How Stacker evolved from a listicle publisher into a trusted content distribution platform powering brand storytelling to 4,000+ newsrooms.
We started Stacker in 2017 with one thesis:
So we built out a 15 person newsroom, focused primarily on data-driven features, and distributed our feed to everyone from MSN to Hearst Newspapers.
Eight years later, that early insight would prove the seed of something larger than we could have imagined. Today Stacker provides a broad newswire to over 4,000 news outlets, all sourced from over 100 contributors across the country. A bootstrapped company, there was no overnight success or rocketship growth. But over the past 8 years, that seed has snowballed into a pivotal part of the media and publishing world, and the past 6 months have made me more bullish than ever about the need (and opportunity) for something like Stacker.
We’ve come a long way from that 15 person newsroom producing 100% original content for MSN and a handful of newspapers. But there is no Stacker today without that foundation, and we’ve never really drawn the full thread through how this platform was built.
This is the story of how a scrappy listicle publisher built a content marketplace and platform that has gradually become a core part of thousands of organizations’ content + distribution strategy. Spoiler alert: like any marketplace, it’s about maintaining quality + trust.
In the early days, our goal was simple: make smart, data-driven stories in a digestible format (read: slideshows), and get them in front of as many people as possible. But unlike most slideshow publishers of the 2010s, we eschewed bikini pictures and silly quizzes, focusing instead on stories backed by data, and made accessible through visuals and clean formatting. The format was akin to other popular publications at the time, meeting somewhere in the middle of a venn diagram between NYT’s The Upshot and FiveThirtyEight on one side, and Buzzfeed on the other.
And since in 2017 it was nearly impossible to build a consumer facing media outlet without $20M in VC funding or being a Facebook advertising savant, we looked elsewhere for an audience - creating flexible, customized RSS feeds, and making it all freely available. This got attention, first from aggregators like MSN, and then from publishers like Newsweek, Hearst Newspapers, Lee Enterprises, and Tribune.
But to earn a permanent spot in those newsrooms, you have to do more than produce content. Our coverage had to hold its own next to their best original reporting. That meant building a rigorous editorial engine with deep research, real editing, constant feedback loops. We built a newsroom to be proud of.
2020 was a year to remember for every business - for Stacker, it was absolutely transformational. We realized something big: our ability to produce great coverage that landed across hundreds of news outlets was valuable not just to the publishers we syndicated to, but for other organizations looking to invest more deeply in their content and audience strategy. And so we launched Stacker Studio to help brands tell stories that belonged in the news cycle, leaning on our editorial team to underwrite relevant stories to their industry. To ensure that each and every piece met the same bar (and ensure our publisher partners could count on us), we published detailed editorial standards, the guiding light for the wire. By the end of 2020, 15 organizations were contributing, expanding the coverage and topics we were able to provide to news outlets on the newswire.
Stacker Studio - and the introduction of coverage underwritten by 3rd parties - helped not only scale the Newswire, but opened our eyes to the larger role we could play: not just as content creator, but a distribution partner that made sure high-quality stories got seen.
Our mission got sharper. As we grew both the number of partners contributing content into Studio (supply) and publishers pulling content from the wire (demand), it became clear that what we were really building was a marketplace. We silently morphed from a publisher creating stories to building the infrastructure to power a full ecosystem, connecting orgs with content seeking distribution, to publishers seeking additional content to fill coverage gaps.
The scale started to become meaningful - over the next two years, we drove 5 million monthly readers (all across 3rd party publications).
The model was working, so we doubled down. Reflecting on what it meant to transition from publisher to distributor, we invested in a number of tools to make Stacker an easy - and obvious - choice for publishers seeking additional content. That year we launched:
Slowly, we evolved from a newsroom into something much bigger: the connective tissue between brand publishing and the media world.
In 2023, we built on everything we’d learned and made the model scalable. That meant turning our bridge between brands and publishers into a true two-sided platform.
So we publicly launched Stacker Connect, allowing brands, non-profits, and other publishers investing in data- and research-based stories to distribute their coverage directly through the Stacker Newswire.
Connect gave us a way to further expand the breadth and depth of the newswire, while holding every piece to the same editorial standards we’d applied from the start. Nothing moved forward without passing our review process. The result was a new wave of brand-invested editorial that expanded both the breadth and depth of our content.
It worked on both sides. Publishers gained more high-quality reporting. Brands reached real audiences through trusted editorial channels. We partnered with world-class organizations like Experian and The Marshall Project, each adding strength and diversity to the stories moving through the platform.
This wasn’t about volume. It was about building a system rooted in trust, transparency, and editorial integrity. Like any marketplace, quality will make or break you. So we created a brand jury to vet each contributing organization, and an editorial board to review each contributed piece against our editorial standards. The newswire today is just as much a function of what’s not included, as what is.
More than ever before, Stacker started to experience real market pull. Brands, looking to build true authority through quality content, were hiring journalists in droves. But a year into building out content strategy, many realized that owned audience was not sufficient - the missing key was distribution.
Stacker could not have been better positioned for this wave, and over the last 2 years we’ve expanded to over 100 organizations contributing coverage to a wire syndicated out into the CMS’ of over 4,000 news outlets.
In 2025, our mission stays the same, but the landscape keeps shifting.
Search looks nothing like it did even a year ago. Zero-click answers, AI summaries, and generative search results make up an increasing share of how people find information. Brands and publishers are realizing that creating great content isn’t enough. You need to meet readers where they are.
This is exactly what we’ve been building for.
Stacker’s platform is designed to earn reach. Our stories live across hundreds of trusted publisher sites, making them more visible to AI tools and search engines, and more likely to surface in the places where people are actually getting their answers.
We don’t have to pivot to meet the moment. The infrastructure is already here.
By staying grounded in trust, access, and distribution, Stacker continues to be the connective tissue between the content economy and the journalism ecosystem - and a platform built to thrive in whatever comes next.
Noah Greenberg is the CEO of Stacker, the first content distribution platform built for earned reach. He’s led the company in redefining how brands and publishers collaborate, with over 4,000 news outlets using Stacker to enhance coverage. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Noah previously helped scale Graphiq, later acquired by Amazon.
Featured Image Credit: Photo Illustration by Stacker // Shutterstock, Canva
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