AlterNet

What you're reading

AlterNet is a US progressive news-and-commentary website founded in 1998 by Don Hazen as a project of the Independent Media Institute, a New York-based nonprofit. It was one of the original wave of left-of-center digital publications that emerged alongside Salon, Common Dreams, and TomDispatch, and it built its early audience on syndicating long-form pieces from the alternative press, environmental movement, and progressive policy circles.

The site was bought by Raw Story in 2018 after a layoff round, then later transitioned back under Independent Media Institute oversight. Editorially it covers US politics, civil rights, the Christian right, climate, reproductive rights, and labor, mixing original reporting with commentary and heavy aggregation of court filings, congressional testimony, and other primary documents. Coverage skews national and federal-level, with regular focus on Trump-era criminal cases, far-right movements, and Supreme Court decisions. Format is web-first with email newsletters and social distribution; podcast and video are minor.

Ownership & funding

Independent Media Institute (nonprofit). Funded primarily through nonprofit + reader donations.

Nonprofit-plus-reader-donations removes the per-pageview ad chase but introduces its own dynamic: a small donor base that funds publications because of their politics expects coverage that matches those politics. AlterNet's revenue model rewards stories that activate its left-leaning audience to donate, share, and renew — which means high-engagement framings of court rulings, election-integrity stories, far-right movements, and Christian-nationalist organizing get heavier rotation than slower policy explainers. Without traditional advertising or a paywall, there's no commercial pressure to chase broader middle-of-the-road audiences. Editorial scope is narrow (US politics and movements) because the funding base supports that focus rather than general-interest journalism.

Where they land on the spectrum

nwsly's editorial team places AlterNet at Left with a factuality rating of Mostly Factual.

AlterNet sits at Left because its story selection, framing, and headline register all signal openly progressive editorial intent. Trump-era criminal cases get aggressive, prosecutorial-tone coverage. Christian nationalism, Project 2025, and far-right movements get heavy and ongoing attention. Climate is covered as crisis. Reproductive-rights stories lead with impact on patients and providers. Headlines frequently use language that signals the political stakes ("brutal takedown", "destroyed", "stunning rebuke") in a register more common to advocacy outlets than to traditional news. Sourcing leans on Democratic officials, civil-rights litigators, academic experts, and pro-democracy think tanks.

The pattern is consistent rather than broken — AlterNet doesn't really pivot to neutral framings on its core beats. What earns the Mostly Factual rating rather than something lower is that the underlying facts in stories are typically sourced to court filings, congressional records, official statements, and named reporting from other outlets. AlterNet aggregates and reframes more than it originates, but the source material it points to is usually verifiable. Corrections happen on-record. The factuality ceiling sits below "High" because framing, headline-writing, and selective emphasis routinely outrun what the underlying sourcing strictly supports.

Editorial vs news side

AlterNet does not maintain a clear news-versus-opinion split the way a legacy newspaper does. The whole product is openly progressive — news aggregation, original reporting, and commentary all share the same editorial voice and headline conventions. The site does run distinct columnist bylines, and original reporting is generally cleaner in tone than aggregation rewrites, but there is no firewalled news desk and no opinion-page label that creates separation. Readers should treat the entire publication as a progressive perspective on US politics. The Left rating applies across the product, not just to a clearly-labeled opinion section.

Why we include them in nwsly

News and commentary site founded in 1998.

nwsly includes AlterNet in the Left bucket because a balanced source mix requires representation of the openly progressive perspective alongside Center and Right voices. AlterNet's specific contribution is sustained, granular coverage of Christian-nationalist organizing, far-right movements, and election-integrity litigation — beats that mainstream Lean Left outlets cover episodically and that Right outlets cover from the other side. It also tracks Trump-era criminal cases at a level of detail that helps when nwsly needs the prosecutorial-perspective angle. Readers see the Left framing labeled clearly so they can weight it against other sources in the brief.

Recent nwsly briefs citing AlterNet

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