News app provides three sides to every story

Perspecs is a news aggregation app that provides three differing views or predictions for each story.

Journalism is, even in its finest form, often very partisan, with different newspapers and websites presenting their own takes on any one news story. So developers at British publishing firm Trinity Mirror are trying to find a new way of bringing readers a balanced diet of news and opinion. Trinity Mirror’s digital product team has developed Perspecs, a news aggregation app, which gives users access to different sides of the same story.

The app, available on Android and iOS, gathers news sources from around the world, including the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, and the BBC in the UK, as well as Russia Today, CNN and the New York Times internationally. It presents three sides to every news story, and enables users to switch between the different stories. These include neutral, left wing and right wing political perspectives, or three predictions on the outcome of a sports fixture.

Trinity Mirror’s head of product Darren Sher said the project grew out of people questioning their news sources: “The aim with Perspecs is to offer readers the opportunity to make up their own mind about a story rather than relying on a single source of news.”

The app is currently in its beta stages and won the ‘Surprise Us’ award at the BBC’s #NewsHackDay in 2015.

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