Most right-wing news websites suffered double-digit year-over-year (YOY) audience declines, according to TheRighting’s exclusive analysis of mobile and desktop traffic based on Similarweb data. Of the 20 sites that landed in TheRighting’s top 20 chart, only three posted gains.
The Free Press, the right-tilting company co-founded by former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss in 2022, generated a 4% increase in YOY visits. The site attracted 3.7 million visits in August 2025, compared to 3.6 million in August 2024. It had more visits than established right-wing news brands like the National Review, the Washington Free Beacon and The Federalist.
The Washington Examiner experienced the biggest decline among all websites tracked by TheRighting in August. However, earlier this year, the site put up a pay wall to access its content.
“It’s not surprising that most news websites saw year-over-year declines in traffic,” said Howard Polskin, President, TheRighting. “The Democratic National Convention, which kicked off August 19, 2024, generated enormous interest among voters resulting in traffic gains. It’s reasonable to expect more audience decreases for the remainder of this year for all news websites compared to the election-year surges we saw down the homestretch of the last presidential election.”
The three mainstream news outlets TheRighting regularly follows also faltered in August. YOY visits slumped at the Washington Post (-41%), CNN (-31%) and the New York Times (-6%). The Times led all websites tracked by TheRighting with 598 million visits in August.
YOY Winners and Losers Among Top 20 Right Wing News Websites for August 2025
(by percentage increase/decrease of visits from year ago)
Winners
- PJ Media (+11%)
- The Free Press (+4%)
- RedState (+0.4%)
Losers
- Washington Examiner (-53%)
- National Review (-41%)
- Outkick (-39%)
- Daily Wire (-39%)
A Note About Methodology
TheRighting uses data from Similarweb, the digital market intelligence company, to measure visits to websites. Until its December 2024 report, TheRighting relied on data from Comscore which measured unique visitors to websites.
