Welcome to The Fact File!

Welcome to a new year and a new way of presenting information.  This is the first day of what we hope will be a very successful and long-lasting project. As you will learn by visiting our story, the goal of The Fact File is to improve public discourse by informing, rather than persuading. Our content will look at the important issues of the day, but, unlike other sites these days, will do so without any ideological spin one way or the other. We care about what the facts are, and believe firmly in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous quote: “everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

We aim to be an independent source of information and, as such, rely solely on donations and third-party ad placement—instead of directly solicited advertisements—for support. So if you like what we’re doing and want to help make the site even better, please do! And your support doesn’t have to be financial: if you like what you see, please tell your friends. At the same time, if you don’t like what you see, please tell us so that we can improve going forward. Finally, if you have ideas for something we should write about or want us to look into something specific, please contact us.

We are grateful for our nearly 2,000 Twitter followers and our nearly 1,000 Facebook fans, all of whom joined us before we published a single word.  We are also grateful to Stony Brook University for allowing us to participate in their intern program.  And, of course, we are grateful for our readers—especially those who are visiting us this first day.  Given that this is a new site and that we are researchers, not web developers, we ask for your patience in the coming months.

While we are in our start-up phase, we will have new content Monday through Friday, so make sure to check back every day.  Saturdays we will recap our stories of the week and Sundays we will offer a preview of the week to come.  We have a number of topics planned for the coming months and we’re sure many more will come up during this exciting time in the United States and throughout the world.  In addition to Facebook and Twitter, you can follow our RSS feed to stay up to date with what we are writing about.