Over more than a decade, St. Louisans have heard many flattering things about LockerDome, a pioneer in the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem that has hired dozens of computer-savvy graduates from Washington University and elsewhere and put them to work downtown doing computer-savvy things. 

What would surprise most St. Louisans is that a “jewel” of the St. Louis startup community – one that involves some of the biggest names in St. Louis tech – has worked with and provided revenue to the Gateway Pundit, purveyor of conspiracy theories.

There are indications that the relationship may have ended in the last couple of months. That’s not entirely clear, however, in part because LockerDome did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In any event, there is evidence that the relationship existed for several years before its possible recent termination.  

“LockerDome has profited  off of fake news and has helped fund a fake news website by approving the Gateway Pundit to be a publisher in its network,” one person familiar with the situation  said.  “I don’t think this was ever their intention, but the sad truth is that a jewel of the St. Louis startup scene has funded an organization that promotes hate, racism and fascism.”

LockerDome, which was founded in 2008 as a social media platform focused on sports, grew rapidly in employment and space at its Washington Avenue location, the Post-Dispatch reported in 2015.  The company by then had already raised more than $18 million from dozens of investors, including Cultivation Capital, a St. Louis-based venture capital firm, and Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III. It had received $200,000 in 2012 through the Missouri Technology Corp., the state’s vehicle for funding startups.  

Members of the company’s board of directors – according to the business information website Crunchbase – include Brian Matthews and Jim McKelvey.  Matthews is a co-founder of Cultivation Capital and also its general partner and was featured in this flattering St. Louis Business Journal story only a few weeks ago.  McKelvey, who besides having joined Matthews in co-founding Cultivation Capital, also co-founded Block, Inc., formerly known as Square, with the founder of Twitter, St. Louis native Jack Dorsey.  McKelvey is also well-known and widely admired in St. Louis as the co-founder of LaunchCode, a non-profit that helps people without traditional qualifications develop tech skills and find jobs using them, and as the co-founder of Third Degree Glass Factory, an art studio and event space. He serves on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the board of trustees of Washington University.  

LockerDome has evolved into an advertising technology company.  Operating as a kind of middleman, it pays online publishers to put digital advertisements on their sites; the advertisers, who may not even know where their ads are being placed, pay LockerDome.  Many of the ads in the LockerDome network are low-grade non-political “clickbait” – “These Celebrities Have Aged the Worst” or “Ph.D. Economist Makes Shocking Prediction.” Others are overtly political, asking readers to vote yes, no, or not sure, for example, on this question: “Would you vote for Trump again in 2024? (Free gift for all who answer).” Clicking on that ad, in turn, leads to another saying “Liberals are FURIOUS that Trump supporters get the White House Wrist Watch for FREE!”).   

A website called webtechsurvey.com provides the details.  As of April 13, the date the screenshot shown below was taken, LockerDome was putting ads on 626 sites.  Ranked sixth among those sites – in traffic — was the Gateway Pundit.

An online advertising expert consulted by the GJR said it appeared that, until recently, the LockerDome relationship was bringing the Gateway Pundit revenues of at least tens of thousands of dollars per month. The expert asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals from readers of the Gateway Pundit, who have threatened others singled out for criticism on the site.

The webtechsurvey site also showed that Gateway Pundit is far from the only right-wing conspiracy site with which LockerDome does or has done business.  Meanwhile, however, LockerDome also has been doing business with Stars and Stripes and with sites that represent liberal points of view, such as opednews.com, and ncronline.org, the online version of the National Catholic Reporter. So it appears that the company’s business model is politically agnostic.

The biggest players in the advertising platform industry, Facebook and Google, have long faced criticism from the right for “deplatforming” right-wing conspiracy sites like Gateway Pundit. Hoft has protested for years about discrimination by Big Tech, testifying to Congress in 2018 that “tech companies … are trying to put me and others with my politics out of business.” Sen. Josh Hawley, the author of “The Tyranny of Big Tech,” is a leading critic in Washington on this subject.    

