Current Revolt Celebrates It's 5 Year Anniversary

Personal thoughts and the changes ahead.

I was looking back at the Current Revolt anniversary post from 2022 and saw how we celebrated getting 3,500 views per day. Now, we average nearly triple that in a non-active season, which gives me a sense of pride in how far we’ve come.

The team and I started Current Revolt in 2020 in response to frustration with lockdowns and the state of politics at the time. Five years later, we are often at the forefront of breaking political news and rumors in our great state, cited by mainstream media and considered a must-follow by anyone who cares about Texas politics.

We’ve long been funded by subscriptions, small one-time donations, and my own personal income. We’ve adamantly refused to sell out for funding, political favor or, in some cases, to write hit pieces for cash or scrub stories in exchange for payment (yes, I have been approached with these offers multiple times).

As we’ve grown, the team and I have taken our work and the content we provide more seriously, investing greater effort and labor to deliver entertaining, informative, interesting, and groundbreaking news to our readers.

Where Current Revolt has fallen short is providing better value to our paid subscribers.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an epiphany when I received no fewer than three several phone calls from political activists, whom I’ve known for quite a while, asking me to share the content of our Friday paywalled article. They didn’t know what we had published because they were free subscribers, and I assume the $7 monthly subscription cost may have been too much for them.

It felt deeply unfair to our paying subscribers to provide content they pay for each month, for free, to multiple people who consider themselves highly active political activists. At that moment, I realized we aren’t doing enough to appreciate and thank our paid subscribers.

After conversations with others who run businesses or media organizations far larger and more successful than mine, and whose wisdom I highly value, I feel confident about changing things up.

Running a scrappy, self-funded, right-leaning publication is not cheap, and I am deeply grateful every person who supports us with a paid subscription, as our revenue model relies on volume.

Going forward, we will be publishing articles behind a paywall. We want to provide greater value and a political edge for those who give us their hard-earned money to access and appreciate the work we do at Current Revolt. The paywall will lift after about a week, ensuring our content remains accessible, but our paid subscribers and supporters will have first access to our news and information.

This change doesn’t thrill me. I’ve spent many nights wrestling with this decision. In an ideal world, we would have that wealthy person who would toss us cash without strings attached, but I’ve learned that, generally, when someone writes a check with a comma in it, that comma often comes with demands. We haven’t sold out, and we have no plans to do so. Because of this commitment, we need your support.

If you’re reading this and haven’t subscribed, I’d love it if you would. You can upgrade to a paid subscription here:

If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you. Everyone is struggling with this economy right now, and everyone is scraping by, cutting costs where possible, and managing financially as best they can. Seven dollars may not seem like much, but it adds up over time, and we do not take that support for granted.

Going forward, we plan to produce more video and audio content that is easier to digest. We’ll also publish more rumors and breaking news more often. The goal here being to make your $7 investment in us worthwhile.

Thank you for being here with us over the past few years. We’re looking forward to the future.

Tony Ortiz
Publisher - Current Revolt
Ortiz@CurrentRevolt.com