Twitter List (canonical source)
The National Consensus News Index, or NCNI, is a stable index of national and local journalists on Twitter. Inspired by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the idea is to see if collecting the tweets of a predictable group of top journalists from multiple mediums, political leanings, and geographies can, over time, generate a consensus view of the top national news stories that people from across the political spectrum can turn to and trust for authoritative information about what the nation’s top stories are at any given time.
The components were chosen in an attempt to maximize two competing goals: consensus and diversity (of mediums, political leanings, geographies, and demographics). Like the DJIA, the idea is that over time both the categories and individual components of the index will change to better reflect the American news landscape. Right now, the components are chosen by me, because I created it. If the idea takes off, I’d like to create some kind of independent, self-governing entity to maintain it.
The NCNI is broadly based on this proposal to create a cooperative “reverse wire” that can combat hoaxes and misinformation on social media, particularly during times of breaking news, by allowing news organizations to add their stories to “consensus” topic pages. Because that idea requires a high degree of coordination among media outlets that is unlikely in the current business environment, this index will serve as a proof of concept of creating consensus news from a diverse array of sources.
Right now, it’s just a Twitter list and a pretty bad Paper.li. In the near future, I’ll build a basic site that includes multiple ways to filter, stream, and share the output of the NCNI, particularly by story, which should make the output far more interesting to browse. I invite others to contribute their ideas for filtering, measuring, and composing the NCNI.
Send feedback on the structure and components of the index by replying to this post or tweeting at me (@gabestein). I basically made this up on the fly, and I’m sure there are many ways to improve it, particularly when it comes to diversifying voices, sources, and mediums.
Suggest or build useful ways to quantify the goals or tweet-output of the index.
Build, apply, or suggest a new filter for the index (let me know on Twitter or in a reply to this post if you do). The raw tweets, while interesting, aren’t particularly useful. I’m interested in coming up with ways to filter the tweets on the index by link, topic, entity, geography, sentiment, authority, medium, etc. Paper.li, which is the first, easiest filter I’ve turned to, is obviously a short-term stop-gap – although the results are intriguing.
Last update: Feb 25, 2018
(10) Lead anchors from “big 3 + 1” primetime weekday and weekend broadcast news: ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS
Jeff Glor, CBS Evening News
Reena Ninan, CBS Evening News (weekend)
Elaine Quinjano, CBS Evening News (weekend)
Lester Holt, NBC Nightly News
Jose Diaz-Balart, NBC Nightly News (weekend)
Kate Snow, NBC Nightly News (weekend)
David Muir, ABC World News Tonight
Tom Llamas, ABC World News Tonight (weekend)
Judy Woodruf, PBS NewsHour
Hari Sreenivasan, PBS NewsHour (weekend)
(5) Lead anchors from “big five” Sunday morning talk shows: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN
Chris Wallace, Fox (no personal account, via show account)
Jake Tapper, CNN
George Stephanopoulos, ABC
Chuck Todd, NBC
Margaret Brennan, CBS
(11) Lead anchors from “big 3” afternoon/evening (4pm–11pm EST) weekday cable news: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC (news and politics only, as defined by Wikipedia — no opinion, panel, talk, commentary, “current affairs” style shows)
Jake Tapper, CNN (repeat)
Wolf Blitzer, CNN
Don Lemon, CNN
Anderson Cooper, CNN
Erin Burnett, CNN
Neil Cavuto, Fox News
Martha MacCallum, Fox News
Brett Baier, Fox News
Ari Melber, MSNBC
Nicole Wallace, MSNBC
Chuck Todd, MSNBC (repeat)
(6) 1 White House correspondent each from NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Times
Maggie Haberman, NYT
Philip Rucker, WaPo
Rebecca Ballhaus, WSJ
Annie Karni, Politico
Sagaar Enjeti, Daily Caller
S.A. Miller, Washington Times
(6) 1 national correspondent each from NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Times
Simon Remro, NYT
Scott Wilson, WaPo
Shayndi Raice, WSJ
Cristiano Lima, Politico
Christian Datoc, Dailey Caller
Valerie Richardson, Washington Times
(6) 2 mainstream liberal commentators, of choice
Josh Marshall, TPM
Catherine Rampel, WaPo
(2) 2 mainstream conservative commentators, of choice
Jonah Goldberg, National Review
Ross Douthat, NYT
(2) 2 mainstream non-aligned commentators, of choice
Noah Smith, Bloomberg View
Dan Drezner, WaPo
(1) 1 far left commentator, of choice
Seth Ackerman, Jacobin
(1) 1 far right commentator, of choice
Joel Pollack, Twitter
(1) 1 media critic
Brian Stelter, CNN
(20) 1 anchor/host for one local news station in each of the top 20 DMAs (chosen more or less at random due to lack of Nielsen access)
Pat Harvey, CBS NYC
Robert Kovacik, NBC LA
Eric Horng, ABC Chicago
Mike Jerrick, Fox Philladelphia
Steve Eager, Fox Dallas
Will Tran, Kron San Francisco
Liam Martin, CBS Boston
Justin Farmer, WSB Atlanta
Pat Lawson, NBC Washington
Rekha Muddaraj, CBS Houston
Huel Perkins, Fox Detroit
Alison Rodriguez, ABC Phoenix
Gayle Guyardo, NBC Tampa Bay
Mark Wright, NBC Seattle
Michelle Tuzzee, ABC Minneapolis
Lauren Pasterna, CBS Miami
Tracy McCool, Fox Cleveland
Kyle Clark, NBC Denver
Vanessa Echols, ABC Orlando
Liz Kreutz, ABC Sacramento