Ground News Reviews

Cool app and appeciate its vision. However, I cannot vertically resize the window. That makes it unusable for me since I am not going to change my Mac desktop layout and how I work (i.e. hide the dock) to see the bottom of the window. Three stars represents the average of 5 for vision/functionality and 1 for UI implementation.

Just got Ground a few weeks ago and started paying for the highest tier the same day. I was very glad to find an aggregate of important news composed of different sources from across the political spectrum, and was transparent on where it’s sources lied on the spectrum. That hasn’t changed with this update, but man does GroundNews look gross now, and it makes things look more confusing.

In the previous update it was simple: flat color background (it was black to me but that could just be because I have dark mode on for my phone) with red for conservative, gray for center, and blue for liberal sources. Clean and easy to see. Now it’s a weird light colored gray for the background and a beige highlight. The color for the biases are the same, but now they feel the need to add a gradient to the colors so it just looks like a giant gray bar with some red mixed on the right and some blue mixed on the left. I get that the point is to show an intensity in bias, like the more solid the color the stronger the bias is. However it looks ugly, and I much prefer the old view to the new one.

I appreciate what they were going for, but wish they had kept it simple. Please fix, or at least give us the option to switch back to the old color pallet if we want to.

I have been using this as my primary news source for over a year. I value the ability to see multiple sides of a story including photos and videos relevant t the topic. I am still getting used to the new update. It definitely feels less clunky and much smoother to navigate, however, it is a real shame to see that the comments section has been removed in the new update. It was a largely unmoderated place (save a strict filter for inappropriate words) where people could speak their mind on topics. I greatly value the ability to see and discuss different perspectives . With that comes some toxicity, but that is anywhere people speak and people were free to turn it off or mute if they didn’t like it. It was so popular that many topics seemed to be exceeding the amount of space GN allotted for comments. I am very sad to see that instead of expanding it, they chose to shut it down. America is suppose to be a place where free speech is protected yet corporations continue to impede that ability more and more. There are so few venues to discus perspectives and challenge ideas because corporations continue to strangle out discussions and information that they do not like. I am not happy that Ground News chose to destroy their free speech platform (however small it was) which closed down one more venue that allowed the discussion of current events and perspectives.

I’ve loved Ground News for a long time now, and have really appreciated the work that they’ve put into showing all sides and biases. Unfortunately, this seems to have attracted a community of toxic hyper partisanship where users just see their side as “telling it as it is”, the center as “watering down the truth”, and the opposite side as the “MSM lies”. The comment section has gotten so out of control that I had to turn it off. Even then, I can’t feel good about funding a forum where people get “thumbs’d up” for insulting and making conspiracy theories about the capitol police officers who committed suicide (my last straw). These are the same people who’ve driven any semblance of moderacy away from the community and drag Ground News down like an anchor. Again, I really do appreciate what the creators of GroundNews have put together, but I just don’t want to fund the toxic environment that it hosts.

I don’t write many reviews but when an app is good enough to put an end to years of searching, the developers deserve the praise. I have tried many news apps and been dissatisfied with them all until Ground News. Not only does it do an excellent job of aggregating the news, but it provides a very intuitive and clean way to compare multiple sources. I also love the ad-free reader. GroundNews is perfect for users who don’t like being spoon fed news from only one angle. If you like to think for yourself and don’t want to fall prey to spin and manipulation, this is the perfect solution. The Blind Spot is a great addition that helps fulfill the apps mission and my search to educate myself on news events without falling prey to confirmation bias. I have chosen to pay for GroundNews both because it is truly worth it and because I want to ensure the developers are encouraged to keep up the good work. I truly hope that many more find GroundNews and that it can help many to be able to think for themselves and see through bias in these increasingly divisive times.

Update Feb 2022: GroundNews got a major overhaul. Cool features to analyze your social feeds to see what kind of bias you’re seeing and more importantly the comments seem to be gone at my first glance. Raising my review. I’ll use GroundNews more for a while and maybe give it a final rating.

GroundNews is well designed and easy to use. Getting an overview of how the news headlines are rated doesn’t take long since it’s pretty intuitive. I’ve added this to my regular news routine and might move to a subscription plan if it continues that way. The comments in GroundNews are almost entirely right wing and certainly an echo chamber. Honestly this makes me skeptical of GroundNews itself if the user base is heavily skewed to one end of the political spectrum. I know you can turn off the comments but I wonder why they even exist. The slanted nature hurts the trustworthiness of the brand. UPDATE: The comments are a 1 sided conservative cesspool that add no value. GroundNews ’s basis seems sound, but until they disable comments I would not recommend it and will not subscribe. The fact they permit that makes me question their motive.

