John K. Byrne

John K. Byrne (born March 24, 1981) is an American publisher and writer. He is co-owner of Raw Story Media and AlterNet Media, which publish the online progressive political news sites RawStory.com and AlterNet.org respectively.^[1] Prior to Raw Story, he wrote briefly for The Boston Globe and McClatchy Newspapers and has been published in The Atlantic.^[2]

Byrne was raised in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, by Catherine and Jeffrey Byrne. Catherine Byrne is a circuit judge of the Massachusetts District Courts and Jeffrey Byrne is a retired family physician.^[3][4]

Byrne attended Concord Academy and graduated from Oberlin College in 2003. At Oberlin College, he founded The Grape, which remains the college’s alternative student newspaper.^[5] He was also editor of The Oberlin Review, where he wrote an exposé about steroid abuse on the football team.^[6]

During college, Byrne worked as a stringer for The Boston Globe Northwest, a since-discontinued suburban section of the newspaper, and for McClatchy Newspapers as an intern in Washington, DC.^[7]

Byrne founded RawStory.com, which was first published on February 1, 2004.^[8] The site was originally conceived as a liberal version of the Drudge Report.^[6] In the early years, Raw Story focused on reporting on anti-gay political figures who were themselves closeted gays. Byrne founded Raw Story when he was 23.^[9] In 2010, Byrne stepped down as editor of Raw Story. He remains the company's CEO.^[1]

In 2018, Byrne and his business partner, Michael Rogers, acquired the progressive news website AlterNet from the nonprofit Independent Media Institute,^[10] and The New Civil Rights Movement.^[11][12]

In 2022, John Byrne was named to the Out 100, Out magazine's compilation of the year's most impactful and influential LGBTQ+ people.^[13]

Byrne and Rogers outed as gay numerous politicians and political staff who voted or advocated against gay rights in the mid-2000s.^[9] Among the first was former Republican Congressman Ed Schrock (R-VA).^[14] Byrne was also involved in the outing of former Rep. David Dreier (R-CA).^[15]

In 2015, Byrne began advocating for the promotion of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) after a false positive HIV test.^[2] His first campaign on Miami Beach was covered by the Miami Herald, “I AM PrEP,” which involved posters created for bars and clubs and brochures for health centers.^[16] The campaigns were expanded into the Latino community and developed from passing out brochures to using online 'peer navigators' (influencers) on social media.^[17] In 2017, Byrne founded Prevention Access Campaign, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting PrEP in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.^[18] It was renamed Prevention305 the following year.^[19]

In 2019, Prevention305 helped start a mobile clinic which does cancer screening and PrEP in partnership with a local cancer center and the University of Miami School of Medicine.^[20][21]

• Prevention305.org