Citizen Free Press, breaking away from other alt-Drudge sites – Washington Examiner

Its a news website run out of a house in Bloomington, Indiana, by a secretive internet whiz who had a bit part in the classic Middle America movie Breaking Away. A mention of Citizen Free Press often brings a shrug even in news-hungry Washington.

But overnight, the site that calls itself an alternative to the once-conservative Drudge Report has shot past competitors and is now poised to dominate the right-leaning media space.

"It's fantastic. I love it. I'm breaking every rule in the modern digital news business with no social media, no Facebook, no branding, no email, and the site is succeeding beyond my wildest dreams, said the one-man operator who goes by Kane."

According to the web traffic counter SimilarWeb, he recorded 6.35 million visits and 45 million page views last month. Thats just a sliver of Drudges numbers, but it puts Citizen Free Press in the top of conservative news sites for page views. Plus, visitors stay a remarkable 17 minutes. And it happened during a period when CFP was briefly knocked off Google.

The shift by the Drudge Report from seemingly conservative, pro-President Trump, to anti-Trump, has opened the door to several conservative news aggregators to grow, and Citizen Free Press has jumped the furthest fastest.

Like Drudge and unlike traditional news sites, such as the Washington Examiner, it lists stories from other sites, often with edgy, sometimes rude headlines. Today, for example, headlines include When Obama cut the payroll tax, Pelosi loved it, and Cuomo begs fleeing New Yorkers Come back, I will cook for you

Unlike Drudge, Kane also writes his own posts from the stories of others, and that helps boost traffic because he includes eye-catching videos. And for posts that do well, he puts them in a library under his list.

While Drudge and many websites have stalled in recent weeks, CFP traffic is jumping, up 1,000% since January 2019, and he hopes to hit 100 million page views a month in a year. He told us that traffic is increasing 5,000-6,000 a month.

As with most new websites, building audiences can be hard, especially when there isnt any brand. Conservative pundit and podcaster Dan Bongino, for example, was able to get a quick start after launching his Drudge alternative site, the BonginoReport.com, in part because he is well known and has a following on conservative media circles.

For CFP, its been word of mouth, an organic type of growth that has given it about 160,000 regulars who help spread the word, said Kane.

"For context, in January of 2020, CFP had 100,000 daily regulars. Now in August, CFP has grown to 160,000 hardcore readers, who visit the site every single day, multiple times each, he said. These 'sticky' numbers are unheard of in the news website business for virtually every other site except Drudge Report itself, which boasts similar engagement numbers, he added.

Kane also credits his style of listing news stories, a primitive presentation even compared to the old school look of Drudge, though he copied the style of Drudge's banner.

It's all about the list. I designed CFP to be as user-friendly as possible, so readers can quickly find new stories, right at the top. I try to write creative headlines. I guess that helps somewhat. It's an alternative approach to news, he said.

With promotion and advertising, Kane said CFP is set to get bigger. Almost no one knows about the site. There is no Facebook page, on purpose, no advertising, no media appearances, no promotion, he said, though it is on a path of 50 million page views in August.

There's a lot of room for growth, said Kane.