media-pipeline left national-security gaza intercept-spinoff soros-funded foundation-money
related: Open Society Foundations · First Look Media · Ryan Grim · Jeremy Scahill
Who They Are
Drop Site News is an independent investigative news outlet founded July 8, 2024, by Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill following their contentious departure from The Intercept. Operating primarily through Substack with a standalone website, Drop Site maintains approximately 9,000 paid subscribers out of 300,000–400,000 total readers. The staff consists of roughly eight remote journalists and editors. Editorial focus concentrates on Gaza and Palestine, Pakistan, Ecuador, and U.S. national security policy—with particular emphasis on war crimes, military-industrial complex accountability, and foreign policy scrutiny.
The outlet blends aggressive investigative reporting with explicit advocacy, rejecting the institutional press tradition of false balance. A significant editorial development occurred in September 2025 when Nika Soon-Shiong, daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, joined as publisher, signaling potential expansion and institutional maturation. Drop Site’s founding narrative centers on editorial independence from billionaire influence—a direct reaction to Pierre Omidyar’s control of The Intercept—yet the actual funding structure complicates that founding myth considerably.
The Funding Model
Drop Site’s revenue model relies nominally on subscriber fees and foundation grants, with Substack subscriptions providing the public-facing “reader-supported” narrative. The outlet claims subscriptions plus individual donations constitute “a bit more than half” of total revenue, with foundation grants making up the remainder. Annual revenue is estimated at $2–4 million, with no advertising model.
The most significant undisclosed funder is the Open Society Foundations, which awarded $250,000 in 2024 specifically to establish a MENA (Middle East and North Africa) desk—money routed through fiscal sponsor Social Security Works Education Fund. This grant was not publicly disclosed by Drop Site during its marketing as “completely independent” and “reader-supported.” The grant surfaced publicly only when the Washington Free Beacon reported the OSF spending database entry in November 2025, more than a year after the award.
The Intercept provided crucial startup capital—access to its subscriber list and an undisclosed transition grant—allowing Drop Site to launch with an existing audience base. The broader context: First Look Media founder Pierre Omidyar had pledged $250 million to the project in 2013, contributed approximately $90 million (96.7% of total funding) by 2017, and withdrew support entirely in late 2022. By early 2024, The Intercept was losing $300,000 per month. When Grim and Scahill pushed for editorial control, the board refused; they departed and launched Drop Site in July 2024, using The Intercept as their launch platform while simultaneously calling out the same billionaire-capture dynamics they were leaving.
FEC Record
Pending API query — organization and individual contributor lookups.
Who Funds Them
Open Society Foundations: $250,000 grant (2024, undisclosed at award time, routed through Social Security Works Education Fund) for MENA desk establishment.
The Intercept: Undisclosed transition grant and subscriber list access (2024).
Subscriber base: Approximately 9,000 paid subscribers generating recurring revenue (amount undisclosed).
Individual donors: Small-dollar supporter base supplementing subscriber revenue.
The structural dependency is split between reader revenue (subscriptions) and foundation money (OSF), with the OSF grant specifically anchoring the MENA coverage that dominates editorial output. Unlike The Intercept’s Omidyar monoculture, Drop Site has diversified away from a single billionaire funder, but the replacement is foundation money from the same philanthropic ecosystem—with significantly less transparency.
What They Push
Drop Site’s editorial focus concentrates on Gaza and Palestine coverage to a degree that structures nearly all other reporting. National security state criticism follows classic left-media themes: military contractors, intelligence overreach, war crimes, U.S. interventionism. Investigative reporting on U.S. foreign policy receives institutional backing through the OSF MENA grant, further centralizing Palestine/Gaza coverage as the outlet’s signature beat.
Notably, the outlet participated in the OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) investigation of U.S. government funding of journalism—a meta-critique of media capture dynamics. The irony is sharp: OCCRP itself noted that Drop Site is “remarkably non-transparent about its own funding,” flagging the very opacity that allowed the OSF grant to remain undisclosed for over a year.
The Audience Capture Model
Drop Site’s revenue structure creates a secondary capture mechanism distinct from billionaire ownership but equally structural. The outlet’s founding audience came primarily for Gaza/Palestine coverage—Grim and Scahill’s explicit commitment to adversarial reporting on U.S. foreign policy. This audience concentration directly generates subscription revenue: readers pay for Palestine coverage.
Simultaneously, the OSF grant specifically funds MENA desk operations, meaning foundation money explicitly anchors the same coverage area. The result is a structural incentive to maintain editorial focus on Gaza and related Middle East policy precisely because that focus generates both subscriber revenue and grant money. The audience is not a passive consumer; it is an active funder voting with subscription dollars. When that audience came for Palestine coverage and continues to expect it, the subscription model creates editorial gravity that is functionally identical to donor capture—except the donor is diffuse (readers) and the mechanism is market rather than contractual.
This is distinct from The Intercept’s Omidyar problem because it is not explicit control, but the structural incentive is identical: maintain the coverage that funds the operation.
What Their Funders Got
Open Society Foundations secured a dedicated MENA reporting desk producing Gaza/Palestine coverage aligned with OSF’s stated regional priorities and geopolitical positioning. The grant explicitly purchased editorial real estate—a guaranteed desk producing content in a specific geographic focus area. This is not covert influence; it is contractual foundation practice. But the non-disclosure created the appearance of independence while extracting the benefit of alignment.
Subscribers received aggressive adversarial national security journalism with explicit anti-establishment editorial voice. They paid for Palestine coverage and got it in abundance. The transaction is transparent: reader pays, outlet produces content readers want.
The Intercept gained the appearance of having “launched” an independent successor outlet while maintaining subscriber relationships with the audience that departed. Grim and Scahill’s move validated The Intercept’s founding mythology (editorial independence is possible) while simultaneously proving it false (both founders’ new project accepted foundation money within months of launch).
