The early October electoral map shows most of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s support squarely in the center of the country. His backers could be forgiven, then, for being surprised that one of the most ardent voices backing his campaign is in deep-blue California – on the Westside of Los Angeles, no less.
With its executive chairman, Stephen Bannon, temporarily stepping down to sign on as chief executive of the Trump campaign in August, Breitbart News Network continues to churn out content under the direction of Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Larry Solov, its chief executive.
They relish the challenge of advancing their point of view and doing it in an unlikely place.
“It’s been very important to us that we keep an outsider’s perspective, to keep our operations and heart and soul in Los Angeles,” said Solov, who co-founded the site with his childhood friend, the late Andrew Breitbart, in the basement of Breitbart’s L.A. home. Marlow, who was the pair’s first hire, oversees the news operation from Washington, D.C., though he makes frequent trips to Los Angeles.
Long before Bannon signed on to run the Trump campaign, the Breitbart site was an enthusiastic participant in a polarized political season, one that has pitted conservatives against each other as much as it has Democrats against Republicans.
That split among conservatives has in some ways riven the Breitbart operation, with some former employees upset with the site’s tactics, implying it had become a mouthpiece for the Trump campaign well before Bannon departed.
Despite the criticism – or perhaps because of it – Breitbart is more popular than ever. Its web traffic has grown 39 percent since Trump announced his candidacy for president, increasing from 12.2 million in June 2015 to more than 17 million unique monthly visitors this August, according to comScore. That’s about four times more visitors than competitors Drudge Report and Talking Points Memo each draw monthly.
Breitbart pulled about 8.5 million unique visitors the month before Trump’s announcement; its traffic has more than doubled since the real estate billionaire brought his unique campaign style to the race.
The website, which also has bureaus in Texas; London; Jerusalem; and Washington, D.C., often posts articles critical of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as well as provocative posts related to terrorism, Islam, refugees, and immigration. The site also includes entertainment, tech, and sports verticals to boost traffic. Breitbart produces two podcasts through Westwood’s PodcastOne and a daily radio news program through SiriusXM. The company plans to launch an online store this month featuring a variety of Breitbart-branded merchandise.
Right track?
It is a business model that has changed significantly since its founding by Andrew Breitbart, an L.A. native and formerly left-leaning writer and commentator. The site has its roots in a contact Breitbart made with Matt Drudge, whose Drudge Report set the standard for alternative conservative media when it launched in 1996. Drudge introduced Breitbart to Arianna Huffington, whom Breitbart helped to launch the Huffington Post in 2005, acting as head of research.
According to Solov, when Breitbart and he got together in 2007, Breitbart originally imagined Breitbart News as an aggregation site featuring wire stories from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse in order to create a “grocery store for news,” where the public could read news directly from the wires and make decisions for themselves on what was most important.
The website switched gears and started publishing original content and analysis in 2009, and started producing video content on its Breitbart.tv platform, along with a number of news verticals on what it called “big” Hollywood, journalism, and government. After Breitbart’s sudden death from a heart attack in 2012, Breitbart.com relaunched as a centralized site with all of its previously separate news verticals in one place.
The company, which defines itself as a news organization, has about 110 employees that work on a 24-hour news cycle, Solov said. About 15 staffers work out of a West L.A. newsroom, the exact location of which was disclosed for the purpose of sending a photographer on the condition that it not be published. The company also works with a number of contributors around the world.
Fitting in
Though it settled in thoroughly blue Los Angeles, Breitbart News is not alone here among a newer crop of advocacy journalism sites that have popped up in the last several years.
Good Inc., a socially-minded L.A. company that produces a quarterly print magazine and daily online content, and TakePart.com, the editorial arm of billionaire Jeff Skoll’s social impact entertainment company, have been joined recently by Attn.com, a news site designed to get millennials interested in issues.
Media critics said it’s important to question how politically oriented sites fit in to the digital media landscape and, more importantly, the national political conversation and process.
“There’s a legitimate discussion to be had about where a media organization leads off and a super PAC begins,” said Dan Schnur, a former communications director for Sen. John McCain’s 2000 presidential bid and now director of USC’s Unruh Institute on Politics. “Breitbart blurs the line between the traditional definition of news media and the new reality in a much more aggressive way than many other forms do.”
According to a source familiar with Breitbart’s funding, the company receives financial backing from Robert Mercer, a computer scientist and investor who co-leads hedge fund Renaissance Technologies of East Setauket, N.Y., which invested $10 million in Breitbart several years ago.
Mercer, who has funded a number of conservative causes, think tanks, and lobbying groups, put $15.5 million behind a super PAC supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, according to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C. Mercer now supports Trump through a super PAC and was reported to be instrumental in the selection of Bannon to run the candidate’s campaign.
Solov, who declined to comment on Mercer or any aspect of the company’s funding, said Breitbart generates most of its revenue through ads. In addition to geo-targeted display ads and pop-ups, the homepage also features a large banner ad for a documentary called “Clinton Cash” – co-produced by Bannon’s Bannon Industries and Mercer’s daughter Rebekah. The site’s podcasts, which launched in March, can be streamed for free through iTunes or directly through PodcastOne’s app.
“Our primary purpose and goal is always to put out the most high-quality news on an hourly basis,” said Solov. “We cover a lot of the stories that the mainstream media won’t cover.”
And the site is planning even more coverage in the future. Solov said that the company intends to hire more staff in Los Angeles and other cities.
“At the end of the day, we’re a for-profit business,” he said.
