Type of site | Political journalism, political commentary |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Created by | Stephen F. Hayes Jonah Goldberg Toby Stock |
Editors | Jonah Goldberg (editor-in-chief) Rachael Larimore (managing editor) David A. French (senior editor) Chris Stirewalt (contributing editor) |
President | Toby Stock |
CEO | Stephen F. Hayes |
Revenue | $1.9 million |
URL | thedispatch |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Required for viewing some articles and for commenting |
Launched | October 2019 |
The Dispatch is an American conservative subscription-based and advertisement-free online magazine founded by Jonah Goldberg, Stephen F. Hayes, and Toby Stock. [1] [2] [3] Several of The Dispatch's staff (including Hayes) are alumni of the defunct The Weekly Standard . [1]
After The Weekly Standard ceased publication in December 2018, Hayes, Goldberg, and Stock were inspired to start a media company with the goal of "producing serious, factually grounded journalism for a conservative audience". [4] Goldberg and Hayes expressed concern over the alliance between conservative media outlets and the Republican Party, and started The Dispatch with a desire to instead focus on conservative principles, regardless of party lines. [5] The company is based in downtown Washington, D.C. [4] By June 2020, The Dispatch had grown to twelve staffers. [6]
The Dispatch began with a beta launch in October 2019 and fully launched on January 7, 2020. [1] Hayes, Goldberg, and Stock own a majority of the company, but there are additional individual investors. [7] The founders intentionally avoided using venture capitalists. [6] At its launch in October 2019, The Dispatch had pooled $6 million in investment capital and had in its employ a full-time staff of eight individuals, [5] including founding editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg, managing editor Rachael Larimore, and (soon after its launch) senior editor David A. French. [2] [8] In January 2020, shortly after launching, The Dispatch Podcast appeared briefly on Apple's Top 100 news podcasts. [4] By March 2020, the company claimed to have nearly 10,000 paying subscribers. [9]
The Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) certified The Dispatch's fact-checking division in May 2020. [10] [11] As of September 2020, The Dispatch had nearly 100,000 subscribers, with almost 18,000 of them paying for the full service. The company pulled in nearly $2 million in revenue during its first year, most of which was from Substack subscriptions. [5] [12] The Dispatch was Substack's first media company. [7] In October 2022, the publication moved from Substack to its own website. [13]
The Dispatch has been sharply critical of Donald Trump from a center-right perspective. [2] On 6 January 2021, after the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, Rudy Giuliani left a voicemail message intended for Senator Tommy Tuberville on a different Senator's voicemail account. This message urged Tuberville to delay certification of the electoral vote: "Just try to slow it down." The unnamed Senator gave the message to The Dispatch, which immediately broke the story. [14] The next day, The Dispatch published an editorial calling for the impeachment and removal of President Trump. [15]
The Dispatch provides free web content, podcasts, and a mix of paid and free newsletters. [4] The Dispatch also produces a fact-checking column. [4]
William Kristol is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine The Weekly Standard. Kristol is now editor-at-large of the center-right publication The Bulwark.
The Weekly Standard was an American neoconservative political magazine of news, analysis and commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard had been described as a "redoubt of neoconservatism" and as "the neocon bible." Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title on September 18, 1995. In 2009, News Corporation sold the magazine to a subsidiary of the Anschutz Corporation. On December 14, 2018, its owners announced that the magazine was ceasing publication, with the last issue published on December 17. Sources attribute its demise to an increasing divergence between Kristol and other editors' shift towards anti-Trump positions, and the magazine's audience's shift towards Trumpism.
Llewellyn Harrison Rockwell Jr. is an American author, editor, and political consultant. A libertarian and a self-professed anarcho-capitalist, he founded and is the chairman of the Mises Institute, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the Austrian School of economics.
