What’s Stacker?

Three years ago I helped found Stacker, an online publisher that transforms analysis of public data into list-driven stories. Since Day 1 we’ve avoided most norms in digital publishing, and the result is something unique - objective data-journalism, presented as slideshows. Slideshows get a bad rap (think “29 cats that are cute”), but our hypothesis was that they could be an incredible way of communicating knowledge from data to readers. Stacker syndicates to a variety of news outlets, working with editors to help complement their coverage, and in turn providing a high volume of objective, data-driven stories that help put the readers’ world into context. Each month over 500 different news outlets turn to Stacker, from NY Daily News to the Houston Chronicle and MSN. About six million people read our stories each month - we’ve spent $0 on Facebook ads, Twitter, or buying traffic.

Two years in, Stacker employs 15 people, produces about 100 in-depth research pieces each month, and… turns a profit. Here’s my take on why we started Stacker, and what you can learn about media today from the company’s early traction.

It’s no secret… online media is a bit of a shitshow right now. With dwindling ad revenues on the print side, local newspapers are being gobbled up by private equity firms and massive conglomerates, stripping the newsrooms dry and leaving news deserts across the country. On the digital side, almost every media outlet that's taken VC money over the past 5 years has either shut down or gone through layoffs, and some of the fastest growing publications are actually charging their readers in a move back towards traditional subscription models. A Business Insider report counted over 7,800 media jobs that were cut in 2019 - so why start a media company today?

Fortunately, there’s more to the story. While many publishers of traditional longform (read: print) journalism have struggled to transition their businesses to digital and monetize audiences, consumers are reading more online content than ever, and plenty of upstart digital publications are flourishing on the internet by upending the traditional business and content models. Dozens of newsletter’s are following TheSkimm’s success, building exciting businesses around content delivered to (and consumed in) your inbox (see TheHustle), while SubStack just raised $15 million to help writers with loyal followings break away from their employers and start their own monetized subscription newsletters. Moreover, the proliferation of companies leveraging lists, galleries and slideshows over the past 5 years has ballooned, further proving the value in taking a step back from traditional news formats. Buzzfeed News (the company’s attempt at traditional long form journalism) went through layoffs in 2019 --- Buzzfeed proper is doing just fine. And although there is more than enough garbage content published in list format each day, it’s worth taking note of how the visual-first, digestible format has struck a nerve with readers.

There is a common thread connecting many of today’s growing media companies --- they’ve acknowledged that many of today’s readers don’t have time or interest in reading a 5,000 word essay, and are evolving the format, creating a more digestible and accessible story format. Many readers are avoiding long form articles and essays, no matter how quality the journalism. Blame it on shorter attention spans, Facebook, or the fact that a long narrative article is just really frustrating to read on your phone - but there’s something about knowing the finite amount of content you are about to consume that has readers hooked. Love it or hate it, people love lists.

But most lists suck. After 10+ years of listicle bombardment, anything with the word “list” in it has become synonymous with clickbait, and is associated with subjective, Buzzfeed-style content meant to grab the reader’s attention but offer little value in return. Something like this....

 Or this

The stigma around lists is real, and when people hear that Stacker publishes lists (and only lists), their eyes usually roll - in most people’s minds, the spectrum of quality for online journalism looks something like this:

So can journalism play off of our innate love for lists while still leaving the reader with some sort of objective knowledge? It can. In fact, breaking down complex information into individual slides is an incredible way to make analysis of public data (think Census records or US Budget data) more accessible. There is plenty of data and research out there, but accessibility is a problem, and presenting analysis in a format people are comfortable with (slideshows instead of spreadsheets), has opened Stacker’s stories up to new audiences.

Sites like 538, The Pudding, and The Upshot have capitalized on people’s obsession with data and its ability to contextualize information, but have yet to cross the format chasm - everything is still single page long reads, or complex charts and graphs - objective data presented in an accesibile, digestible format is where Stacker has found its niche.

Each slide in a Stacker story is made up of three parts: a data point (put into context), additional editorial insight, and a corresponding image.

Example of a single slide in a Stacker story

Humans are visual creatures, and images are a major part of every story we tell. By pairing data with a complementing photo, raw stats become more accessible to a wider audience that otherwise would not consider reflecting on the information.

Great content that readers love is a nice start, but today’s online media marketplace is saturated as hell, and simply throwing up a website and some Facebook ads doesn’t quite cut it anymore - when launching Stacker, we looked at one of the consequences of all those media layoffs - newsrooms are shrinking, but their websites still need engaging content - and decided to find audiences elsewhere than our own website. As budgets shrink, publications are starting to hone in on their “specialty” as they’re forced to decrease the volume of original content they’re able to create, and look elsewhere for traditional “features,” that don’t make sense to investigate and report on in house. And that’s where we’ve built our business.

But what about tomorrow? Online media has changed a lot these past few years, but it’s not stopping, and at Stacker we’re constantly thinking about how we can shift our weight and momentum to address what’s next. One of our biggest bets? Local.

If the media industry as a whole has been hit these past 10 years, local journalism has been absolutely bludgeoned, with newsrooms shrinking at alarming rates all over the country. If you are an entrepreneur that wants to save the world --- saving local journalism wouldn’t be a bad place to start. How can Stacker help? The beautiful thing about data is it is a) highly collected for every zip code, city, state and neighborhood, and b) highly structured, enabling Stacker to reuse analysis from one city, neighborhood or state across all the others. In essence, Stacker can perform the research once, and provide a unique story for an almost infinite number of neighborhoods and cities.

While this won’t singlehandedly “save local journalism,” an influx of engaging, unique features to local publishers frees up their editors, allowing newsrooms to focus on the stories that matter to their communities.

The future of media is unclear, but far from grim.