AlterNet is a privately owned for-profit left-of-center news website that publishes both original content and republishes pieces from other left-of-center writers. The website is owned by John Byrne, the founder and owner of left-of-center news site Raw Story, who is also a prominent LGBT activist. The site is notable for being willing to publish radical essays that associate Republicans with Nazi war criminals and terrorists. The site claims one million monthly unique website hits, which translate into roughly seven million page views per month. ^{1 2 3 4}

Founding and History

AlterNet was founded in 1987 as a project of the Institute for Alternative Journalism. It originally functioned as an early form of a virtual newsroom. The project was specifically focused on assisting small-scale and independent media. This arrangement continued until 2018, until the Independent Media Institute (the Institute for Alternative Journalism changed its name in 1999) sold the website to John K. Byrne, the owner and founder of the left-of-center media website Raw Story, in 2018. Byrne turned the operation into a for-profit website held under the auspices of AlterNet Media. ^{1 5 6}

The AlterNet website maintains a “.org” top-level domain extensions despite not being a non-profit. This has been allowed for all “.org” extensions since 2019. ⁷

As of 2025, the AlterNet website claims that it was founded in 1998, however, archived webpages from the site when it was under the control of the then-Institute for Alternative Journalism clearly state that the site was founded in 1987. ¹

Under new ownership, AlterNet no longer serves as a newswire service and instead publishes original content and republishes left-of-center pieces. ⁸

Finances and Claimed Traffic

As a privately held for-profit company, AlterNet Media does not make public financial reports. The site funds itself with ad revenue and with ad-free memberships starting at $10, along with reader donations. ⁹

AlterNet claims that it receives more than one million unique site visits every month and that these visits translate into over seven million page views. When the site was acquired in 2018, the publisher of both websites, Roxanne Cooper, reported that the combined monthly readership of Raw Story, AlterNet, and New Civil Rights Movement, which was also acquired at that time, exceeded 70 million monthly page views. ⁴

Organization Philosophy

AlterNet promotes left-of-center political stances. In the week following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump, the website ran numerous pieces decrying President Trump, Republicans, and conservatives in general. For instance, the site provided commentary on republished excerpts from a New York Times column by formerly right-of-center writer David French, in which French appeared to associate Trump-supporting Republicans with the Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, while claiming he was not doing so. ¹⁰

Similarly, the site published an opinion essay that characterized Jay Bhattacharya, President Trump’s nominee to head the National Institutes of Health, as a mass murderer and compared him to Ted Bundy for using his position as a Stanford professor of economics and health policy research to oppose the strict lockdowns and public health interventions during the COVID-19 era as ineffective and injurious to freedom. The author also compared Bhattacharya to the Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of the Auschwitz death camp. In the same piece, the author compared another Trump appointee to Reinhard Heydrich, a Nazi SS officer and main architect of the Holocaust. ³

Projects and Initiatives

In the week following President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the Belief section ran articles attacking President Trump over his response to the controversial sermon at the National Cathedral, an essay claiming that Christian Nationalists are working with tech billionaires to end American democracy, and promoted claims that the inclusion of the phrase “So help me God” in the Presidential oath of office is the result of Christian Nationalist machinations. ^{11 12 13}

Cultural coverage similarly criticized  the advent of the second Trump administration, decrying that the U.S. was poised to become a right-wing oligarchy. In the run-up to the inauguration, it ran a piece fearing that Facebook would turn into a “right-wing cesspool.” ^{14 15}

The site’s economic coverage is similarly left-of-center, running headlines predicting that President Trump’s actions would tank the economy and opposing the proposed sweeping deregulation of the economy. ^{16 17}

Human Rights coverage is mostly focused on covering access to abortion and opposition to the deportation of illegal immigrants. ^{18 19}

Leadership

Roxanne Cooper is the editor and publisher of both Raw Story and AlterNet. She has worked at several other publications in management roles including the San Francisco Bay Guardian, LA Weekly, and Stars and Stripes. ²⁰

Elizabeth Preza is the managing editor of AlterNet, a position she has held since 2018. Prior, her career has largely comprised of working at left-of-center media, including writing and editing positions at Raw Story and staff writer positions at AlterNet and Mediaite. ²¹

John Byrne is the founder, owner, and CEO of Raw Story Media and the owner and CEO AlterNet Media, both of which are for-profit left-of-center media websites. Byrne was educated at the notably left-of-center Oberlin College. Byrne is a high-profile LGBT activist notable for seeking to “out” Republican politicians who experience same-sex attraction, and was named as one of the most impactful LGBT people of 2022 by Out, a left-of-center LGBT magazine. ^{22 2}