Jonah Jacob Goldberg is an American conservative syndicated columnist, author, political analyst, and commentator. The founding editor of National Review Online, from 1998 until 2019 he was an editor at National Review. Goldberg writes a weekly column about politics and culture for the Los Angeles Times. In October 2019, Goldberg became the founding editor of the online opinion and news publication The Dispatch. Goldberg has authored the No. 1 New York Times bestsellerLiberal Fascism, released in January 2008; The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, released in 2012; and Suicide of the West, which was published in April 2018 and also became a New York Times bestseller, reaching No. 5 on the list the following month.
Benjamin Aaron Shapiro is an American columnist, author, conservative political commentator, media personality, attorney and businessman. At age 17, he became the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. Shapiro writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, and serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded. Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and live radio show. He was editor-at-large of Breitbart News from 2012 until his resignation in 2016. Shapiro has written 11 books.
Matthew Colin Taibbi is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. A former contributing editor for Rolling Stone, he is the author of several books, co-host of Useful Idiots, and publisher of the newsletter Racket News on Substack.
Stephen Forester Hayes is an American journalist and author. In October 2019 Hayes co-founded the online opinion and news publication The Dispatch. Previously, he was a senior writer for National Journal and Editor-in-chief of The Weekly Standard. He was a staunch proponent of the Iraq War and an influential figure in promoting the claim that the Saddam Hussein regime and Al Qaeda had an operational relationship.
RealClearPolitics (RCP) is an American political news website and polling data aggregator formed in 2000 by former options trader John McIntyre and former advertising agency account executive Tom Bevan. The site features selected political news stories and op-eds from various news publications in addition to commentary from its own contributors. The site is prominent during election seasons for its aggregation of polling data.
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning is a book by Jonah Goldberg, who was then a syndicated columnist and the editor-at-large of National Review Online. In contrast to the mainstream view among historians and political scientists that fascism is a far-right ideology, Goldberg argues in the book that fascist movements were and are left-wing. Published in January 2008, it reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list of hardcover non-fiction in its seventh week on the list.
Kevin Daniel Williamson is an American conservative political commentator. He is the national correspondent for The Dispatch. Previously, he was the roving correspondent for National Review.
Vox is an American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media. The website was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, and is noted for its concept of explanatory journalism. Vox's media presence also includes a YouTube channel, several podcasts, and a show presented on Netflix. Vox has been described as left-leaning and progressive.
David Austin French is an American political commentator and former attorney who has argued high-profile religious liberty cases. He is a columnist for The New York Times. Formerly a fellow at the National Review Institute and a staff writer for National Review from 2015 to 2019, French currently serves as senior editor of The Dispatch and a contributing writer for The Atlantic.
The Bulwark is an American anti-Trump center-right news and opinion website launched in 2018 by Sarah Longwell, with the support of Bill Kristol and Charlie Sykes. It initially launched as a news aggregator, but it was revamped into a news and opinion site using key staffers from the recently closed Weekly Standard.
Sarah Longwell is an American political strategist and publisher of the neoconservative news and opinion website The Bulwark. A member of the Republican Party, she is the founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, which spent millions of dollars to defeat President Trump in 2020. According to TheNew Yorker, Longwell has "dedicated her career to fighting Trump’s takeover of her party."
Christopher W. Stirewalt is an American political analyst who is the politics editor for NewsNation and is a contributing editor for The Dispatch. Previously he had worked for the Fox News Channel, which he joined in July 2010. He authored and hosted Fox News Halftime Report newsletter and co-hosted the podcast Perino & Stirewalt: I'll Tell You What with Dana Perino.
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.
Lauren Wolfe is an American journalist known for her coverage of wartime sexual violence.
Sarah Isgur is an American attorney, political commentator, and former spokesperson in the United States Department of Justice.
Toby Stock is an American legal scholar and co-founder of center-right online media company The Dispatch. He currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer at the National Constitution Center.
Casey Newton is an American technology journalist, a former senior editor at The Verge, and the founder and editor of the technology newsletter Platformer.
The Dispatch produces "serious, factually grounded journalism for a conservative audience".