Introducing Stacker Connect
Today, we are thrilled to publicly introduce Stacker Connect, the newest offering in our journey to build the world’s most robust and accessible newswire. As we continue to reimagine what a newswire can look like, Stacker Connect serves as a bridge between brand publishers creating world-class content with newsrooms seeking to supplement their coverage.
Stacker Connect allows brands, non-profits, and other publishers investing in data- and research-based stories to distribute their coverage through the Stacker Newswire, providing a unique opportunity to drive more earned reach for their best content. As a result, the Stacker Newswire will have increasingly broader coverage across an even more wide-ranging set of subjects for publishers.
More than 20 organizations have participated in the Stacker Connect pilot program, from world-class brands like Experian, Edmunds, and Bankrate, to a variety of incredible nonprofit newsrooms like The Marshall Project, The 74 Million, Grist and The Hechinger Report. Together, this has already resulted in over 50,000 placements, driving over four million unique readers - that's 50,000 free articles for local news outlets to help engage readers, and 50,000 earned pickups for contributing organizations to help expand their reach to new audiences.
This past year, we have heard two major themes from the publishers and content creators we work with:
From publishers: While there is an abundance of free content available, the core problem is separating the wheat from the chaff. With hundreds of pitches coming in every day, how can editors find engaging, accurate coverage without spending countless hours sifting through their inboxes?
From brands: Distribution, distribution, distribution. There’s a playbook for creating great in-house content, and with the right resources, brands are now drawing on their expertise to create unique coverage in their respective domain. But scalable distribution is still out of reach. As more companies invest in their own publishing efforts, finding an audience for their coverage outside of their own blogs or newsletters has become priority number one.
Having spent the past five years integrating with over 2,000 of the country’s leading news organizations, and developing a deep understanding of what editors are looking for, Stacker is uniquely positioned to solve both problems - doing the vetting for publishers and providing distribution for brands and newsrooms - and creating a seamless platform to connect the two.
How It Works
While we are excited to bring additional partners to the Stacker Newswire, we understand that our role as the clearinghouse for quality is critical.
To contribute to Stacker Connect, partners must go through an editorial review process and meet firm standards. They must have a demonstrated record of publishing accurate, fair, and authoritative content.
Once approved, participating newsrooms pay a flat utility fee to contribute content to the wire, ensuring we can continue to offer the newswire at no cost to publishers across the country. Additionally, we offer Connect pro-bono to select nonprofit newsrooms each month, putting quality journalism in front of more eyes and further adding valuable storytelling to the newswire.
Once a partner is accepted into the program, every story submitted is further reviewed by Stacker editors before publication on the wire. There is no obligation for newsrooms to republish the content—success for contributing partners is rooted in delivering coverage that resonates with readers across our network of distribution partners.
From there, contributing organizations can measure their reach on Stacker's Analytics Portal, to better understand where their coverage is being read.
Looking forward
We founded Stacker in 2017 on the belief that there was an appetite for unique, third-party data journalism, and novel ways to fund a newsroom and a digital distribution platform without charging publishers.
With the launch of Stacker Studio in 2020, we embraced the growing trend of brand-underwritten journalism, helping organizations tap into our editorial expertise — not just in producing quality coverage, but also our knowledge of what publishers want. The past few years have proven there is a growing number of organizations investing in their own original storytelling and producing all sorts of incredible content. Stacker Connect will be the bridge between those organizations and publishers seeking engaging, valuable stories to augment their own coverage.
We are committed to expanding our impact for publishers, and we will continue to find new ways to add value through the Stacker Newswire.
Interested in distributing your content through Stacker or gaining access for your own newsroom? Reach out!