u/Isaac_Tangle

Hey gang,

I popped into Reddit for the first time in a while today and saw this thread, which obviously caught my eye. The post itself, and the comments, were super enlightening. I'm genuinely here not just to mount some kind of defense but engage, because I learned a bit and some stuff caught me by surprise. And because, well, I've bet my entire livelihood on making Tangle work so I gotta make sure we aren't losing long-time supporters! Some assorted thoughts I'd really love to just put into the ether

• First and most importantly: the idea that our team doesn't consult experts is just flatly untrue. Not only do we interview a lot of topic experts for all manner of podcasts, Friday editions, etc. we all also come from totally different backgrounds with different expertises and relationships and sources. I just interviewed Matt Stoller, maybe the foremost progressive expert on monopoly and antitrust law, for a forthcoming pod episode. Just because a direct quote from him doesn't appear in the newsletter doesn't mean he isn't shaping our coverage; just because an expert doesn't appear in the newsletter doesn't mean an expert wasn't consulted for the introduction or a take. I've literally shared Google docs with sections of our newsletter with topic experts and asked them to flag any potential factual inaccuracies or push back on a piece. I am constantly emailing, texting, and calling people/sources who have expertise in potential issues before writing or editing a piece. These are all pretty common journalistic practices, but we save a lot of time by not asking people to go on the record or seeking out the "perfect" quote to include in a piece, because (almost always) we aren't trying to break news, we're trying to explain/break it down.
• Related to the above, I saw a lot of people referencing errors or mistakes we made that keyed them off to some kind of lack of rigor. But I didn't see a single example! What errors? What mistakes? What did they look like? We obviously track corrections, and it's extremely important to me that we aren't misinforming our readers, so this is both a challenge (bring the receipt) and also an important gut check. If you are a topic expert on something and we got something wrong, don't post about it vaguely on Reddit. Write to us! I want to fix it. I'm at isaac@readtangle.com and you can reach our staff for corrections at staff@readtangle.com
• Most news outlets have a narrower or more unique goal than just delivering news. Miami Herald wants to serve Miami. NYTimes is the paper of record, breaking news and doing original reporting across the country. Politico is insider-y D.C. news. Free Press is a sort of centrist anti-progressive news outlet. Our goal is to be a big tent news org -- bringing conservatives, indies and liberals under one roof so they can better understand each other's views and dialogue amongst themselves. We aren't trying to moderate people's views or break news about the energy sector or shit talk progressives; we're trying to be a space where you get a genuinely holistic understanding of the news (see it explained) and also understand the lenses that the news is being seen through (left/right). We try to make this extra interesting/engaging by not just aggregating, but producing our own original content (My take). And now we have the resources to do more original reporting, writing, and interviews (Friday editions, the podcast, The Sunday, etc).
• I think the ideal use-case for Tangle is in one of two buckets: 1) You are a person who has 15-20 mins to keep up with American politics every day, and time for one news source. Tangle, in my opinion, is one of the best. We don't just give you a surface level 150 word break down of a topic, we go much deeper, with a more much diverse set of sources, and you'll have a really good holistic 101 understanding of what just happened, with opportunities (link outs and follow up coverage) to go much deeper. 2) You are a junkie who consumes news all day, and we are a jumping off point. Every edition includes links to past coverage, other outlets' coverage, deeper breakdowns, data, research, etc. and you can start with us and follow the rabbit hole wherever it goes.
• We are also different from a lot of places by trying to be really human-forward. Not just by resisting the reaches of AI or whatever else, but also by not acting like an institution. I'm here, right now, trying to engage. We answer and publish reader criticisms constantly. We lean into human-first storytelling and writing, and try to make it clear there are real people behind our work rather than a faceless group of employees working under a logo. That produces a different product, in my opinion, which offers a different kind of value than something like the Associated Press (not better -- different. We couldn't do our work without them.)

Finally, I'd just say that I constantly hear from topic-level experts who see our coverage after reading more traditional news outlets and write in with complimentary notes about how we were one of the few places to capture the nuance or complicating factors of an issue, and how grateful they are that we're not just doing some 120 word round-up that misses all that. I think that is simply a product of our format and our rigor. Of all the things I'm proud of about Tangle, that one really is the thing that is one of the most important to me. Our reality and this moment just aren't made for short-form news, yet that's the most dominant kind of news we have right now. And I love that we are pushing something different out into the ether.

Anyway, thanks all for reading, and for the folks who hopped in to make their own case for sticking around. u/TheUnsettler1216 I hope you stay with us! Will try to monitor this thread for any feedback/thoughts