Brian Timpone

Brian Timpone is an American conservative businessman and former journalist who operates a network of nearly 1,300 conservative local news websites. In 2012, Timpone stated that articles on his websites are partially written by freelancers outside of the United States,

Education and early career

Timpone graduated from Marian Catholic High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois. He received a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri; while attending, he covered sports and news for the University-owned KOMU-TV. After school, he took a job at KDLH in Duluth, Minnesota, which he worked for less than a year before taking another TV job in Champaign, Illinois. Timpone was hired as the personal spokesman to Illinois House Minority Leader Lee A. Daniels in 1997. The companies include Local Government Information Services (LGIS), of which he is president, Metric Media, Franklin Archer, Locality Labs (formerly known as Journatic and LocalLabs), DirecTech LLC, Interactive Content Services, Newsinator, Blockshopper, and The Record Inc. The companies have received funding from Liberty Principles PAC (substantially funded by Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein) and have provided services to the Illinois Opportunity Project, politician Jeanne Ives and hotelier Monty Bennett as customers.

The Record network The Record network was started by Timpone in September 2004 with The Madison County Record, a legal journal for Madison County, Illinois. It was silently funded by the United States Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform to oppose lawsuits against businesses and to support tort reform. The Chamber later funded a site run by The Record called Legal Newsline. , The Record's network included: Cook County Record, Florida Record, Legal Newsline, Louisiana Record, Madison - St. Clair Record, Northern California Record, Pennsylvania Record, SE Texas Record, Southern California Record, St. Louis Record, and West Virginia Record. According to Timpone, Journatic used news data processed by workers in the Philippines, but he states that the writing is "domestic". Journatic's job listings in the Philippines advertised a $0.35–0.40 pay rate per article for "writers to work on events stories" who are "able to commit to 250 pieces/week minimum".

In a June 2012 episode of This American Life, Timpone disclosed that Journatic was outsourcing its writing to over 300 freelancers using fake "Anglo-sounding" bylines in several geographic areas outside of the United States, including the Philippines, Eastern Europe, Brazil, and Africa. While Hearst's Houston Chronicle ended its partnership, Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle reviewed its use of the service and continued using it.

BlockShopper, also founded by Timpone in 2006, though it was merged into Journatic in 2008, was said by Timpone to be "a nod to the days when newspapers included real estate, graduations and marriage announcements". After BlockShopper published high dollar real estate sales and purchases by several high-profile people, and in some cases tied in their employer in the announcement, several anti-BlockShopper websites popped up and lawsuits were filed. Some of the targeted people said it would "[increase] the risk that baddies will rob them, steal their identities or kidnap their children." Out of 50,000 articles, 15,000 of them were unique stories, with only about 100 with human bylines. Opining what effect this network of 'pay for play' websites has had, "Increasingly, we are seeing political campaigning which uses news as a cloak for campaigning activities potentially further undermining trust in legitimate local news outlets." Timpone's brother Michael began sharing the Metric Media website and mailing address for similar promotions.

Metric Media's websites, printed papers, robocalls, and text messages were linked to the 2022 election, notably among right-wing PACs including Tim Dunn's Defend Texas Liberty PAC, Uihlein's Illinois-centered People Who Play by the Rules PAC (run by Dan Proft), and Restoration PAC, partly funded by Uihlein. Tim Dunn is also linked to Pipeline Media. The network's printed newspapers were mailed to voters in Arizona, Kansas, and Illinois. Several publications claiming to be Catholic, with such titles as Arizona Catholic Tribune and Michigan Catholic Tribune, are unaffiliated with the Catholic dioceses in the areas they were printed. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay further noted that the Wisconsin Catholic Tribune used content from its in-house publication, The Compass, without permission in violation of copyright law.

A 2024 study by NewsGuard, a misinformation tracking company, found that "the number of partisan-backed outlets designed to look like impartial news outlets has officially surpassed the number of real, local daily newspapers in the U.S." NewsGuard identified at least 1,265 such websites "backed by dark money or intentionally masquerading as local news sites for political purposes". According to Axios, almost half of these websites are targeted to swing states, "a clear sign that they're designed to influence politics". Metric Media was noted as a major backer of partisan websites designed to look like news websites. Ahead of the 2024 United States elections, Metric distributed one-off print newspapers.