Independent News Curation Team

The majority of U.S. media are owned by a handful of giant corporations, meaning that most news Americans consume is ultimately framed by and beholden to corporate interests, not those of the general public. The news needs more diversity—in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, immigration status, perspective, and more—and must be driven by financially independent, trustworthy media outlets. There are numerous publications like this, but many don’t have the resources to compete with the corporate media giants and reach enough people to regularly impact the national conversation.

The OptOut Media Foundation works to elevate independent news outlets. We do this primarily through our free news aggregation app and newsletters, and we’re working on several new projects, including an initiative to create new standards for assessing news outlets’ reliability. Our long-term goal is to advance democracy and social justice, and we know that media will play a very important part in this progress.

In addition to our general newsletter, we recently launched three verticals focused on climate, LGBTQ+ issues, and New York City and state. The three editors we hired are writing biweekly newsletters and curating the news app, as well as working to expand our news network and running networking communities for journalists in their issue areas. We are grateful to the Puffin Foundation, which is making these positions possible with its support.