AllSides started in 2012, co-founded by John Gable (Lean Right bias) and Scott McDonald (Center bias). AllSides For Schools, a separate non-profit project of the Mediators Foundation, was co-founded in 2015 by Gable, McDonald and Joan Blades (Left bias). Since 2016, AllSides and its properties, including AllSides.com and its mobile application, have been owned and run by AllSides LLC.
The original co-founders maintain majority ownership and control of AllSides LLC, with John Gable being the primary owner and investor.
Our Audience
Like other companies, we serve and are greatly financed by our audience, so the make-up of our audience is important.
The AllSides audience is uniquely balanced. We regularly administer surveys on our website to discover the political bias of users. An average of two back-to-back surveys once gave us a perfect political balance of 29% left, 42% center and 29% right. Our most recent survey was in November 2022. It found that 35% of our users identify as mixed, 29% of users left of center, 33% right of center, and about 4% unsure. In the same survey, 45% of respondents identified themselves as Independent, 22% as Democrat, 19% as Republican, and 15% as “something else.” While these numbers do fluctuate slightly over time, they have consistently shown a very even (unusual in the news media space) political balance, often within a margin of error of being perfectly balanced.
This balanced audience, and our reliance on balance as a core differentiator for our brand and business, means that we are financially rewarded for remaining balanced. Many news organizations would like to be balanced or less biased, but they make more money by catering to one side of the other. For AllSides, our aspirations, customer expectations and financial incentives all align.
Our Revenue Sources
AllSides primarily makes money through subscriptions and services.
Online subscriptions and donations accounted for 23% of AllSides revenue in 2022. While that used to be over half of our revenue, in 2022 most of our revenue came from a variety of client services in news, bias, education, dialogue and technology (72%).
Paying clients as well as partners and funders (whether for profit or non-profit) can drive a media company in one partisan direction or the other. To protect our own balance and independence, AllSides’ partners, clients and investors span the political spectrum.
Advertising accounted for a small amount of revenue – about 4% – in 2022. We apply our own advertising standards to prevent conflicts with our credibility and mission. This includes not permitting political advertisements on our website.
We understand that advertising can be a major conflict of interest for media companies that seek to be balanced, factual, fair and credible since it rewards them for being sensationalist, biased and overly quick to publish. AllSides will never resort to clickbait, misinformation, or fake news to earn ad revenue. Users can view AllSides ad-free by becoming a Sustaining Member, and we encourage anyone to report inappropriate or political advertisements to us.
Our Business Model
AllSides’ business and funding model aligns with our social good mission. It encourages our team to prioritize quality, credibility and balance that supports our brand and leads to more subscriptions and service revenue rather than instantaneous gratification and sensationalism that drive advertising dollars.
While AllSides does provide client services to partners and news organizations, our focus is on the end consumer; we make money by providing services to others to advance our mission to help free people from filter bubbles.