Such criticism notwithstanding, Google severed its advertising relationship with the Gateway Pundit last Sept. 1.  The tech company sent Hoft an email that he published himself informing him that Google had “repeatedly found content … that violates our … policies.” Google had provided Hoft with revenue of $1.1 million between November 2020 and June 2021, Forbes reported. 

The other platforms with which Hoft does business – including LockerDome, at least until this spring –  probably made up for Google’s departure, the online advertising expert said.  

This past Feb. 7, LockerDome announced that it has rebranded itself as Decide Technologies. The company’s press release said the decision followed an extremely successful 2021 in which revenue climbed 38 percent to $32.2 million, and in which headcount grew to 81 from 51.

The release said the rebrand “better reflects its technology’s ability to use machine learning and data to help advertisers and publishers determine when to place advertisements.”  

For a few weeks after the rebranding, LockerDome – now Decide – continued to work with the Gateway Pundit; Gateway Pundit ads that used to tie back to LockerDome were simply linking back to Decide instead. Since about late February or March,  however, LockerDome/Decide ads have been missing from the Gateway Pundit site.  It appears, therefore, that the relationship may have ended.  

Yet that can’t be said definitively, because the Gateway Pundit is still listing LockerDome as one of its authorized ad networks, as the screenshot below, taken May 18  from gatewaypundit.com/ads.txt, shows:

In any case, LockerDome/Decide is continuing to work with other hard-right sites, such as patriotpulse.net and wnd.com, which still push conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the Biden Administration and many other issues.  The GJR found LockerDome/Decide ads on those sites as recently as May 18.  Here is a screenshot of one that ran on patriotpulse.com April 21, asking “Would our country be greater if Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2024?” (The other ads on the screenshot are not those of LockerDome/Decide.) It is followed by a screenshot of the ad that then pops up if you click on it.

The identity of another of the Gateway Pundit’s  erstwhile advertising platforms might also come as a surprise. China-bashing is common on the site, with articles like these two recent pieces: More Evidence China’s PLA (Military) May Have Initiated COVID-19 In an Open-Air Test, and China Reaffirms Alliance with Iran Days After the Ayatollah Releases Video Showing Assassination of President Trump.

Yet, at least until earlier this spring, AliExpress – owned by the Chinese multinational Alibaba – was one of the Gateway Pundit’s conspicuous advertising platforms. 

More recently, however, it, like LockerDome/Decide, has not been evidence. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that this past February, the Biden Administration added AliExpress to an annual list of markets that the United States accuses of counterfeiting and copyright violations. In the absence of comment from Decide; however, it’s impossible to know.  

Paul Wagman is a former Post-Dispatch reporter and FleishmanHillard executive who is now an independent writer and communications consultant.

In the backyard of the Hazelwood Supreme Court decision, I am organizing efforts for year seven of trying to get New Voices legislation passed in Missouri. The only thing that has passed in the last seven years are the states passing Missouri in adding this law that basically overrides Hazelwood and grants First Amendment rights to students and advisers. We are surrounded. Illinois, Iowa, Arkansas and, yep, even Kansas have passed New Voices along with nine other states. Another 20 have introduced legislation.

So what’s the hold up MO? Why aren’t you telling students “I trust you” and “I believe in you”?

As Claire McCaskill responded in a recent GJR First Amendment event about the possibility of New Voices being passed in Missouri, “Have you seen Jeff City, lately?”

Why, yes, Claire, yes I have. For the last six years, I have made the trek from Kirkwood to the Capitol with some amazing high school journalists to testify before the House and Senate Education Committees. The results? Nothing but this legislation being shoved in the back. Behind charter schools and vouchers. Behind testing and teacher pensions. No one seems to want to fight for kids these days. No one seems to care about this bill at all. Politics be damned.

The New Voices bill really should not be a partisan bill — it’s freedom of speech. “Fake news” is a hot topic, and this is a way we can combat that. If we’re worried about a climate of misinformation, the way we can combat this is by educating students to be media literate and able to create media that’s genuine and well thought out. It’s awesome because it supports freedom of expression for student journalists and allows civically minded students to engage. I’d much rather have students in an environment with a teacher than doing it on their own, untrained on social media.