I’ve been using GroundNews for a while now and I can say that the service this team provides is great.

I worry about being trapped in my own information bubble on the internet, getting sources and articles curated to appeal to my interests and biases in how they are told. GroundNews helps prevent me from getting stuck in such a bubble! The comparison ability is not a first among news services, however Ground News does it very well and I additionally appreciate the ability to see how much a side of the political spectrum reports on a story, which shows the level of importance an issue is to a side or if the story itself may be told in a twisted way.

I eventually paid to get the Pro version of GroundNews to support this service. The small team personally reached out to thank me and told me to contact them for any recommendations on how to improve GroundNews . That level of involvement was extremely nice to see.

I agree with some others that the comment section of GroundNews isn’t really needed, I personally ignore it. I feel GroundNews’s purpose doesn’t really mesh well with the commenting feature. Though Ground News makes this feature easy to ignore if you wish, yet accessible if you would like to contribute to it.

Overall I really enjoy this service, haven’t had any problems with it software wise, and would recommend supporting the team if you enjoy it too by subscribing to one of the paid models, since they’re so cheap.

Great News App! If you want to stay informed on current affairs, you could download every single news outlet's app. But that would be a lot of work. Instead, make it easier on yourself and download Ground News Pro. Ground New Pro collects articles from a large pool of sources, and incorporates different types of reporting, so not everything comes from the New York Times or a local news station. It tells you if the source leans left, right, or center. It learns from your reading style and directs more articles from your choices to you. Great news from all over. International to domestic. If you really only want updates from your regional newspaper, go ahead and download that dedicated app. But for news stories from around the world and across topics including entertainment, science, tech, politics, and beyond, get Ground News Pro. You won’t be disappointed.

GroundNews is amazing. Being able to scroll through the bias, location, and timing of a news story adds an incredible amount of context. The sources are truly international, and inline translation works well. I am now significantly more informed about how the world is seeing events unfold. This is something that google news, apple news, or any of the other aggregators do not give.

Furthermore, the developer support is REAL, and it is handled quickly and correctly by one of the co-founders. I had an edge case issue where my second device created a dummy account and I used a different email for my subscriptions. The developer wrote back the same day multiple times and we were able to resolve the issue. Bam!

I am a huge fan. Well worth the year subscription. Give the free trial a go, and you’ll be hooked.

1 - The new format is too convoluted. It takes too many screens to get to the actual story and even more to get back out. Readers should be able to go directly back to the main headline feed and/or the source page after reading an individual article.

2 - headline feed needs a “return to top” option. Nobody wants to scroll back to the top from several pages down.

3 - on the headline feed, chopping off the top of photos is so unbelievably annoying. You may think it’s a clever disguise to maximize clicks, but it is a psychological irritant. As a retired human interface quality expert, i suggest you shrink the photo and display the whole photo to the left with the headline and the source list to the right. Allow readers to choose at the headline where they want to land on the political spectrum and let them go directly to the desired source. You can put the source spectrum at the bottom of each article so readers can jump to the next source when they are finished reading.

4 - you need a ‘return’ to headlines’ button at the top and bottom of each full article.

I am a retired engineer. Therefore I feel justified in making these criticisms. I am also a woman who was forced to retire because of discrimination against women in my profession. It pains me that a woman developed news aggregation site (such a great idea) is so poorly designed that it actually drives readers away.

I like Ground News a lot, because as a news aggregator it is effective at what it does and the free access isn’t super restrictive. It allows you to do exactly what a news aggregator is supposed to do, allow you to compare, and contrast reporting and track news stories. On top of that it lets user to tailor it to the topics and regions you are most interested in.

What I think would make it better is if they did away with the comments section. Taking one look at the toxicity of most comments there, it is distracting and detracts from the positive experience to be had on GroundNews . I know they allow you to turn comments off, but I still strongly think they ought to be removed. The focus should be solely on the news and not people’s two-cents. That’s what social media is for and not a news aggregator.

I don’t usually write reviews for apps, but I absolutely love GroundNews! As a high school social studies teacher who teaches Government, American History, and Media Literacy, GroundNews helps me better stay informed about the main news stories of the day. I love the bias feature that allows average news consumer to figure how how a particular story is being covered by the polarized media outlets. It even links right to the actual news stories within GroundNews , so you don’t have to switch/close out an app to read a story.

Seriously, for the average news consumer, the paid subscription of $9.99/year is well worth the money. I’m hoping to show GroundNews to my students to help them understand the importance of getting your news from more than one source!

