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Even news outlets perceived as politically neutral can benefit from today's polarized media environment.

The past decade has seen a surge in partisan online news sites that patently skew toward one side of the American political spectrum, from the right-leaning Blaze Media to the openly liberal Axios. Money is a primary driver of this media polarization: User engagement translates to dollars in subscriptions or advertising. Online news outlets' revenue depends upon attracting eyeballs from an increasingly polarized reading public known to avoid journalism that does not confirm their existing biases.

Surprisingly, those same dynamics can also attract readers of all stripes to officially nonpartisan outlets. That's the unexpected takeaway of a paper I co-authored and published in the June 2024 issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems. It found that news sources perceived as unbiased can sometimes tweak their story presentation to appeal to partisans.

That is good for their bottom line, at least in the short run—but it may not be great for American democracy.

Polarized politics, polarized readers

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