So I am asking for support of the Cronkite New Voices legislation. You’d be supporting the freedom the First Amendment of the Constitution should stand for  and, more importantly, kids. They need someone to say, “I trust you” and “I believe you” now more than ever because they are not just the future.–they are the present. And that’s why we’re fighting for student journalists’ free speech and press rights.

I asked former top editors to send in notes about what that trust meant to them.

Maddie Meyers

 I am a current sophomore at the University of Missouri majoring in journalism, and I was an Editor-in-Chief of The Kirkwood Call newspaper at Kirkwood High School. My experience on The Kirkwood Call showed me what it means to be a journalist, and that means using our voices freely to raise awareness about serious topics. 

With the trust of my school administration, I had the opportunity to connect with many different people and lead a staff of 80 individuals. I urge you to support the Cronkite New Voices Act because it is crucial to helping student journalists build their confidence and lead as professionals.

 As a student journalist, I covered a wide range of issues, including recycling concerns, intruder drills, inequality in sports, and racial equity. Regardless of the topic, one of the most important lessons I learned is how to connect with people who are different from me.

 One source who stands out in particular was a man who goes by “Nuggetz.” He had lived on the street for 13 years and crossed the country 17 times. He shared that people assume he is a druggie and dirty, but he said he does not judge others. Talking with him made me realize how sometimes the people who are ignored and looked down upon, have some of the most interesting stories. Without my journalism experience, I would not have had the confidence to go up to a stranger and ask him about his life. 

My time on staff has taught me how to connect with anyone and uncover the truth. By not having my voice censored, I have been able to give a voice to the voiceless and shed light on important issues. I am thankful I have never been held back or limited from sharing valuable stories.

As an Editor-in-Chief of a student-run publication, I developed leadership skills because I worked with an editorial board to make executive decisions about content and staff management. On staff, I learned professionalism and responsibility like no other experience has ever taught me. When controversial issues arose, I met with my fellow editors and thoroughly discussed problem-solving options to keep our publication running successfully and keep our staffers motivated. We were able to have civilized discussions like adults do because we were given the same freedoms as professional journalists. 

This experience has prepared me not only for my college journalism courses, but for my future career. The New Voices Act has already passed in 14 states, including four that border Missouri, so it is time that Missouri joins the others in protecting students’ press freedoms. 

Press freedom is part of the First Amendment, and it should apply to everyone, especially students. This is a formative time in students’ lives and they should be encouraged to share the difficult stories instead of being limited by the people who are supposed to guide them. I am thankful I worked in a motivating environment where my administrators trusted me and the other students to be responsible journalists. I hope that soon all students will be able to say the same. And you have the ability to make this possible.  

Mimi Wright

In January 2016, almost six years ago, I wrote a statement in support of the New Voices bill as a then-senior and editor-in-chief of The Kirkwood Call, a critically acclaimed newsmagazine from Kirkwood High School. We’ve won countless awards for our journalism, and continue to do so, covering topics from opioid and alcohol abuse to eating disorders and sexual assault. I shared this statement in front of the Senate Education Committee and defended my right of free speech not just as a student journalist, but as an American. How, as an American, are student journalists not guaranteed their right of free speech which is guaranteed by the Constitution? It baffles me to this day. 

In 2016, I wrote this: “There are problems in our society, and if we can discuss them at a younger age, we are eliminating ignorance that is causing a lot of these issues.” I wholeheartedly stand by this statement and think it is at the core of solving the issues that plague our society daily. By discussing topics like race, sex, violence and politics, we are educating the future leaders of our society. They are NOT too young to know about these topics when many of these issues  impact students daily. Assuming that students are not mature enough to handle these topics only infantilizes and demeans the emerging thinkers of our time. 

In 2016, I wrote this: “I plan to major in journalism, a dream I would never have had if it were not for the support of our administration. My dreams are coming true because I am free to speak my mind.” In 2020 at the height of the pandemic, I graduated summa cum laude from the Journalism School at the University of Missouri, the first and most respected journalism school in the country. I reported for The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting as a college student, and I now work in New York City at one of the premiere travel media companies in the world. I am an extremely confident young professional who benefited directly from having my thoughts heard. Strip the voices of student journalists now, and you strip their futures.   

