Popular. Fearless. And progressive. That’s Raw Story’s tagline. The other word that comes up when talking to leadership is nimble.
Two decades into its run, the digital native site, started in 2004 by John Byrne as a counterpoint to the right-leaning Drudge Report, is reinventing itself to keep up with changing times. When Byrne talks about those early years, he describes the organization as full of ambition, even if it was small in size and tight on cash.
“These were exciting times with the internet,” said Byrne. “We started the same year as Facebook. And the Huffington Post came along in 2005. But we were different; we didn’t start with a lot of investor money.” Byrne explained the team was small and spread around the country, and traffic and revenue were good as they chalked up clicks.
Raw Story found early success by writing punchy headlines and linking to other news sites. It became known for stealing the thunder of large legacy press by getting the scoop on their forthcoming big stories and breaking them before publication. They moved on to writing their own stories and breaking their own investigations, including one that identified a secret CIA black site in Poland that was used for renditions during the Bush administration.
Then, like many others, Raw Story shifted its focus to social platforms where the audience seemed to be. “Honestly, Facebook changed our business. For Facebook, it was basically 300-word articles or less, with a sensational headline,” said Byrne. “There was huge Facebook traffic to publishers, which they obviously now have taken away.”
Byrne and Raw Story’s publisher, Roxanne Cooper, aren’t alone in realizing it’s time to find new footing. Like their print brethren before them, they now must find new models to adapt to a changed reality.
A newly released survey of 300 global digital newsrooms by the Reuters Institute showed nearly two-thirds of media leaders are worried about the decline in referral traffic from platforms, and the vast majority are looking for new ways to reach audiences and fortify revenue.
“If you study cultures and civilizations, the people who keep moving are the people who survive,” said Cooper. ”[In] the news business, you have to keep moving and growing and innovating and changing to survive. And the people who don't aren't surviving. Another advantage is we are small. It makes us more nimble. If you try something out, and it’s not working, you can stop doing it.”
Finding the value proposition
Byrne and Cooper describe seeing the writing on the wall during the digital audience boom.
“During COVID, people staffed up because there was a lot of traffic for news sites because people were at home with nothing to do,” Cooper said. They didn’t leap at expensive expansions, which ultimately helped them. “We knew people would go outside and do things instead of reading the news 24 hours a day. We felt like we were going to take the windfall while it happened. But we won’t plan for this windfall to last forever.”
Around that same time, the social platforms started to step back from providing news, and Raw Story’s leadership started thinking about what was next. They’d always been an open, free-access site, earning revenue from ads driven by breaking news and high-click headlines about cultural and political outrage moments.
“The whole media industry started shifting toward subscriptions and paywalls; you know, we were resistant to do that. We’ve done a lot of paywall and price experimentation to determine what is reasonable for people to pay.” Byrne said there’s also a value proposition to consider. “I’ve seen people think they can just put up a paywall, and then magically, they have a whole new business. You’ll get people, but you have to invest in the product.”
That experimentation led to a hybrid paywall. At Raw Story, breaking news, political and cultural corruption and skirmishes drive the engine in front of the paywall with advertising. The editors see what their audience is hungry for and serve it up. Byrne admits that means there’s still a lot of Trump in their daily lineup. This was true even before the former president announced his intention to run again. Byrne said that’s because it’s what people want to read.
“Subscription revenue — it was our feeling that, if you’re going to ask people to pay, you need to give them something they can’t get anywhere else,” said Cooper.
Returning to our roots
To deliver that added value, they are turning to investigative reporting, something Byrne wanted to do for years. This includes hiring top-notch reporters and a new editor to run the operation that now has some 20 employees. In 2022, they recruited veteran investigative reporter and editor Dave Levinthal away from Business Insider as editor-in-chief.
“I love the fact that we’re a small, scrappy newsroom. I like being in the position of the underdog and doing journalism that is very much in touch with a readership,” Levinthal told E&P. “It’s journalism that is going to be insurgent in a certain way; that’s going to really be different from what might be happening at the big guys. Smaller news organizations often, if they are run correctly, have the nimbleness, the flexibility … to find stories that are being overlooked.”
