I worked for a huge global media company for a while. From the inside I could see what it took to reach the masses and keep their attention: reach, influence, and messaging that was controlled very carefully.

I could also see what got cut. The mundane stories, the small ones, the unsexy ones ended up on the cutting room floor, because the company won by getting the most eyeballs, and fear, outrage and division got the most eyeballs. Rage was on the menu. If it bleeds, it leads.

There was a second rule, and nobody had to write it down. A story that might upset an advertiser, a partner or an owner did not run. You do not bite the hand that feeds you. I don't think that makes the people in those rooms villains. The incentives did the choosing.

What many people call tribalism is not inevitable; rather, it's a function of group norms.

As I've gotten older I've started reading alternative news sources. Partly to get more of the news that matters, and partly to hear from people on the ground who saw the thing happen. I've come to admire the journalists who are building their own audiences one reader at a time.

I want more of that. I want citizen journalists filling the gaps the big outlets leave, and acting as a check on what mass media turns into when attention is the product being sold.

That's where UnityUpdates came from. I want communities to have a toolkit to find, train, empower and enable people to tell more stories, ask harder questions, and dig into the stories that matter where they live. In practice that means an Editor who hands out assignments by name, Reporters who write under their own names, and a desk where the gaps in a story turn into questions the community can answer.

There are no view counts in it and no trending list. Each story shows its sources and its label, and a correction stays attached to the story it fixes.