Class Analysis
Drop Site represents a central contradiction of left media in the philanthropic era: the outlet was founded explicitly to reject billionaire donor capture at The Intercept, yet immediately accepted a $250,000 foundation grant from the same philanthropic ecosystem—with no public disclosure and explicit branding as “reader-supported.”
The founding narrative is that Grim and Scahill left to escape editorial interference and funder control. The structural reality is that they replaced one billionaire (Omidyar) with multiple foundation funders (OSF primary, but implicit others), and maintained a subscriber model that creates its own editorial gravity. The subscription audience is not a donor class in the traditional sense, but it is an audience that must be continuously satisfied—and that audience came for Palestine coverage and will leave if it stops.
The question is whether structural incentive and market demand constitute a form of capture. Drop Site would argue no: their audience is self-selected, their coverage is authentic, their funding is transparent (post-revelation). But the year-long non-disclosure of the OSF grant undermines the transparency claim. The contradiction is not hypocrisy exactly—these are individuals committed to the work—but a failure to reckon with the structural dynamics they inherited from The Intercept.
Contradiction
Independence claims vs. reality: Drop Site was founded to escape Omidyar’s billionaire control of The Intercept. Within months, the outlet accepted a $250K grant from Open Society Foundations (another billionaire foundation) specifically to establish a MENA desk—the outlet’s signature coverage area. This grant was not disclosed publicly, allowing Drop Site to market itself as “completely independent” and “reader-supported” for over a year. When the Washington Free Beacon reported the OSF grant in November 2025, it exposed the same funder-influence dynamics the founders claimed to be rejecting. The structural question: is accepting undisclosed foundation money fundamentally different from Omidyar’s model, or merely less concentrated and less transparent?
Capture Architecture
Primary revenue streams: Subscriptions (est. 50%+ of revenue) and foundation grants (remainder).
Lead funder: Open Society Foundations, $250K grant (undisclosed) for MENA desk.
Editorial anchor: Coverage priorities for Gaza/Palestine and Middle East policy are sustained by both audience demand (subscribers fund themselves by paying for this coverage) and grant funding (OSF money explicitly funds the desk).
Structural vulnerability: If foundation funding and audience preference both concentrate on MENA coverage, the outlet’s claim to “reader-supported independence” masks a dual-dependency model. The readers are not independent of the outlet’s coverage; they are self-selected for it. The foundation is not independent of the coverage it funds; it explicitly purchased the desk.
Editorial red lines: The outlet will continue producing aggressive national security reporting and Palestine coverage because that is simultaneously what readers pay for, what OSF funds, and what the founders believe in. The coincidence of these three pressures creates structural stability—but that stability is the definition of capture, even if unintentional.
Timeline
| Date | Event | Key Players | Amount | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 8, 2013 | Pierre Omidyar pledges $250M to First Look Media | Omidyar, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill | $250M pledge | First Look Media founded as billionaire-backed investigative platform |
| 2017 | Omidyar has contributed approximately $90M to First Look (96.7% of total funding) | Omidyar, The Intercept leadership | ~$90M | Omidyar’s outsized control establishes funder-influence baseline for The Intercept |
| Late 2022 | Pierre Omidyar withdraws support from The Intercept | Omidyar, The Intercept board | Undisclosed | Beginning of The Intercept’s financial crisis; end of primary funder support |
| April 2024 | The Intercept reports $300,000 monthly losses to staff; CEO announces restructuring | The Intercept leadership, staff | N/A | Financial crisis forces newsroom contraction and editorial shift |
| June 2024 | Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill attempt to secure control of The Intercept; board declines their proposal | Grim, Scahill, The Intercept board | N/A | Founders’ bid for editorial independence rejected; resignations follow |
| July 8, 2024 | Drop Site News launches with founding by Grim and Scahill | Grim, Scahill, initial staff | Undisclosed (transition grant from The Intercept) | New independent outlet launches with Intercept subscriber access and transition funding |
| 2024 | Open Society Foundations awards $250K grant for MENA desk establishment | OSF, Drop Site, Social Security Works Education Fund (fiscal sponsor) | $250K | Foundation explicitly funds geographic coverage focus; grant remains undisclosed publicly |
| September 2025 | Nika Soon-Shiong (daughter of LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong) joins Drop Site as publisher | Soon-Shiong, Drop Site leadership | Salary (undisclosed) | Institutional backing and capital connections from major media family signal expansion and stabilization |
| November 2025 | Washington Free Beacon reports OSF’s $250K grant to Drop Site via public spending database | Washington Free Beacon, OSF, Drop Site | $250K (revealed) | Undisclosed foundation funding becomes public; “reader-supported” branding challenged; first major scrutiny of Drop Site’s funding |
The timeline reveals a structural arc: founders reject billionaire capture by departing The Intercept, immediately accept foundation money from the same philanthropic class, and fail to disclose it. When exposure occurs, institutional backing (Soon-Shiong hire) is already in place, suggesting strategic anticipation of funding pressure or pre-negotiated stabilization.
Sources
- Semafor: The Intercept is running out of cash (Tier 2)
- Semafor: Money woes and staff issues strain The Intercept (Tier 2)
- Washington Free Beacon: Exclusive—Soros bankrolling anti-Israel Drop Site News (Tier 4 — partisan source, but first to report OSF grant from public database)
- CJR: The Intercept’s business crisis and layoffs (Tier 2)
- Ken Klippenstein: Why I’m resigning from The Intercept (Tier 3 — reporter’s own account of newsroom dynamics)
- Semafor: The verdict of history will be merciless—A new left media rises in the age of Trump (Tier 2)
- OCCRP: OCCRP under attack (Tier 2)
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