Rhett Ayers Butler
We Didn’t Block GenAI from Mongabay. The Results Were Surprising. In recent years, many media outlets have chosen to block ChatGPT and other generative AI bots from accessing their content. There are strong arguments for doing so: concerns about copyright, the environmental cost of AI queries, and the broader implications of AI-driven content aggregation. At […]
Want to raise money from foundations? It’s not just about persistence—it’s about speaking their language. When I first started seeking foundation support for Mongabay, I faced a wall of silence. No responses. When I was lucky, I got a “No thanks.” At the time, I thought I was taking the right approach. I targeted foundations […]
Cat stories attracted the most readers on Mongabay web sites. For anyone familiar with the internet over the past three decades, the popularity of cat-related content will come as little surprise. Across Mongabay’s six-language platforms and four regional bureaus, articles about wild cats topped the charts for median readership in 2024. This includes the iconic […]
I founded Mongabay 25 years ago to address what I perceived as a gap in media coverage of tropical rainforests. Over the years, Mongabay has grown significantly, especially after transitioning to a non-profit in 2012. Since then we expanded from two full-time staff in the U.S. to more than 120 team members across over 30 […]
I’m often asked about the animal that appears on my business card. First, it’s a real animal. It’s not a muppet. It’s a bird: the scale-crested pygmy tyrant. The scale-crested pygmy tyrant is a species of tyrant flycatcher that belongs to the passerine order of birds, a group known as ‘perching birds,’ which includes many […]
As noted before, shifting Mongabay from a for-profit to a nonprofit granted us the privilege to prioritize impact over chasing clicks. This move freed us to give away our stories and view other media outlets as potential partners rather than competitors. If our articles are republished, that helps us fulfill our mission by helping inform […]
LinkedIn has become our top source for English-language readership via social media. Given the inquiries about social media following my post on audience engagement (https://bit.ly/3rW7QBn), I analyzed the year-to-date social media data for Mongabay’s English-language news website, https://news.mongabay.com. Surprisingly, visitors arriving via LinkedIn links collectively spent 77,070 hours reading our news articles in the first seven […]
This post is the third in a series on Mongabay’s recently published 2030 plan. This post focuses on audience engagement. Earlier posts include: Addressing the planetary challenges we collectively face won’t be simple. As a journalism organization, Mongabay plays a crucial role by providing news and inspiration from nature’s frontlines. Our goal is to share […]