The Intercept

The Intercept is an American progressive or left-wing nonprofit news organization that publishes articles and podcasts online. The Intercept has published in English since its founding in 2014, and in Portuguese since the 2016 launch of the Brazilian edition staffed by a local team of Brazilian journalists.

The Intercept was founded by journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras. It was launched on February 10, 2014, by First Look Media with funding by eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar, starting with $250 million in pledged funding. The publication initially reported on documents released by Edward Snowden. Co-founders Greenwald and Poitras left in 2020 amid public disagreements about the leadership and direction of the organization. In January 2023 it spun off from the First Look Institute as an independent nonprofit organization.

The website had hosted an archive of documents leaked by Snowden to Greenwald and Poitras. First Look deprecated the archive and laid off its associated research team in 2019, saying that their editorial priorities had changed and that they no longer reported from the archive. This marked the end of The Intercept's original vision of being a platform to report on the NSA disclosures. Barrett Brown burned the National Magazine Award he had received for his Intercept column in protest of First Look's decision to offline the Snowden archives.

In February 2024, The Intercept laid off 16 staff members, one-third of its newsroom. In April 2024, the outlet fired William Arkin and Ken Klippenstein resigned in protest. In July 2024, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim left The Intercept to found their own news website, Drop Site News. The Intercept stated it was providing startup funding for the new site, that Scahill left with the support of the outlet, and that Scahill would continue participating in podcasts.

In April 2025, the publication announced the hiring of journalist Nick Turse as a National Security Reporting Fellow.

At launch, Omidyar pledged $250 million in funding. The non-profit arm of First Look Media budgeted $26 million in both 2017 and 2018, according to public filings, much allocated to The Intercept. High-profile journalists were well compensated, with Greenwald being paid $500,000 in 2015.

The Intercept was awarded a grant of $3.25 million from Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. It had only received $500,000 when Bankman-Fried went bankrupt and the shortfall in funding "will leave The Intercept with a significant hole in its budget" according to its editor-in-chief.

Omidyar ceased financial support in 2022. First Look Media offered a $14 million grant when The Intercept spun off. In 2023, the CEO discussed a financial pivot to small donors and major gifts. Donations doubled from $488,000 to $867,000 from 2022 to 2023, but failed to meet expenses. As of April 2024, The Intercept was burning around $300,000 a month. In May 2024, The Intercept reported its best fundraising campaign ever.