Who reads Muckrakers.Today

Our audience is progressive, accountability-minded, and unusually persistent. Readers arrive from search, from social recommendations by other accountability journalists, from our own newsletter, and increasingly from links that campaigns, unions, and issue organizations share to their own lists. They open newsletters, they finish podcasts, and they show up in the story tips inbox with primary documents attached.

Geographically, we skew heavier in the Southeast (Asheville is our home base), with meaningful concentrations in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Nationally, we index high in urban and college-town ZIPs with the standard progressive-media demographic profile. Age skews 30 to 65. Roughly half of newsletter subscribers open on mobile, half on desktop, with mobile share climbing on breaking-news days.

Behaviorally, this is not passive scroll traffic. The Grifters ledger and the Rogues' Gallery pull readers who stay on-page for minutes, not seconds. The Putin Watch Index gets return visits from the same IPs day after day. The MUCK YOU! podcast retains listeners past the mid-roll at rates that compare favorably to comparable independent political podcasts.

Distribution surfaces

Sold directly, so a sponsor always knows exactly what they are buying and where it runs.

Web (muckrakers.today and targets.muckrakers.today)

The homepage aggregator, the Grifters ledger, the Podcasts hub, the SpaceX Stock Price Fraud tracker, the Dumbass archive, and the whole Rogues' Gallery surface. Standard leaderboard, in-column, and footer units, sold on a per-day or per-week basis. Custom formats (sponsored trackers, sponsored series) available for larger commitments. Ad units render server-side against our house cream-and-red brand, so third-party creative feels native without being confusable with editorial.

The Daily Muck newsletter

A morning email digest with the day's essential accountability reporting, curated from the front page. One dedicated sponsor slot per send with a house-formatted native placement (small logo, one line of copy, one link). Subscriber list is grown only through direct opt-in on this site; no list buys, no swaps, no cross-promotion trades.

Podcasts (MUCK YOU! and Rogues' Gallery)

Host-read or produced spots at the pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll positions. Podcast advertising works on this site because our shows are short, packed, and finished by listeners. Custom-branded segments and full-episode sponsorships available for larger campaigns and for issue advertisers with a longer story to tell.

Social channels

We do not sell social media placements directly. Sponsors of on-site or newsletter campaigns get a good-faith social mention on our owned Bluesky account when the campaign runs.

Rate card

Rates are starting points and scale with reach, position, and cycle demand. Weekly, full-cycle, and bundled web + newsletter + podcast packages available on request.

Rates above are for standard non-political creative. Political and issue advertising is welcome and priced at the same schedule; the required paid-for line is added at run time. All rates are USD and are exclusive of any external ad-serving fees where the sponsor requests third-party delivery.

Programmatic advertising (Google AdSense)

In addition to direct-sold placements above, some pages carry programmatic display advertising served through Google AdSense. Programmatic units are labeled as advertising and are separated from editorial content by our house cream-and-red chrome. Sponsors of direct-sold placements can request that their creative not run alongside programmatic units on the same page, and we honor that request.

Reader privacy details, including the Google DoubleClick DART cookie disclosure and opt-out links, are on our Privacy Policy page.

Editorial firewall

Sponsors do not see, review, or approve editorial content before it publishes. That includes our aggregator ranking, the Grifters ledger, the Rogues' Gallery dossiers, the trackers, the podcasts, and the newsletter. If a sponsor's competitor becomes a Grifter or a Rogue on the merits, we cover it. If a sponsor becomes a Grifter or a Rogue on the merits, we cover that too, and we disclose the sponsorship relationship inline.

We do not run advertorial dressed as journalism. Sponsored content, when we do it at all, is clearly labeled Sponsored at the top, kept out of the aggregator, and never carries the Muckrakers editorial byline.

The editorial team has no revenue targets. Ad revenue is planned against known costs (hosting, tools, contractor payments, legal), not against per-piece performance. There is no floor traffic a story has to hit for it to publish. There is no story we spike because a sponsor asked.

Political and issue advertising

Muckrakers.Today accepts political and issue advertising. Placements for candidates, committees, PACs, unions, and issue campaigns are sold at fair market value on the same rate schedule as commercial advertising and run with the required paid-for disclaimer.

American Muckrakers PAC II (FEC ID C00896951) is a federal super PAC legally separate from the newsroom and separate from Parallax Advisory LLC. A candidate or committee that advertises with the newsroom does not thereby purchase influence with the PAC, and a candidate the PAC opposes may still advertise with the newsroom under the same terms.

We reserve the right to decline creative that is materially misleading, that promotes voter suppression, or that violates the required paid-for line and disclaimer rules under applicable law. Where creative includes claims about a third party, we may ask the buyer for source documentation.

What we do not run

• Crypto pump-and-dump schemes, meme tokens, and anything marketed as "guaranteed returns."
• Payday lending and predatory small-dollar credit.
• Multi-level-marketing recruiting funnels.
• Firearms accessories or ammunition targeting a private consumer audience.
• Adult content, tobacco, illegal-drug paraphernalia, and gambling not licensed in the reader's state.
• Sponsored content pretending to be editorial reporting.

Contact

Advertising: ads@parallaxadvisory.llc

Publisher: Parallax Advisory LLC, Asheville, North Carolina.

Related: About Muckrakers.Today · Privacy · Terms