We increased traffic to our site, launched our daily Food Policy Tracker, and have found new audiences.
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We increased traffic to our site, launched our daily Food Policy Tracker, and have found new audiences.
September 2, 2025
Civil Eats celebrates one year without a paywall. (Illustration featuring graphics by ©grafis-media via Canva.com)
A year ago, we removed our paywall after nine years. It was a big deal for our small nonprofit newsroom, and something remarkable happened: Our overall traffic shot up, we gained new members, and we are now delivering our vital reporting to more readers than ever.
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At the same time, we shifted our reporting strategy to cover actions of the federal government that impact the food system. Our new Food Policy Tracker, launched on Inauguration Day, features near-daily posts and has become a crucial part of our work.
This initiative depends on engagement from a large audience for its success, and that’s exactly what has happened without a paywall. Given the historical and unprecedented events unfolding, it is paramount that more readers have access to our reporting, not fewer.
After we removed our paywall, we saw an immediate and lasting surge in our readership. We’ve seen a 23 percent increase in traffic over the past 12 months, compared to that timeframe the preceding year—and a 32 percent increase compared to 2022 – 2023.
Also, our past reporting has reached new audiences, bringing fresh relevance to current events. Several of our pandemic-era stories from 2020 saw some of their highest page views after we took down the paywall.
After we removed our paywall, we saw an immediate and lasting surge in our readership, with a 23 percent increase in traffic over the past 12 months.
For instance, our 2020 report of President Trump’s first term and its effects on the food and ag industry saw a spike in traffic in the months leading up to the 2024 election, receiving more than 57,000 pageviews in the past year, totaling over 89,000 pageviews since the day the story was published.
Additionally, our site received a 46 percent increase in overall pageviews in the weeks leading up to the election compared to the same period the year prior.
We’ve received an outpouring of positive feedback, too. Media outlets and media organizations like MediaPost, NiemanLab, and the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) shared the news, and well-known figures from the food system, political, and academic worlds expressed support for our newsroom’s efforts to make our reporting accessible to everyone.
When we removed our paywall, we also shifted our membership strategy to clarify the value of member support. Even though payment was no longer necessary to gain access to our content, we explained that supporting Civil Eats was still essential to our survival. To enrich our appeal, we’ve offered more membership benefits and have seen our engagement deepen. And it’s paid off: Since we dropped the paywall, we’ve gained several hundred new supporters.
Since launching our new Food Policy Tracker in January, we’ve published more than 160 posts covering Congress’ actions and the Trump administration’s efforts to transform the federal government.
We’ve reached thousands of new readers, received dozens of tips, and have broken news on rollbacks to diversity and equity initiatives, the freezing of farm grants, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its impact on food and farming. Lawmakers have also sought out the Tracker’s reporters to share exclusive news, recognizing the value of the platform.
Several of our pandemic-era stories from 2020 saw some of their highest page views after we took down the paywall.
Through on-the-ground reporting by Senior Staff Reporter and Contributing Editor Lisa Held, as well as editing and support from the entire team, the Tracker has allowed us to document how funding cuts are hurting farmers, detailing how their contracts to sell crops to local schools or implement climate-smart practices have been canceled. We’re also thrilled to welcome our new Staff Reporter, Rebekah Alvey, who has been making significant contributions to the Tracker in her first month.
The Tracker has also followed emerging Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) developments, including the release of a report about childhood chronic disease and obesity, a push to get companies to remove artificial food dyes from their products, and a proposal to define ultra-processed foods.
With immigration playing an outsize role in the nation’s food system, the Tracker is keeping close tabs on changes to the H-2A Guest Worker program and hosts an up-to-date list of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on farms and other food businesses.
The Tracker was featured by the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), and we recently hosted a behind-the-scenes online salon, moderated by INN’s Paulina Velasco, to discuss the Tracker, which well over 100 people attended. Readers can also sign up to receive instant updates or the weekly digest.
With our paywall now down, we can reach a much wider audience and keep them informed about critical issues and events. This is particularly valuable at a time when so much is being obfuscated and mainstream media is beholden to corporate interests.
Having the paywall down has been key to the Food Policy Tracker’s success: It has received more than 116,000 pageviews since it launched and has consistently been one of our website’s top traffic generators and social shares since then.
Having the paywall down has been key to the success of our Food Policy Tracker: it has received more than 116,000 pageviews since it launched in January and has consistently been one of our website’s top traffic generators and social shares since then.
We continue to build on the Tracker and launched a daily and weekly newsletter, which keep readers up-to-date on the latest policy news, and have thousands of readers subscribed already.
The Tracker has been extremely well received—we’ve gotten positive feedback from readers and experts from around the country, and we receive a steady stream of tips about how individuals are being affected by the funding freeze and purge of staff across the government.
We’ve heard from sources and readers that the Tracker is a “lifeline for nonprofits preparing for increased need and fighting to maintain services,” is “life-saving,” and is an “essential resource.”
While many newsrooms and commentators still believe “paywalls are the only way [news outlets] are going to survive,” others are calling into question the ethics of news paywalls (see “Democracy dies behind a paywall”) while also highlighting the number of conservative outlets that make their content free of charge.
Paywalls limit access to information. Meanwhile, high-quality, factual journalism is increasingly held behind these financial gates—and read by fewer and fewer readers.
A year out, we know this for certain–removing our paywall has allowed us to offer an entirely new accountability project, with more people than ever benefiting from our reporting.
Civil Eats’ core mission is to educate and inform, and we believe that making our content accessible to as many people as possible is central to that goal. We also deeply hold that independent media remains a cornerstone of our democracy.
In our small but mighty way, we strive to be part of that tradition, through rigorous reporting that reveals threats to democracy in our food system and sheds light on solutions.
Support for our continued paywall removal comes from GRACE Communications, the 11th Hour Project, and Wildseeds Fund. We continue to encourage our readers to become supporters to gain deeper access to our work, join a community of like-minded changemakers and food innovators, and help us keep our reporting free and accessible to all–which is needed now more than ever.
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