Drop Site News

Washington, DC, USA · Nonprofit · Fiscally sponsored by Social Security Works Education Fund

Overview

Drop Site News is a nonprofit investigative news organization founded in July 2024 by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim, with Nausicaa Renner as a founding editor. All three previously worked at The Intercept — Scahill as a co-founder and one of the organization's defining journalists, Grim as Washington bureau chief, and Renner as an editor who had resigned from The Intercept in February 2024 in protest of that outlet's mass layoffs. The publication launched with startup funding provided by The Intercept — an unusual arrangement that recognized the two departing journalists' centrality to the organization's editorial identity — and is fiscally sponsored by Social Security Works Education Fund, a Washington nonprofit. It describes itself on its About page as "a non-aligned, investigative news organization dedicated to exposing the crimes of the powerful — particularly in overt and secret conflicts where the U.S. government is playing a key role," and states explicitly that it is "not simply another non-partisan news organization" but one that is "never afraid to take a stand for truth, regardless of the partisan consequences or the risk of political or personal unpopularity."

Founding and the Break from The Intercept

The immediate circumstances of Drop Site's founding lay in the institutional collapse at The Intercept in the first half of 2024. Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media had ended its major financial support of The Intercept in late 2022; by February 2024, the publication had laid off approximately one-third of its newsroom — including editor-in-chief Roger Hodge — in a cost-cutting measure driven by the loss of philanthropic revenue. Renner resigned in February in protest of the layoffs. Scahill and Grim remained briefly but found themselves, as Scahill later wrote, in an environment where "the management regime" had made it impossible to pursue the journalism they had come to The Intercept to do. Grim told Semafor that he and Scahill had proposed to take over The Intercept entirely — an offer the board rejected. They departed in July 2024.

In his founding statement, Scahill described the animating logic: "What Ryan and I are trying to do is build a lean, sustainable, reader-supported news organization that's going to take big swings at powerful people. Our pledge is to be accountable to the readers, the viewers and the listeners." The name Drop Site — a journalism term for a secure location or method through which a source passes material to a journalist — signals the publication's orientation toward source-based national security and foreign policy reporting. The first major story, published within the first week of operation, was a three-part series by Scahill based on interviews with senior leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad about their decision to launch the October 7, 2023 attacks and their view of the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

Founders: Scahill, Grim, and Renner

Jeremy Scahill is one of the most prominent investigative journalists in American national security reporting. He began his career at Democracy Now!, where Amy Goodman trained him, and has spent three decades covering US military operations, covert warfare, and foreign policy. His 2007 book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army — a detailed investigation into the private military contractor that became central to the Iraq War — was a New York Times bestseller that helped force a Congressional reckoning with the privatization of military operations. His 2013 book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield documented the expansion of the Joint Special Operations Command's covert killing program under both Bush and Obama administrations; it was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated documentary. He is a Type Media Center Fellow and hosts the Intercepted podcast, which continues at Drop Site.

Ryan Grim is a Washington DC journalist whose career spans Politico, HuffPost (where he served as DC bureau chief), and The Intercept. He is known for consequential political reporting including the 2023 publication of a leaked Pakistani diplomatic cable alleging US State Department pressure to remove Prime Minister Imran Khan — a story that had significant geopolitical reverberations — and for aggressive White House press briefing questioning on the Biden administration's Israel policy during the Gaza conflict. He hosts the Deconstructed podcast, which also continues at Drop Site. He is the author of We've Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement (2019) and a biography of the Sackler family's role in the opioid crisis.

Nausicaa Renner previously served as an editor at The Intercept and Columbia Journalism Review. She left The Intercept in February 2024 in protest of the layoffs and joined Drop Site at its founding as the third member of the leadership team.

Coverage and Editorial Character

Drop Site's coverage in its first year has centered heavily on the Israel-Gaza conflict — including Scahill's Hamas interviews, reporting on US weapons transfers to Israel, coverage of the civilian death toll in Gaza, and investigative pieces on the information war around the conflict. Its Middle East coverage is led by Sharif Abdel Kouddous, a journalist based in Egypt and New York who has covered the region for Democracy Now! and other outlets. The publication has also covered US domestic politics, the Trump administration, immigration enforcement, the activities of Elon Musk's DOGE operation inside the federal government, and civil liberties issues. In February 2026, Drop Site gained access to the White House press corps pool — a credential that drew criticism from pro-Israel media organizations, which characterized the publication as "Hamas-sympathetic" in their coverage of its White House accreditation. Drop Site disputed that characterization.

In September 2024, Scahill published a statement titled "Drop Site News is Under Attack From an Authoritarian Government," describing what he said were attempts by a foreign government to suppress the publication's coverage. The specific government was not identified in publicly available reporting.

Funding and the Open Society Foundations Grant

Drop Site describes itself as reader-supported and explicitly states it does not accept corporate advertising. It is fiscally sponsored by Social Security Works Education Fund, a Washington nonprofit focused on Social Security advocacy — an organizational home that has drawn commentary given the publication's primary editorial focus on foreign policy and national security rather than domestic social insurance policy.

In November 2025, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Open Society Foundations — the philanthropic organization associated with George Soros — had awarded Drop Site News a $250,000 grant in 2024 to support the establishment of its Middle East and North Africa bureau. The grant was confirmed by Open Society Foundations' own public spending database, which described it as intended "to bridge a crucial information gap in independent journalism" in the MENA region. Drop Site's own donor communications described the publication as "entirely reader-supported," omitting reference to the grant — a disclosure gap that generated criticism both from those who objected to the editorial implications of Soros-linked funding and from those who raised the more general point that a publication claiming independence should disclose all significant funding sources to its readers. Drop Site did not respond to requests for comment from the Free Beacon at the time of publication. The grant and the disclosure question remain the most significant documented controversy in the publication's brief history.

Access and Usage

Drop Site publishes at dropsitenews.com with a free and paid subscription model. Free subscribers receive access to some content; paid subscribers receive full access. Subscriptions are available at dropsitenews.com/subscribe; one-time donations are accepted at donate.dropsitenews.com. The Intercepted and Deconstructed podcasts are available through all standard podcast platforms and through the Drop Site website. Secure tips can be submitted through the contact page.