot really? Or consider an atheist person: most of them hold very basic and ignorant ideas about religions and when explaining why they are atheists, they can not hold their ground for their condescending arguments against someone who believes in and knows their religion deeply. Their fear, anger, and condescending ideas about the "other" are brittle and they never realised them as such because they never had a safe, honest, deep conversation with "the other". Same goes for a religious person who holds some very basic and ignorant ideas about atheism and atheists.

A bad person, for me, is not someone who holds the wrong ideas. It is a person who does not actively challenge their beliefs, who doesn't try to find and dismantle their endoxas, and who refuses to change when presented with facts.

I am not original and hopefully not alone in this humility as a civic virtue idea. My inspirations:

I am also deeply inspired by the Nordic Constructive Journalism movement. I first learned about it when I started looking for a different kind of news page that I would actually enjoy reading. There are also good websites presenting news coverage with labeling like AllSides and Ground News that I learned and got inspired from.

I present the news from six leanings:

There is not a Center News because it actually doesn't exist as a category. The center is always shifting with voter movements. If the Left is gaining momentum, Center will be more Center-Left and will try to capture some votes from the new leftist momentum, or vice versa. This is exactly what is happening with CDU and CSU right now in Germany: they are becoming everyday more and more like an "acceptable" AfD to capture the votes that are going to the right wing right now.

Neutral and Apolitical categories are added because I also want to include some cultural and sports news in the future. Everything is political as Gramsci put it, I know, but I don't want to force categorizing everything. It might kill the vibe a little.

Sometimes center-left news would be labeled as neutral because, as I will publish my research about the political leanings of major AI models, they are mostly standing on center-left ideas and hence falsely labeling center-left ideas as neutral. I would fix it when I detect it and you would see my name as the editor in the authors section.

Another thing I don't like about news is the good news / bad news categorization. Mainstream media is overwhelmingly weighing on bad news. They are entrapped with engagement metrics. Bad news creates more engagement, makes you click on the article and stay longer on the page. If you read and follow the news today, it would steal from your energy and optimism. You will end up unnecessarily more depressed and stressed.

The alternative is not publishing only "good" news either. I find that attempt with the best intention naive. Their news coverage never touches a sensitive topic. It often appears to me to be news for people who try to hide from problems, hoping that if they don't see them, the problems will disappear on their own.

So instead of good news and bad news, I am introducing Agency Levels. Close to the Scandinavian Constructive Journalism ideas, this framing is about giving you time to regulate your emotions and gather strength before engaging with a story. Currently there are five levels:

These levels are from the perspective of an average person. My main purpose is to encourage more people to be more active in political life, not to flatten the complexity of the news itself.

If you feel like we are completely doomed, check out Gapminder by Hans Rosling and their team. A good effort to balance what is on the news and what is backed by scientific data.

I want to make the news accessible. For people with migration backgrounds, for german learners, for people who don't have a university education. This is why I present the same news in three different language levels:

For each level I added a few multiple-selection style questions about the news to see if the reader is understanding the content. These questions are designed to be solely about the news content, not open-ended opinion questions. The goal is to test understanding, not to push a view.

I also provide a selected vocabulary section that presents a list of important and frequently used terms to help learners of the language. And you can listen to the news to improve your listening skills as well.

Under each political news article I provide two opposing ideas from left and right, and ask a critical thinking prompt for the user to answer. I want people to think from different perspectives at the same time to facilitate understanding and empathy from the beginning of the conversation.

When a user enters a comment, I first send it to moderation. I don't want to save disrespectful, harmful, hateful, harassing language content. After moderation passes, it goes to proofreading. Proofreading tries very hard to not change what the user has said and meant, so it only checks grammar and spelling. It offers explanations for its changes and gives users some more information on the grammar topics to help in the future.

During saving, the comment also gets scored for two things:

For the fun and learning part of it. Crossword is an amazing way for memory building, to keep your neurons happy and young, and to foster new connections. Each crossword is built from the selected vocabulary section of the corresponding news article.

Judge everything as an experiment for now. The content is AI-generated. Focus on the language learning and improving aspects, which will be more reliable. I want to keep improving this experiment and see what it could do, especially for AI's role in journalism and public discourse.

• The detection of whether a comment is written by an AI or a human is currently flaky. Scores are not consistent.
• There is definitely room for improvement on the user interface and user experience.
• Improving the crosswords: right now they are built entirely from the selected vocabulary section, which makes them feel a bit empty. A richer and more enjoyable crossword experience is on the list.