The Case for Free Press
Encyclopedia Brown · News Investigations
A free news reader built around one idea: you deserve to know what's happening in the world — and who's paying the people telling you about it.
No Paywalls. No Logins.
Every story links to a free source. NPR, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, BBC, Democracy Now!, ProPublica — real journalism, no subscription required.
Your Neighborhood, Too.
Enter your ZIP code and see city-level, regional, and statewide news that actually covers where you live. Not just the coasts.
A Global View.
American news looks different from outside America. We cover eight world regions — Europe, Africa, SwaNa, Asia, Latin America, North America, and more — across 90+ independent outlets.
Follow the Money.
Every article carries a funding badge showing who owns or funds that outlet — government, corporate, or PAC-connected. Tap it to see the sourced facts. Judge for yourself.
Breaking News, Your Way.
Set keywords — "Uruguay," "inflation," "climate" — and get browser alerts the moment matching stories hit the wire. No algorithmic push. Your words, your news.
Installs Like an App.
Encyclopedia Brown is a Progressive Web App. Add it to your home screen on iOS, Android, or desktop. Works offline. No App Store. No data harvesting.
90+ outlets across 8 regions · plus local news for any U.S. ZIP code
Built by someone who needed it. Kept alive by people who use it.
Encyclopedia Brown started as a personal project. The developer — someone working class, not a startup founder, not a media executive — got fed up with Apple News after realizing how many of its sources were funded by the same interests they were supposed to be covering. So they built something better.
This app does not carry ads. It does not sell your data. It does not hide stories behind a paywall. It aggregates free journalism from 90+ outlets worldwide and shows you, clearly, who funds each one. That takes real work to build and real money to run.
If you use this app and it's helped you stay informed — about your neighborhood, your country, or the world — we're asking you to support it the way listeners support public radio: with whatever you can afford.
Donations keep the servers running and the developer able to keep building this.
Covers one month of server costs. Every investigation starts with a fresh notebook.
Keeps the lights on and the feeds running for two months of real news.
Helps us add new sources, expand our Latin American coverage, and improve local news.
A full year of operations. The kind of support that makes independence possible.
Like public radio, we rely on readers — not advertisers.
Choose an amount
Secure checkout via Stripe · Cancel anytime · No spam
We aggregate RSS feeds from free news outlets worldwide — no scraping, no logins, no APIs that require payment.
Our funding database cross-references news sources against FEC filings, corporate ownership records, and journalism watchdog reports. Every flag has a source link.
Local news is powered by your ZIP code — we translate it to a city and state, then pull relevant coverage from Google News aggregation.
Your keywords and ZIP codes stay in your browser. We don't collect or store personal data. There is no account.
Everything stays on your device. Not our servers. Your device.
Your ZIP codes, your keywords, your reading preferences, your language — none of it ever leaves your phone or computer. We store it all in your browser's local storage. There is no account. There is no database with your name in it. There is no profile being built about you. We literally cannot see what you read.
One practical note: because your settings are on your device, keep your phone physically safe. If someone has access to your unlocked browser, they could see your keyword list. For sensitive topics, consider using a private browsing window.
A note from the team
This app was built with AI — and that matters.
Encyclopedia Brown was developed using AI tools. We believe AI is one of the most powerful technologies humanity has ever created — with the genuine potential to end poverty, eliminate drudge work, and give every person on Earth access to the kind of expert knowledge once available only to the wealthy.
But we are going about it almost entirely wrong.
Right now, the most powerful AI systems are controlled by a small number of billionaires and corporations. The benefits flow upward. The decisions about what AI does, who it serves, and what it optimizes for are made behind closed doors by people whose primary obligation is to their shareholders — not to you, not to your community, not to the public good.
We believe AI should be a free resource, owned and governed by the people, in the same way we believe the news should be free and transparent. One without the other is incomplete.
Read MANNA by Marshall Brain
The clearest vision we know of for what AI could do — and what happens when it serves capital instead of people. The first half of the novel shows AI used to eliminate jobs and concentrate wealth. The second half imagines the Australia Project: a society where AI works for everyone, where abundance is shared, where technology liberates rather than controls.
The Australia Project's ideals — that a post-scarcity society is possible, that AI managed collectively can eliminate poverty and free humans for creativity and connection — are the ideals this project is built on.
Read MANNA free online →v0.75 · Encyclopedia Brown · Free as in beer, free as in speech · No account · No tracking · No ads · Built in the open
Know someone who would appreciate free, transparent news without the paywalls and tracking? Share this blurb — they can install it themselves in seconds, no App Store required.
The truth is out there.
Add Encyclopedia Brown to your home screen and read the news on your terms — free, independent, and fully informed.