1. “About AlterNet.” AlterNet. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.alternet.org/about-alternet/.
2. “John Byrne.” Raw Story. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.rawstory.com/u/john-byrne
3. “Trump’s Most Dangerous Cabinet Pick Is Someone You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.” AlterNet, January 27, 2025. Accessed January 27, 2025.  https://www.alternet.org/jay-bhattacharya/.
4. Story, Raw. “Raw Story Partners Announce Acquisition Of AlterNet.Org And The New Civil Rights Movement.” PRN Newswire, April 11, 2018. Accessed January 27, 2025.  https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/raw-story-partners-announce-acquisition-of-alternetorg-and-the-new-civil-rights-movement-300628299.html.
5. “It’s a New Day for AlterNet.” AlterNet, April 10, 2018. Archived from the original April 10, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180410021031/https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/raw-story-owners-buy-alternet.
6. “About Alternet.” AlterNet, February 22, 1997. Archived from the original February 22, 1997. https://web.archive.org/web/19970222072340/http://www.alternet.org/aboutalter.html.
7.  Ricart, Judit Ruiz. .“.ORG vs .COM vs .NET – What Do They Mean and Which Is Better?” Wix Blog, January 23, 2025. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.wix.com/blog/org-vs-com-vs-net-domain-extensions.
8. “Home.” AlterNet. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.alternet.org, https://www.alternet.org/
9. “Defend Democracy Today: Support Fearless, Insightful Journalism.” AlterNet. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://kindest.com/442355-defend-democracy-today-support-fearless-insightful-journalism.
10. Boddie, Maya. “Ex-GOP Columnist: How a German Political Theorist Explains Trump Party’s ‘Terrible Political Morality.’” AlterNet, January 26, 2026. https://www.alternet.org/republicans-trump-german-thinker/
11. Boddie, Maya. “‘Fake Christian Is Mad’: Trump Mocked over His National Prayer Service Criticism.” AlterNet. January 21, 2025. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.alternet.org/trump-national-prayer-service/.
12. Henderson, Alex. “Alarm Raised about ‘unholly Alliance’ between Christian Nationalists and Billionaires.” AlterNet, January 20, 2025. Accessed January 27, 2025.  https://www.alternet.org/katherine-stewart-oligarchs/.
13. Parker, David. “How Christian Nationalism Played a Role in Incorporating Phrase ‘so Help Me God’ in Presidential Oath of Office.” AlterNet. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.alternet.org/so-help-me-god/
14. Jones, Benjamin. “What Is an Oligarchy — and Is the United States Poised to Become One?” AlterNet, January 21, 2025. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.alternet.org/what-is-an-oligarchy-and-is-the-united-states-poised-to-become-one/.
15. Goldsmith, Eloise. “Facebook Follows X down Path to Becoming Right-Wing ‘Cesspool.’” AlterNet. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.alternet.org/facebook-fact-checkers/.
16. Henderson, Alex. “‘Delusional Mythology’: Hard Lessons Ahead for Trump Supporters Because They Don’t Understand Capitalism.” AlterNet, January 27, 2025. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.alternet.org/trump-economy-rich-logis/.
17. Johnson, Jake. “‘Unthinkable’: Trump FTC Chair Shuts down Public Comments on Corporate Pricing Tactics.” AlterNet, January 24, 2025. Accessed January 27, 2025.  https://www.alternet.org/trump-corporate-pricing/.
18. Schladen, Marty. “Far-Right Republican AGs Question Protections for Immigrants from Dangerous Home Countries.” AlterNet, January 27, 2025. https://www.alternet.org/immigration-dangerous-country/.
19. Barclay, Mel Leonor. “Pregnant Women Sue the Trump Administration.” AlterNet. January 26, 2025. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.alternet.org/pregnant-women-sue-trump-administration/.
20. “Roxanne Cooper – Raw Story.” Raw Story. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.rawstory.com/u/roxannecooper.
21. “Elizabeth Preza.” LinkedIn.com. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizforprezadent/.
22. Ireland, Doug. “The Outing.” L.A. Weekly. Accessed January 27, 2025. Archived from the original February 8, 2019.https://web.archive.org/web/20190208094059/https://www.laweekly.com/news/the-outing-2138854.