User:Valleyhollandman/sandbox

John K. Byrne (born March 24, 1981) is an American publisher, writer, and non-profit director. 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. He is also the founder and Executive Director of Prevention 305, a nonprofit focused on increasing access to HIV prevention drugs the in Miami, Florida area. Prior to Raw Story, he wrote briefly for the Boston Globe and McClatchy Newspapers and has been published in The Atlantic. He is also a published fiction writer.

Early Years and Education
Byrne was raised in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts by Cathy and Jeffrey Byrne. Cathy Byrne is a circuit judge of the Massachusetts District Courts, appointed in 2012 by Democratic Governor Deval Patrick. Jeffrey Byrne is a family physician.

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. The Grape has published continuously since 1999. He was also editor of the Oberlin Review, where he wrote an exposé about steroid abuse on the football team.

Journalism Career
During college, Byrne worked as a stringer for The Boston Globe Northwest, a discontinued suburban section of the newspaper, and for McClatchy Newspapers as an intern in Washington, DC.

Raw Story
Byrne founded RawStory.com, which was first published on February 1, 2004. The site was originally conceived as a liberal version of the Drudge Report. In the early years, Raw Story focused on national security issues, American politics, and reporting on anti-gay political figures who were themselves closeted gays. Byrne founded Raw Story when he was 23.

Byrne interviewed major political figures and authors of the day, including former House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and the late historian Howard Zinn. His reporting also focused on civil liberties, including articles critical of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama's warrantless wiretapping program. In 2010, Byrne stepped down as editor of Raw Story. He remains the company's CEO.

AlterNet
Byrne and his business partner, Michael Rogers, acquired the progressive news website AlterNet and TheNewCivilRightsMovement.com in 2018. The sale was covered by The Wall Street Journal. AlterNet was acquired from the nonprofit Independent Media Institute, shortly after the resignation of the Institute’s Executive Director, Don Hazen, who quit in 2017 after BuzzFeed News reported he had harassed five former female employees.

Outing of Political Figures
Byrne, along with his later business partner Michael Rogers, outed as gay numerous politicians and political staff who voted or advocated against gay rights in the mid-2000’s.

Ed Shrock
Among the first was former Republican Congressman Ed Schrock (R-VA). Rogers and Byrne reported that Schrock, who once disparaged gays in the military, had left two advertisements on a gay phone sex line. Schrock resigned August 31, 2004, after the recordings were revealed and posted online.

Ken Mehlman
Byrne also reported on the campaign manager for President George W. Bush, Ken Mehlman. The site, along with Rogers, outed Mehlman in 2004. Mehlman was targeted because the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign issued anti-gay flyers in Ohio and because of the anti-gay marriage amendment Bush supported. A proxy denied that Mehlman was gay in 2005. Mehlman, however, admitted that he was gay in 2010, and eventually went on to campaign for gay marriage in New York.

David Dreier
In late 2004, Byrne and Rogers also outed then-Congressman David Dreier (R-CA), who voted against a bill allowing gay adoption, against protecting gay employees from discrimination, and against same-sex marriage. Byrne discovered that Dreier’s chief of staff, who he alleged he was in a long-term, intimate relationship with, was the highest paid chief of staff of any House Committee chair. He also reported that Dreier’s 1998 and 2000 opponent knew that Dreier had been living with his then-chief of staff. Dreier, who was once considered for House Majority Leader, retired in 2010. His closeted status was seen as one of the reasons he ultimately did not get the job.

Fiction Writing
Byrne published his first fiction piece in the Baltimore Review in Spring, 2013. The piece, titled, “I’m Going to Let You Go, Okay?” mentioned his early work on Raw Story. He has also been published in the Chicago Review.

HIV Prevention Advocacy
In 2015, Byrne began advocating for the promotion of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) after a false positive HIV test. His first campaign on South Beach was covered by The Miami Herald, “I AM PrEP,” in November 2015, which involved posters created for bars and clubs and brochures for health centers. Byrne wrote an article about his in a long-form piece for The Atlantic in December, 2015. CBS News 4 Miami covered his PrEP advocacy in March 2017. Byrne is also an at-large board member of Arianna's Center, a Ft. Lauderdale-based nonprofit focused on serving and empowering the transgender community in South Florida.

In 2017, Byrne founded an HIV prevention nonprofit, Prevention 305, which focuses specifically on linking Latinx immigrants to HIV prevention medication in the Miami, Florida area.

Personal Life
Byrne lives in Miami Beach with his boyfriend Devin Seckfort. He is an active art collector and nonprofit donor. Federal Election Commission records indicate he supports LGBT candidates for Congress.