About LEFT Network

A daily front page for progressive media and the publishers creating it.

LEFT Network is a daily front page for progressive media and the publishers creating it. We pull stories from independent and established left-leaning outlets, sort through them, and put the ones that matter on a single page — so you don't have to chase them across a dozen feeds, and so the people writing them get the credit and the click.

Why this exists

The progressive media-sphere is broad and growing. There's serious work happening at Truthout, Mother Jones, Lever News, Current Affairs, DC Report, dozens of independent newsletters, plus a steady output of podcasts and video — and no single place that surfaces the best of any of it on a given day.

You either pick one outlet and miss everything else, or you scroll three social feeds optimized to make you angry. Neither is great.

There's a structural piece behind that. Over the last decade, the right built a dense, well-financed media infrastructure — most of it underwritten by a handful of billionaires. The left has had no equivalent buildout, and good-faith leftists wouldn't accept that kind of money even if it were on offer. So the infrastructure has to come from somewhere else: from the publishers, the readers, and the cooperative arrangements they're willing to build together.

Where this is headed

LEFT Network is being built as a cooperatively-run hub for the progressive media-sphere — shared tools, shared audience, and a real say for the publishers we amplify. That's a direction, not a finished structure. The aggregation layer is what's live today. The rest is being shaped in the open, with the publishers willing to shape it. We won't claim to be a cooperative until we are one.

How it works (today)

We follow the public RSS feeds of dozens of progressive outlets. Throughout the day, new stories come in. An editor selects what goes where — what gets the headline slot on The Report, what makes the homepage feed, what lands in the Podcasts & Video section.

Every link on the site goes directly to the publisher's page. We don't host articles, we don't republish them, and we don't put them behind any wall of our own. If a story is paywalled at the source, it stays paywalled — we'll send you to it, and the publisher gets the click.

Three places worth knowing about:

  • The Report — the daily curated front page. Start here.
  • Explore — every story we've ever indexed, filterable by source, topic, and date.
  • The newsletter — a weekly digest of what made The Report. Free, no spam, unsubscribe with one click.

The "today" in the heading is deliberate. The aggregation layer is what's live; the next layers are what we're building toward.

Where the stories come from

We aggregate from these sources. If you don't see one you trust, email us and tell us about it.

Source list current as of launch — we add and remove outlets as the editorial picture changes.

Publishers — come build this with us.

If your outlet appears on LEFT Network — or you wish it did — there's an open invitation here that goes beyond "thanks for the RSS feed." We built this because nobody was going to build it for us, and the next layers shouldn't be built for you either. We're working toward a cooperatively-run hub: shared tools, shared audience, real say in how the place runs. That's not all built yet. The aggregation layer is. The rest is being shaped by the publishers willing to shape it. If that sounds like you, get in touch at partners@left.network.

Who's behind it

LEFT Network is built and run by the team — a small group of editors and engineers working in the open. It's an independent project. No investors, no parent company, no ad network, no paywall. How the project gets where it's headed (see above) will be shaped by the publishers and readers who show up.

What this isn't

We don't (currently) author the stories on the site — that credit belongs to the publishers and writers we link to. If we ever publish original work here, it'll be clearly marked as ours and it won't crowd out theirs. Either way, the site exists to point you at good work, not to replace it.

It isn't an algorithm trying to maximize your time on page. There's nothing to scroll forever. When you've read The Report, you're done.

It isn't trying to be neutral. The sources are progressive. So is the editorial perspective. We think being honest about that is more useful than pretending otherwise.

It isn't a finished product, and it isn't trying to look like one.

Contact

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