Leans left
Summarized from more than one independent rater, including AllSides and Ad Fontes Media. We do not rate outlets ourselves.
Founded in 1857 by abolitionists including Ralph Waldo Emerson, and majority-owned since 2017 by Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective. It publishes long-form argument and reporting and has grown substantially in recent years.
It is unusual in publishing conservative writers seriously rather than as tokens, and its critics on the left say so with some irritation. Critics on the right counter that the range narrowed considerably after 2016, and that its institutional voice now takes one side of the central political question as settled.