Talk:Ground News

Starter resources and some questions

While researching, I found it difficult to find resources to use as citations. Searching for "Ground News" on Google always gives an overwhelming amount of results for ground.news (which is to be expected). I found more links to news sources through the Ground News "About" and "History" pages than through searches. I thought I would share some links that may be harder to find. Some are cited in the article, some not:

Ground News maintains a "History" timeline, which is mostly links to other articles.

Information on Snapwise Inc., the company that owns Ground News. I suspect it is a company owned by Harleen Kaur or investors. Records indicate Snapwise is located in Kitchener, and was founded March 26, 2014.

A Forbes profile from Feb 2017 on Kaur. Ground News is not referenced in the article.

A TEDx talk given by Kaur at the University of Waterloo in Feb 2019.

A Dec 2019 Women's Wear Daily article mostly on fake news, but uses several quotes from Kaur.

A Jan 2020 press release announcing Ground News Pro.

A Feb 2020 Digital Trends article.

A June 2020 article from MIT Technology Review on the technology industry based in Kitchener. Ground News is only a small part of the article.

An undated Velocity Incubator article. (Metadata says the article was published Aug 18, 2020, modified Dec 1, 2022)

Two CTV News interviews with Kaur from Aug 2021 and Nov 2021.

A Sep 2020 Mashable article on social media information bubbles, with some quotes from Kaur.

A Nov 2020 Voice of America interview with Kaur.

A Feb 2021 National Press Club interview with Kaur.

A Mar 2021 Mashable article on the Twitter Blindspotter feature.

A June 2022 Op-ed in MediaPost written by Kaur.

A PLOS One study from Feb 2024 on polarization and media consumption, which uses Ground News.

A BNN Bloomberg interview, which is the same as the second CTV News interview linked above.

An article by the Waterloo Region Record (behind a paywall).

A timeline of investor funding news. Crunchbase data is user-generated, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this information, but it may be of some use.

The Google Play store page for the Ground News app. Click on "About this app" to reveal some more information.

The Ground News YouTube channel and Vimeo page, for some promotional materials.

Articles that fleetingly mention Ground News: The Globe and Mail Nov 2018 (behind a paywall), NYTimes Oct 2020, USA Today Nov 2020, Financial Times Mar 2021 review of Twitter Blindspotter, USA Today June 2021 (archived because original behind a paywall), Washington Post Nov 2023.

Questions

Release date – The Ground News app was definitely released in April 2018. On the Google Play app store, clicking on "About this app" shows the release date of April 24, 2018. The "About Us" page claims the service was launched on April 27, 2018. This was left out of the article because I was unable to find an independent source to confirm this. Complicating things, in a National Press Club interview with co-founder and CEO Harleen Kaur, the interviewer claims, and Kaur repeats, that the service was launched in January 2020. This may be referring to how the "Pro" version was launched in January 2020. According to a Velocity Incubator article the service was free-to-us for 14 months, but that still doesn't add up to April 2018.

Company information – This is small, but Ground News has given two figures for how many employees they have. According to the "About" page, "The Ground News team ... is made up of 18 media industry outsiders." However, in the Reddit methodology page, "Ground News is run by a team of seven industry outsiders." The Reddit Methodology page also features a picture of their old logo, so maybe its just out of date. Another matter is who the company investors are. According to the "About" page, under "Our Team," "We are not funded by a media company, big tech, government affiliations nor institutional investors - we are supported by our subscribers and a small group of individual investors who care about the problem [media bias] personally." I am unable to find any information on the investors. Maybe they are the same people referenced in the Forbes profile.

Timeline – In the company's history timeline, they have an odd habit of pointing to events that do not seem like company history, and referencing coverage from some questionable sources. Several points on the timeline reference how the company was mentioned in an interview or in a Tweet by a well-known individual. Some statements on the timeline do not have links for verification. Additionally, the timeline also promotes interviews and articles released by well-known sources of biased or false information, such as Newsmax, Breitbart, The Epoch Times, and Russia Today. I especially find this surprising given that one of the stated purposes of Ground News was to provide easy access to credible, newsworthy information.

Hope all this helps with future edits. – DV79 (talk) 05:43, 1 March 2024 (UTC)