“We’re kind of returning to our roots,” explained Byrne. “I started as an investigative reporter. It’s just sort of an evolution of the business. Facebook changed what we thought about what was important, almost. Coming back to investigative journalism is also about reclaiming our agency. Because I think this is true for other publishers, as well. It was as if Facebook and Twitter decided what was important. You’re not the same kind of news organization.”
Raw Story’s leadership had never entirely given up on investigative journalism. One of their sweet spots has been reporting on extremism. They had a long history of reporting on the darker corners of U.S. culture and politics. Investigative reporter Jordan Green and others at Raw Story had been reporting on the dark web and extremism in the U.S., tracking the growth of the alt-right and the movements of the Proud Boys, the KKK and Neo-Nazi groups. So, when groups of extremists began activating after Trump’s election loss in 2020, and they were preparing to descend on the U.S. Capital, Raw Story was well ahead of the story. See E&P’s story on domestic extremism that featured Green in January 2022.
In 2021, as part of their strategy, Green became Raw Story’s full-time reporter on extremism. Audiences took note, and so did the industry. Their breaking news and investigative reporting have drawn in audiences, and they won several awards, including two EPPYs for their coverage of extremism and taking a first prize Folio award for Green's ongoing reporting on January 6th.
Byrne and Cooper believe that the revenue from breaking news and stories of political and personal folly will pay for the deeper investigations.
Last year, Levinthal added two new star reporters to their roster. Mark Alesia, who was part of the award-winning team that broke the Larry Nassar story for the Indianapolis Star, joined in April. Alexandria Jacobson was also brought on to deepen coverage and will be based in Chicago.
Levinthal said that their geographically dispersed team would help them find local stories with national appeal and help them avoid the Beltway mentality, “My mandate pretty much from the get-go is to go with journalism that truly is going to stand apart. I felt it was always an overlooked aspect of politics or that not a lot of people did or fully understood the intersection of money and politics, and that manifests itself in many different ways.”
2023 was a year of testing out the kind of investigative and enterprise stories that would connect with their audience. Levinthal said stories they did last year that had an impression focused on extremism in all its forms and issues of corruption in politics. With that framework, the team will look at the 2024 congressional elections.
Levinthal said they’ve already begun digging in and seeking public records and data with FOIAs. They are developing a voice. “One thing that will differentiate our work is that it’s very newsy. But almost a bit magazine form in terms of the writing and editing,” said Levinthal. “You’re going to read a tale; you’re going to read a true tale. And it will be worth reading [all the way through].”
Expanding the network
One of the essential strategies for reclaiming their agency in a post-social platform world is finding new ways to see and expand their audience. They created an app and became partners with MSN, Smart News and dozens of other independent newsrooms to do that. They now have over 30 co-publishing partnering newsrooms, including CalMatters and Oklahoma Watch.
“Much of our 2024 coverage will be trying to go deeper while maintaining the urgency of our breaking news operation. We’ll write about, you know, 100 to 150 stories per day — every day, and republish 100 to 150. That includes partnerships that we have with other news organizations.” Levinthal said many partnering newsrooms are nonprofits serving diverse communities and voices. “One of my big goals and from a leadership level this year is to broaden our pool of news partners.”
New chapters
John Byrne said Raw Story is now clocking 10 million unique hits per month, and he said this is a move toward deepening their reporting and being open to making thoughtful changes, even if it means changing back to what they once were.
He also credits not putting all your eggs in one basket and combining efforts, “Diversity, which is the key. [Make] subscriptions part of your business, advertising part of your business. And then add partnership deals to diversify your traffic sources, which I think is even more important.”
Roxanne Cooper, who started publishing with local independents, including LA Weekly and the San Francisco Bay Guardian, said what was true for print back then is true now: “I always go back to — you need to innovate and change and try new things constantly.”
Cooper has set her sights on a new horizon of her own. She told E&P she plans to retire from the business after the 2024 election. “I’ve been talking with John about this for a while. It’s been part of our planning. In my mind, it’s time for younger people to step in.” Although she did add, “But I feel like I might get pulled back in.”
Diane Sylvester is an award-winning 30-year multimedia news veteran. She works as a reporter, editor and newsroom strategist. She can be reached at diane.povcreative@gmail.com
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