Mediaite Turns 15: Dan Abrams Looks Back at Highs, Lows… And How the Site Almost Broke Him

Dan Abrams

When Mediaite launched in 2009, we were embraced with a hero’s welcome from my colleagues in the media. “Why the hell do we need Dan Abrams’ Mediaite?” queried Fast Company. Slate declared, “The fledgling media Web site leaves an acrid aftertaste.” New York magazine celebrated our unconventional name with the headline: “There’s a Mediaite Burrowing Around Inside the Internet,” followed by, “Maybe because it sounds like a kind of parasite, one that attaches itself onto the skin of the media and burrows into it?”

Others were more sanctimonious, claiming to be aghast at my gumption to create a news media entity while (at the time) also having a consulting company which advised, gulp… businesses.

The grousing became so fierce that even though I was still with NBC News as their Chief Legal Analyst, I was asked to step down from the board of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press based on my work for a “for-profit consulting business”! Ah, remember those precious days of old when news organizations tried to convince themselves they were effectively “not for profits”? Before just about every media company actively sought out a wide variety of “alternative revenue streams”?

But the early resistance from the media became a part of the site’s DNA, helping fuel its success and enhance its endurance. In fact, the criticism made me even more steadfast and uncowed as we worked out of the corner of a music company’s Soho office. It’s true, the mission of the site always seemed ambitious if not a tad presumptuous. “For the media, about the media and part of the new media.” How dare we declare ourselves the arbiters of their unassailable, unconflicted, and uniformly unbiased content? Members of the news media in particular don’t generally appreciate being examined or scrutinized. And yes, some of the hullabaloo may have been self-inflicted. We came barreling in with a “Power Grid” that ranked (and rankled) members of the media based on their “relevance.” The grid was so controversial — and popular — that the site crashed on day one. But over time we “burrowed” in and resoundingly answered the question of why the hell we needed Mediaite.

I wasn’t always confident we had a good enough answer. After I effectively shuttered the consulting business, which funded the website in the early days, dipping into my personal Chase account to cover payroll became an anxiety-inducing, and all too regular event. Not only had I become a media pariah to some, I had placed my financial future at risk as well.

Fortunately, that all changed with new business strategies and smarter choices. Soon enough, Mediaite became a very profitable media business. Now, the site is a daily habit, maybe even a guilty pleasure, for millions every day. Walk into any newsroom in America, particularly the national ones, and you are bound to see Mediaite opened on the computer screens of producers, talent, and executives alike. The site’s coverage of media and politics regularly gets picked up on cable news and beyond. We don’t just cover the people who make the news anymore, we are now a critical source for many of the segments you see on cable news and talk radio.

Our audience has grown exponentially with the site often drawing a whopping 80 million page views per month with a still comparatively small team. Maybe most significantly, about 50% of that traffic comes in via the front page of Mediaite.com. Google search and mercurial social media referrals make up just a fraction of our traffic. Now, I can’t honestly claim that I foresaw how critical it would become not to be beholden to Facebook, Twitter, or Google. We chased that traffic too, but fortunately never came to rely on it as did so many now media ghosts.

Mediaite also helped spawn more than a dozen other properties. Some became monsters like Law&Crime and the Law&Crime Network that recently sold to Jellysmack. Others like SportsGrid.com and TheMarySue.com were sold at opportune times. Most recently my fine spirits review site BottleRaiders.com announced a major expansion with YouTube partnerships and the acquisition of a spirits event business. Others had their moment, like TheBrasier.com, which was effectively Mediaite for chefs and earned a prestigious James Beard award before ultimately being folded into Mediaite. Geekosystem.com became a strong “geek” site until TheMarySue surpassed it and I combined them together under that name. I’m still disappointed that RunwayRiot (formerly Styleite) never took off the way I had hoped. There were abject failures too, almost all from what I call our “blue period” from around 2012 to 2014. Does anyone remember TheMaude or TheJaneDough?

The vicissitudes over the past 15 years forced us to adapt both on the business side and editorially. Wonkier media “think” pieces were ubiquitous in the early days, but eventually gave way to more breaking news, opinion pieces, and scoops that you see on the site today. Staff changes have also inevitably shifted the site’s perspective, including politically. I have long tried to balance the politics on the site but have never completely succeeded. There were times I felt the site becoming more right leaning, and at other times too liberal. But there were never edicts nor editorial mandates. Mediaite writers in 2009, or 2024, always knew they could, and would, have their say and autonomy. Through it all, we also maintained our independence as an outlet untethered to any corporate ownership.

But this is not, and never was, The Dan Abrams Post. As the editors also know, I sometimes vehemently disagree with perspectives or pieces on the site. Over the fifteen years I’ve faced disbelief from many (including friends) upset about coverage, insistent that I must somehow be behind a story even though in reality, I read it for the first time on the site or when the person linked to it with their complaints.

Whether I agree with the writers or not, I have long been proud of the success so many Mediaite reporters and editors have achieved. We have seen dozens of alums join just about every major media entity in the country. Right and left, mainstream and alternative, Mediaite was their training ground. But I am even prouder of the fact that in the past few years in particular, rather than serving as a launching pad, Mediaite has become a destination for top writers from other publications and media companies. We have solidly become one of the top players in the news media and have the talent to back it up.

So, thank you. Thank you to the inaugural team who endured the slings and arrows, thank you to those who worked at Mediaite in the early days for less money than they deserved, thank you to the amazing team we have right now for making the site so compelling and successful, and thanks to all of you for sticking with us and helping to make Mediaite what it is today. Happy 15th!