I love the idea for GroundNews, and have immensely enjoyed being able to quickly see how different sources are covering the same subject. However, the interface leaves much to be desired.

My biggest complaint is the ads. It is difficult to trust an app that says it’s unbiased when in the middle of the article I’m reading half the page is suddenly covered by a picture of Donald Trump asking me to support his future campaigns.

I assume that if I pay for an upgraded version I can hide the advertisements, but even that is unclear. When I click “Find Out More” to see their subscription options, it’s as if the page isn’t fully developed. I can certainly choose one of two plans to subscribe to, but no matter where I tap on the page it gives me no information about what these subscriptions provide.

GroundNews does one thing very well, it takes basically every source and, using third party media bias charts (3 of them which can be found into he settings), separates the sources into 1 of 7 categories, from far left to far right. The media bias charts have their own unbiased methodology, so if someone does not like where their preferred news source is located, it’s probably time to start using another source. Do not be an idiot and complain that “FoX nEwS iS nOt RiGhT.” Of course Fox News is a right source, how partisan does one have to be to not realize that. The media bias charts are great and have really shown me that some of the sources I would dip into, I no longer want to use (ex: MSNBC). GroundNews needs some UI improvements taken from an app like Brief (another great unbiased app), but other than that the idea of Ground News is fantastic.

My initial review of this was based on the idea that even though GroundNews fulfils a need and dream I’ve had for awhile, it had some bugs and inconsistencies. But since my first review I’ve seen updates that have addressed most of the issues. This is indeed a good team of devs that are actively listening to their community.

Normally I don’t bother looking at all the sources for every piece of news because it’s too time consuming. I just try to get a general idea without taking on too much bias, but despite my best efforts I’m sure I’ll take on the point of view of the first few articles which are being fed to me via some personalised algorithm.

GroundNews fixes that, not only can I get a clearer idea of the biases, I can also compare each side or location and get even more information.

So far I see the potential with Ground News and i am planning to use this exclusively. That being said I noticed a bug and wasn’t sure if there was a process to share so I decided to just do it here. I am uninterested in celebrities so I have this not selected but I am interested in the environment so I have that selected. I have noticed that a title that includes the word “environment” is included in that section but I am getting articles in my feed regard toxic environments on social media. Nothing to do with actual environments. I see the logic but can recognize that I would like to see a way to tag an article from a topic in the feed to say it isn’t suppose to appear there.

Idk but so far probably the best news app I’ve used. Better than reddit for sure. Great Job!

I have been using GroundNews for a few months now and I really love it! More than any other news source or aggregator, this one provides so many features to compare and understand how the news is reported differently by region, political leanings, or even just how the story changes over time. It features blindspot reports, alerts, links to sources. I love flipping through the headlines to see the subtle word choices as you move from left to right or US based to world based news.

I have over 75 news sources linked in my browser, fact checkers, sites on media rankings, and yet I feel I have learned more just being able to see the stories play out in real-time.

I love Ground News - it’s my go-to source for news every day. It’s the only place I trust to see media bias and get the full picture on each headline.

But the redesign completely broke the “Read Full Article” feature! For some reason, every single source for every headline only actually points to one source. For example, every single source redirects to “Raw Story” for an article about Trump and classified records today. When I click CNN? Raw Story. Washington Examiner? Raw Story. It’s the same for every headline! Not all of them point to Raw Story - for each headline it’s a different one, but I can’t actually open the full articles except one.

Also, minor bug, but it takes several views of the notifications page (accessed by the bell button in the upper left hand corner) to actually clear out notifications and mark them as read. I’m OCD about clearing my notifications badges so this has become super irritating.

I’m not a HUGE fan of the aesthetics of the redesign either. I preferred the old design. That being said, I will get used to it if the bugs are fixed.

Please fix GroundNews!! I need my news back!! Ground News is such a fundamental part of how I engage with the news cycle and it’s been so frustrating to use since the update.

Love this news app! The layout is great, the ranking on left/right/center views is great, love the colors (very easy on the eyes). There is a slight annoyance with the alerts tho. I’m order to clear GroundNews badge icon, I need to go into my alerts, close out and go back in for the second time before the alerts clear. I’m one of those who doesn’t like having badge numbers just sitting around, so it’s nice to clear them when I read them. Other than that, I’ll happily pay a small subscription for this beauty. Can’t freaking stand ads that are literally everywhere on all the other news apps out there. Even the ones you pay for still have just as many ads. So stupid.

