Rare launched at a
Newseum gala on April 15, 2013, and acquired 25 million page views within the first year. The website was aimed at a younger,
center-right audience, and early contributors brought in by Decker's team included
Jeb Bush,
Ted Cruz,
Rand Paul and
Grover Norquist. Rare has been described as
libertarian-conservative and has been compared to the websites
Independent Journal Review,
BuzzFeed, and
The Huffington Post. Following a mass layoff of over 50 staffers, the site and its affiliated web properties were purchased by Texas-based Wide Open Media Group. The site ceased publishing once again in 2021, after its parent was acquired by Publishers Clearing House. It was acquired by Nashville-based Savage Ventures and relaunched in April 2022. In 2023, a CNN report described the new iteration of Rare as one of several "fringe right-wing" news sites with inflammatory and misleading content that
Microsoft AI was serving to consumers. Rare editor Troy Smith responded, calling CNN "left-wing fringe" and saying that mainstream media fail to cover President
Joe Biden honestly. Rare ceased publication in early 2024, with its last social media posts in February. Previously-published content on the site is no longer accessible and the main page of the site is a list of aggregated headlines of stories published in May 2024. ==References==