Raw Story (also stylized as RawStory) is an American progressive news website. It was founded in 2004 by John K. Byrne and is owned by Byrne and Michael Rogers.
Byrne started Raw Story as a counterpoint to the right-leaning Drudge Report after he graduated from Oberlin College in 2003. It was officially launched in 2004, with Rogers joining the same year.[2][3][4]
In April 2018, Raw Story partners John K. Byrne and Michael Rogers announced that they had acquired AlterNet via a newly created company, AlterNet Media,[3] as well as the New Civil Rights Movement.[6][4][7]
From 2019 to 2021, Raw Story partnered with Pulitzer Prize winner investigative journalist David Cay Johnston and his nonprofit news service DCReport, providing funding for DCReport's investigative reporting in exchange for original content for Raw Story's subscribers on financial regulation, taxes, energy, the environment, worker safety, and corruption.[8][9]
In 2023, Raw Story hired Dave Levinthal as Editor-in-Chief and Adam Nichols as Executive Editor with the goal of expanding investigative and enterprise reporting. Levinthal was deputy editor at Insider, and previously served at OpenSecrets, Politico and The Dallas Morning News. Adam Nichols was formerly Managing Editor at Patch.[10]
Founder John Byrne described Raw Story as "focusing on news that's downplayed by mainstream media outlets".[3] In its early days, Raw Story was known for scooping larger media outlets on their own stories and breaking them before publication. During the presidential administration of George W. Bush, Raw Story identified a secret CIA black site in Poland that was used for renditions.[11]
In 2014, then-executive editor Tony Ortega described Raw Story's editorial mission as trying to expose people "who try to exploit American ideas about fair play and equality by rigging things through their immense wealth or their discriminatory cultural myopia."[12] In 2005, Newsweek described rawstory.com as: "Muck, raked: If you're looking for alleged GOP malfeasance, the folks at rawstory.com are frequently scooping the mainstream media."[13]
In 2011, Raw Story was among the first outlets to report on the Apple assistant Siri apparently directing users away from abortion clinics and emergency contraception, instead providing results for the definition of emergency contraception or clinics far from the user.[16] The assistant, still in beta testing at the time, could, however, provide users with methods to acquire Viagra or use escort services.[17]
The same year, Raw Story was the first to report on a United States Air Force contract to create fake social media profiles as a means of psychological warfare to be used against terrorist cells.[18][19]
In 2012, then-executive editor Megan Carpentier wrote about undergoing a transvaginal ultrasound procedure in response to recent legislation in Virginia requiring an ultrasound prior to an abortion procedure.[20]
In 2017, Raw Story investigative reporter Jordan Green reported from the ground of the Unite the Right rally, and in 2021 covered the civil trial which resulted in a $25 million judgment against the organizers of the rally. Green had been following the activities of extremist groups, learning their lingo, and communicating with them. He had learned that such groups precisely and strategically plan their violent clashes. "That revelation informs his new work — tracking where January 6th insurrectionists’ anger is now directed and how it may manifest again."[22]
On February 15, 2021, Raw Story reported that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem had used a state airplane to travel to conservative political events. The report led Democratic lawmakers to formally request that the state's attorney general investigate Noem.[23]
In 2023, Raw Story was the first outlet to report on the re-indictments of the founders of the Rise Above Movement, a California white nationalist group known for actively seeking out and engaging in street brawls.[25]
In 2023, Raw Story's Dave Levinthal was the first to report that cyberthieves stole $690,000 from the campaign of Senator Jerry Moran, and revealed that $150,000 was stolen from the campaign of Rep. Troy Nehls.[26]
Raw Story investigated a teenage gang linked to a spate of racist vandalism in 2024. Its coverage drew national attention and the ire of neo-Nazis, who organized a protest outside the home of a Raw Story reporter. "The amount of harassment and threats kind of validates the importance of the story," Green told The Washington Post.[27]
On February 19, 2018, Raw Story published a report claiming that Russian trolls co-opting the Me Too movement had forced Minnesota senator Al Franken to resign, and that an article by writer Ijeoma Oluo had been used as part of the campaign.[28][29] Oluo told Snopes that her article had been published after Franken announced his resignation, adding: "I was hoping that the piece would give people context and help people grow from all of this into a better place."[28]Raw Story later retracted its report.[29]
According to a study by researchers from the University of Liverpool and University of Dundee, published in the journal Discourse & Society, the headline in another 2020 article in Raw Story engaged in the fallacy of ambiguity by using『the phrasal verb ‘cashing in on’』to create the appearance of impropriety in reporting on a business owned by Jared Kushner when, according to Snopes, there was "no evidence that the startup is linked to any public damage".[32] According to the researchers, this use of "polysemous terms in news titles ... [is] potentially misleading for the majority of readers who are used to getting their daily news feed scrolling through news titles".[32]
In 2008, the Online News Association named Raw Story a finalist in the 2008 Online Journalism Awards in the "Investigative, Small Site" category for the article "The permanent Republican majority", which revealed improper partisan influence in the prosecution of former Governor Don SiegelmanofAlabama.[33]
In 2021, a Raw Story report by Daniel Newhauser broke the story on South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's use of the state airplane for non-official purposes, which resulted in criminal investigations.[23][34] The investigative reporting was a finalist for a 2022 Society of Professional Journalists award which "honors a journalist or news organization for outstanding use of public records in reporting or advocacy of rights such as press freedom and public access."[35]
In 2022, Raw Story won the first place EPPY AwardbyEditor & Publisher in the category "Best news/political blog (1 million or more unique visitors)" for "How I left the far right", an opinion piece by Dakota Adams, son of Oath Keepers' founder Stewart Rhodes, that described how Adams became disillusioned with the anti-government militia group in the later days of the Trump administration.[36]Raw Story was also named the best U.S. news and political blog by Editor & Publisher in 2023.[37]
In 2024, Raw Story's Alexandria Jacobson won a Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing Best in Business award for its "Lawmakers, Law Breakers" series, which exposed Democratic and Republican lawmakers who violated U.S. conflict of interest and insider trading laws. It received honorable mentions in two other categories. The series also won the first place inaugural ION Award in 2023, which called the nonpartisan investigation "fair, bold, specific, and thoroughly documented."[39] The same year, Jacobson also won a Sidney award for a feature article that illuminated an epidemic of violence against U.S. Mail carriers.[40]
In 2009, libertarian journalist Michael Moynihan referred to Raw Story as a "conspiracy-friendly" website.[55] In 2016, ad verification company DoubleVerify, which helps advertisers select which types of websites their automated online ads might appear on, created a new category called "Inflammatory Politics & News", one of 75 categories. The new category was to include "hardcore conservative and liberal sites", and included rawstory.com as well as several far-right websites.[56] A 2018 report by the Oxford Internet Institute categorized Raw Story as one of the "Top 30 Junk News Sources on Twitter."[57] Some consider Raw Storyahyperpartisan media outlet.[58][59][60][verification needed]
As of June 2023, Roxanne Cooper was publisher and Dave Levinthal was editor-in-chief, Adam Nichols is Executive Editor, and Brad Reed is Managing Editor.[1][22] Editorial staff are members of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild.[61] Notable former editorial staff include New York Times senior staff editor Michael Roston,[62]NBC News political reporter Sahil Kapur,[63][64] and former Village Voice executive editor Tony Ortega.[65]