US progressive political news outlet Raw Story is strengthening its investigative and accountability journalism as it grows subscription revenue.
Only about 5% of Raw Story’s content is behind a paywall but it has built to almost 30,000 paying subscribers in around five years.
Almost a third (30%) of its revenue now comes from subscriptions. Users can pay $6.99 (£5.20) per month or $59 (£44) per year for fewer ads and full access, while paying $89 (£66) means no ads at all.
Raw Story publisher Wendy Greenlaw attributed the subscriptions growth to investment in “distinctive journalism, original content that readers aren’t going to find anywhere else”.
She said Raw Story, which has a team of 18 people in total, is profitable and this is enabling them to “constantly” reinvest into the business.
“We’re really looking at scaling the business and controlling cost, but also reinvesting that profit into new technology, new ways to reach our audiences, new ways to create original journalism.”
Raw Story completely redesigned its website and updated its newsletters in October to make its exclusive journalism more prominent ahead of the US midterm elections.
Greenlaw said: “This isn’t a redesign for the sake of having a new look. We wanted the site to reflect what Raw Story has become and where we’re going.”
Most of Raw Story’s output, produced by a team of about ten people, is made up of faster turnaround political stories which Greenlaw said “continues to resonate with readers”. This is free to read and funded by adverts and syndication to platforms like MSN, Smartnews and Newsbreak.
A team of four staff writers separately produces original reporting which is paywalled, led by editor-in-chief Adam Nichols dedicating his time to the investigations part of the newsroom.
Readers can sample this exclusive content with three free articles per month after they register with their email address.
Nichols cited exclusives such as the United States Postal Service hiring armed security guards through a private contractor with a history of alleged human rights abuses, a pattern of immigration agents with a history of domestic violence or other alleged criminality, and a series on the Leaving MAGA group.
Nichols said that when he joined Raw Story in 2023, its exclusives team was just two people. “It’s just been exciting, particularly in the last few months, to see what we can do with it and the appetite that there is for all the stuff that we’re doing and the feedback we’re getting from it.”
He said promoting someone specifically to lead the breaking news team so he could dedicate his time to the exclusive journalism had put them “in a really strong position”.
He said: “If you’re juggling the day-to-day breaking stuff as well as the long-term stuff, it’s difficult to get that balance between the two of them. I think the way we’re structured now, where we’ve got somebody specifically looking at the day-to-day stuff, and somebody specifically running the longer-term stuff, that positions us really well to actually do very well in both camps.”
Direct loyal audience makes Raw Story ‘very confident about the future’
Nichols said Raw Story has an “extremely loyal audience” who come to the homepage directly rather than via Google.
According to Similarweb, 56% of Raw Story’s traffic came directly in September, with 11% from external referrals (which could include other media coverage), 9% from organic social, 7% from email and just 6% from organic search.
The website received 13.97 million visits in September, compared to 16.71 million for The Daily Beast for comparison. Raw Story says it reaches around seven million users each month.
Nichols said: “We’ve built that audience over more than two decades… that has me very confident about the future.”
He added that he receives feedback from readers every day, responding to stories and criticising typos, and that he knows many of their names. “We think that is our strength.”
Independent ownership sets Raw Story apart from outlets owned by ‘big companies’
Raw Story is a 22-year-old independent outlet, majority owned by its founder and chief executive John Byrne.
Nichols said this had become a key draw for people in the US looking for independent journalism they can trust.
“There’s an idea that these big companies will roll over when there’s pressure put on them,” he said, citing the example of ABC News paying $15m (£12m) to Donald Trump in 2024 to settle a defamation lawsuit after anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely said the president had been found liable for rape, rather than sexual abuse.
Nichols said it felt like independent journalism “which isn’t owned by corporations, which isn’t owned by billionaire individuals” was more important than ever.
“People come to us because they know we’re independent, because we do responsible journalism with responsible sourcing, we want our stories to be very accurate. We employ trained journalists who know what they’re doing…
“We’re not aligned with any political political parties, but we’re not particularly afraid to be seen as partisan. We do write for a progressive audience.
“We are not looking to say and watch everything that Trump says, that kind of thing. If Trump says something which is like blatantly not true, we’ll say it’s blatantly not true, we’ll have opinion writers who will say that, and that seems to have connected with a specific audience because they don’t trust that the establishment media will do that anymore.”
Asked whether Trump’s second presidency had been good or bad for Raw Story, Nichols said although their content is “very driven by what’s happening with the Trump administration”, they were “doing pretty well before Trump came along” and not reliant on his news cycle.
He added that although some progressive audiences had “switched off” after the last election and dug their heads in the sand, others were “very angry and very engaged”.
“I think whatever happens down the line, we will still be in existence. We’ll still be doing news that I really find very important,” Nichols said.
Alongside further growth in subscription revenue and syndication from platforms like MSN, Smartnews and Newsbreak, Greenlaw wants to develop new AI licensing revenue in 2027. Currently Raw Story is blocking all AI crawlers on its site.
“We are trying to establish relationships where if you are going to use our data or our journalism, we feel we should be fairly compensated for that,” Greenlaw said.
In 2024 Raw Story filed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI over the alleged use of thousands of its articles to train ChatGPT. The case was dismissed at an early stage but Raw Story is still in the appeal process.
Video will be another area of expansion in 2027, Greenlaw said, citing Capitol Hill reporter Matt Laslo’s recent on-the-spot interviews with congressmen and senators as they come out of hearings.
She said that could be extended to videos with the investigative team discussing what they’re working on or how they brought a story to light.
“I think people really want to see the human side of our journalism and the people behind the stories that they’re telling,” Greenlaw said, adding that it would hopefully resonate with both Raw Story’s older, educated audience and younger viewers on platforms like Tiktok where the brand currently has 12,500 followers.
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