According to documents reviewed by The Daily Beast, progressive news website ThinkProgress is in a financial spiral, suffering increasingly dire revenue gaps and rapidly shedding employees.
ThinkProgress — a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a think tank founded by members of the Obama and Clinton administrations — was launched in 2005 with the goal of helping promote the progressive agenda in the news cycle, but in recent years, the website has faced unprecedented revenue struggles that appear to be reaching a crisis point.
“A budget document provided to ThinkProgress management and obtained by The Daily Beast showed that the website was expecting a roughly $3 million gulf between revenue and expenses for 2019,” The Daily Beast reported Monday. Though ThinkProgress has “never been a revenue generator,” the outlet notes, the shortfalls in recent years appear to be unprecedented and escalating.
“According to the document, advertising revenue is projected to fall $350,000 short of what was budgeted this year, and online contributions are expected to fall short by nearly $180,000,” The Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick and Sam Stein report. “The site is projected to have about $64,000 in grant revenue (money derived from donations to CAP and meant for coverage by ThinkProgress) in 2019. That’s roughly $60,000 short of what it had budgeted for the year and roughly $540,000 less than it received in 2018.”
Those steeply increasing revenue and donation gaps have already resulted in a 12% drop in payroll and several key departures, including a managing editor. Confidence in the leadership of the site also appears to be crumbling.
CAP Executive Director Navin Nayak acknowledged the site’s “large and growing budget gap” to The Daily Beast, citing widespread financial struggles for many digital media oragnaizations over the last few years.
“As with many other digital media organizations, 2017 and 2018 were particularly challenging years in this regard, as ThinkProgress experienced a 40 percent drop in ad revenue over just one year, creating an inevitable budgetary strain,” Nayak told the outlet.
Nayak reportedly met with the management of ThinkProgress Wednesday to discuss the gloomy financial situation. The site’s management then sent an email the following day, which The Daily Beast reviewed, admitting the grim outlook for the website. Sources told The Daily Beast that Nayak has been warning employees that they should start looking around for other employment. (Read the full report here.)
As an example of the kinds of pro-progressive, anti-Republican/Trump reporting coming out of ThinkProgress, here are some quick excerpts from pieces the embattled outlet is promoting online today:
“Conservatives, taking a page from the 2016 playbook, begin targeting Joe Biden’s health“: “Supporters of President Donald Trump on Fox News have begun speculating about presidential candidate Joe Biden’s health and physical aptitude, as the 2020 race begins heating up. The move mirrors a similar Republican strategy from 2016, when conservatives, trolls, and the Trump campaign questioned Hillary Clinton’s physical fitness and well-being.”
“No longer comfortable with legacy pro-Israel groups, many Jewish Americans are looking elsewhere“: “Attitudes toward Israel have shifted among American Jews, as Trump and Netanyahu forge a sharp, rightward path together.
“Trump picks immigration hardliner to lead USCIS“: “The Stephen Miller-ification of DHS officially begins.”
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