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Like millions of other Americans during the early days of the pandemic, Max Frost and Max Towey tuned into CNN and Fox News for updates on the crisis. The recent college graduates and co-hosts of the policy-focused Banter podcast, produced by the American Enterprise Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, did not like what they saw.
“COVID brought the worst out of our news industry,” Towey says. “That’s when we felt: ‘Our generation needs some new alternative. Let’s give them one.’”
Fed up with the partisan punditry so prevalent in news — across both the TV and print media — Frost, Towey and another partner, Billy Carney, have since built RocaNews, a down-the-middle outlet delivering fact-centric stories via newsletter and Instagram, where they now boast more than 1.1 million followers. The triumvirate pulled this off by leveraging what Towey calls their collective “entrepreneurial edge,” which so far has triggered three rounds of fundraising that’s netted the young company around $5 million from angel investors.
“Legacy news companies are making people feel out-of-touch, angry, and divided,” says Max Frost, president and COO of RocaNews. “They’re making people scared or sad about the world. We want to be the antidote, helping people to find the wonder in the world and be more informed, less stressed and less divided.”
On Instagram, RocaNews posts about four stories a day, focusing on U.S. politics, world events, tech and