A news aggregator that rates bias is an interesting idea and I was really excited to see an assortment of stories and how the coverage differs. However, within 30’ of installing and only trying a few stories I am deleting GroundNews due to absurd execution.

Unlike other news aggregators that I’ve used, this loads each publisher’s individual Web pages. This is a problem because of constant pop ups, cookies, requests for subscriptions, ads, intrusive videos, and everything else we HATE about browsing the Internet. Why would I subject myself to so much crap just to see how different biases are expressed? Nope, I’m out.

Clear out all that garbage and maybe I’ll reinstall. Stop using icons instead of names for news sources and maybe I’ll even pay. As it stands now, it’s an interesting idea, poorly executed, and not worth your $1/mo. or even your time.

While I would love a competitor in this space of news aggregators with a twist, GroundNews is baffling to use. Notifications make no sense and don't open up the story. The UI is a constant frustration to navigate for someone wanting to, you know, use the map and read news (seems like the point?). Is the map a nav tool or a visual organizer? Turns out it's bad at both. Map filtering? huh?

The top menu buttons of Top and Latest give me the same stories generally. My News doesn't seem to make much sense, and when I'm actually wanting to read the story on the original site there's no usual direct 'open in Safari' menu item nearby.

The core news feed format is good, but seems very dominated by world news. Having no way to say what your region or country is makes this best for reading local news or world news but not "national" news (which gets lost).

My only complaint is that they need to develop an IPad-specific version where the “news feed” is a vertical stream that you scroll up and down through on the map (while in landscape mode) instead of the weird narrow band with horizontal scrolling. Otherwise its a pretty solid app with the ability to see news articles from multiple sources for a given event. Some of the articles are not accurately depicted on the map; however, this could be related to the articles’ meta-data and not an app issue.

Definitely recommend giving this one a shot, especially if you live in a high-population area and enjoying staying informed.

I’ve been searching for a balanced news app for so long. Others that would claim to be balanced seem to be conspicuously missing news sources from one side or other. Been using this for maybe a week and it’s the best attempt at balanced news I’ve found so far in my years of searching.

I love the ability to see the same type of news story and have the ability to compare the reporting narratives. It’s wonderful to be able to focus on news areas for non-headline stories. I’m excited to see more of the world through others eyes and not just from the western point of view. I’d really like an edit button for comments though...first post and auto- correct just took over. :P

I’ve been using Ground for several months and love the ability to effortlessly access auto-translated news from around the world. The easy access to so many news organizations and perspectives is my favorite feature. I also appreciate the global focus of the morning news alerts.

Great app, love the map view which helps me orient to the news geographically. Show stopper for me is the inability to filter out certain types of news. I don’t care for sports news - I have ESPN for that. GroundNews doesn’t let me specify the types of news I don’t want to see at all so even though I selected politics and business, I still have sports dominating my top stories feed...

Finally, a news source that doesn’t lean too far left or right but just reports the honest, raw news when it happens. I particularly like the international aspect that we never get enough of from any of the other news sources.

This is actually a pretty good app with a ton of sources and news topics to customize your feed content.

However, if you want to get more involved than that you have to make an account and if you want to leave a comment... it REQUIRES YOUR LOCATION! Yes, they will 100% obstruct any attempt at commenting on a story without turning on location services. Please, fellas. I’ve been victim of enough opinion based hacking/stalking thanks to internet scum and stupid programming choices like this. It claims it NEEDS your location to “read, report and share local news”... to make a comment.

Often you only hear one story or partial report on a topic of interest to you— now with Ground you can dig deep or skim over news of importance and get honest reports! Love to watch evolving stories- you feel immersed in the drama and significance! Kudos to Ground — Empower people!

The idea and progress of GroundNews thus far are great. My biggest ask is to provide a setting option to hide arrows that allows shifting from one source to another on the same topic. Given a user can easily swipe from side to side it doesn't make sense to obstruct a user's view.

Get the same story from different sources allows for a more balanced view. Also provides articles I would have not otherwise have seen.

The UI is good and the concept sounds good, but the reality doesn’t match. Filtering to location doesn’t work. Even when it says filtered to map, it still lists news from around the world. Unless I’m in Canada, Europe and South America at the same time. Also, you can’t filter out news sources so you’re stuck with useless, irrelevant and inaccurate news whether you like it or not.

Variety of news sources left, right and everything in between! Make up your own mind

Love the opposing and different points of view. Helps me get out my social echo chamber. Map feature really cool too, lots of fun looking back at home town and seeing what’s going on.

Loved GroundNews right from the start. Great ease of access and a very user-friendly interface. There are also plenty of different news sources available so it’s great for just about anyone