#All about citizen free press full
#All about citizen free press tv

Among conservative websites, that figure is surpassed only by (almost a billion), but the Fox site has the benefit of being attached to the most powerful brand in conservative tv news. Based on the latest publicly available data from SimilarWeb, CFP generated 147 million pages views for February. While Kane’s true identity remains his secret, most of the facts about the size of his audience are reliably documented (see chart at the bottom of this page). He turns down advertising, as well as all radio and tv appearances except for occasional spots on the podcast “Bannon’s War Room.” His Twitter page provides an image and a line about working for CNN’s then-financial news anchor Lou Dobbs (disclosure: I worked with Lou Dobbs in the late 1990s when I was at CNN). He says he’s a University of Virginia graduate who worked as a junior producer in the CNN DC bureau in the late 80s.

I don’t know his number so he can call me but I can’t call him. Kane communicates with me through Twitter messages and by phone. and begin the routine all over again five hours later. But as the site grew and developed a following, his workday regularly swelled to 18 hours. For the first year or two, he says, he routinely labored 12 to 14 hours a day. To generate the huge volume of headlines he provides, Kane uses three browsers simultaneously with more than 75 tabs open at any one time. “He was poised at the perfect time for the downfall of Drudge and Drudge turning on Trump,” says former Drudge editor Joseph Curl, who launched his own conservative aggregator, Off the Press, last October. Kane says he’s been toiling away on his site every day without a single day off since he launched it with little fanfare in 2017. He lifts weights, rides his bike and liked golfing before CFP claimed all his free time. He has lived in Bloomington, Indiana, for more than 20 years with his partner Liz. The maestro behind this growing micro-media empire is a 50-ish news junkie who goes by the one-word name Kane, an obvious “Citizen Kane” reference, the film about the notorious press baron William Randolph Heart. He acknowledges that Kane is not his real name. And of course, it’s all filtered through CFP’s right-tilting lens, which is clearly not the preferred perspective of about half the country. However, scan enough CFP headlines and the news of the day shifts into focus, even if it’s a mile wide and an inch deep. It’s not close to what is traditionally considered narrative nonfiction or mainstream journalism. But most lead farther into the site where the story is fleshed out with Twitter videos, short commentary and images, all provided by the curator.

#All about citizen free press full

Headlines feature a simple sentence like “AOC goes full stupid,” or “The Donald in top form.” About a quarter of the headlines follow the classic aggregation format and take visitors to external news sources, usually somewhere in the conservative media ecosystem. Steve Bannon has described CFP as the “stack,” and for once Bannon and I agree on something. About every five minutes, a new headline hits the top of the home page pushing down the earlier copy. The stark black headlines offer one line of copy strung across the page in type so small that at first glance it looks like a razor-straight lineup of crushed ants. “It looks like a 7th grader built it,” confesses the site’s somewhat mysterious founder, who has a fondness for staying offstage in the shadows, preferring the glow of his never-off computer monitor to the spotlight of media attention. Each day, about 100 headlines are posted on CFP’s austere home page in a simple linear design, giving the site a heavy 1999 AOL vibe. It’s not incorrect to call it an aggregation site for right-wing viewpoints, but that ignores the snippets of original content that are sprinkled into the majority of the stories. Another link last October resulted in my most trafficked day in 2021.ĬFP defies easy descriptions. When CFP linked to TheRighting on April 25, it drove more than 20,000 visitors to my site. A link from Citizen Free Press – highly coveted in the right-wing world - can unleash a river of traffic. Outside of the much-visited digital arm of Fox News, CFP generates more page views than any other conservative website as measured by SimilarWeb. Today, a day after the site’s May 1 fifth anniversary, it’s clear that Citizen Free Press (CFP) has quietly emerged as a growing force in conservative media. All it took was one obsessed news junkie toiling almost every waking hour for the past 1825 straight days curating right-wing content specially tailored to capture the MAGA zeitgeist. There’s no mystery behind the success of the enigmatic Citizen Free Press conservative website. SAY HELLO TO ‘KANE’ He’s the Secretive Maestro Behind Citizen Free Press, One of Conservative Media’s Most Popular Websites