Now, more than ever, I emphatically support the need for the protection of student voices. Now, more than ever, students must be heard. I urge you to support the New Voices bill. 

Kennady Wade 

It’s been 33 years since the ruling of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, seven years since the first time a New Voices Act was introduced in Missouri, and nearly five years since I testified on behalf of the bill. Year after year, it gets shut down in some capacity. Please, let this be the year it gets passed into law. The ruling in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier is archaic and outdated. As a high schooler, I was fortunate enough to practice journalism at a school that chose to safe-guard my First Amendment rights. Because of that, I was able to take risks and learn without fear that what I was saying would be censored along with my fellow students. 

The skills and values I learned as a student journalist I still carry with me today – accountability, integrity, and ability to trust my instincts. When I was interviewing for my current job in the legal field, half of my time was spent discussing my experiences as an editor at my newspaper because it still mattered that many years later. I was able to grow because my school trusted me, and my adviser, with taking risks. You now have the opportunity to prove those same experiences to scholastic journalists in Missouri. 

The passing of the New Voices act cements the right to free speech in school. What this literally looks like is students having a safe forum to discuss real-world events – both local and national – under the guidance of an adviser. The technological landscape has changed so much in the past 33 years – social networking services like Twitter and Instagram have completely changed the way that news is both communicated and consumed. Restricting students’ freedom of speech in school does not equate to silencing them. It just offers more incentive to share that information in a forum that does not care about their well-being. 

Scholastic journalism can give so much to students – but, that’s only if you are willing to give them the opportunity to learn by choosing to safe-guard their First Amendment rights. Please, make the right choice. 

Camille Baker

Four years ago, when I sat in the same chair as (Megan, Hayden or Kate), was the third consecutive year the Cronkite New Voices Act passed in the House without receiving a hearing from the Senate. Now in 2021, we’ve reached year six. I’m angry. Angry that editors-in-chief who I’ve never met because we’re that many years apart in school, are making the same drive from Kirkwood to Jeff City to argue the same point I argued 4 years ago, the same point my editor argued the year before me, and the same point her editor argued the year before her. 

I wanted to reflect on my own experiences and opportunities as a student journalist, but given that that was four years ago, and I’ve acquired almost an entire college education since then, I thought it’d be helpful to take a glance at the strides high school journalists have taken more recently, leaning on their First Amendment rights. 

So, here are just a few examples of what encouraging students to cover sensitive subjects has led to:

• In 2020, students all over the U.S. covered the summer’s racial justice protests, providing insight to their communities on why they were happening.
• Students provided vital public health information to their student bodies regarding COVID-19, backing their stories with data and examining and exposing school policies that lacked proper quarantining and inadequately protected school environments from the virus. 
• Coast to coast, in North Carolina and Washington state, students won years-long battles to access college sexual assault records.
• Students published research-backed stories on discriminatory redlining policies, inequities in water quality in historically Black neighborhoods and Nazi propaganda in police training.

Is student journalism really disreputable? Maybe you’re still deciding. While you’re thinking on it, here are some specific examples of student journalists using their First Amendment rights to publish insightful and essential information. 

El Estoque: A newspaper from Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, California:

• Students published a series of stories with insight on the spread of COVID-19 disinformation, xenophobic backlash against Asian students as a result of the pandemic, an editorial from a student whose family lives in China and a comprehensive pandemic timeline. 

The Shield: McCallum High School, Austin, Texas:

• During their summer break, high school journalists covered a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, Texas, keeping their ground and their faces down to get the full story, amid rubber bullets and tear gas used by the police.

Manual RedEye: duPont Manual High School, Kentucky:

• High school reporters broke the story that local police were using a training presentation that quoted Hitler multiple times and advocated for the use of extreme violence. 

The Kirkwood Call: Sound familiar?

• Six staffers wrote and published a series inspired by the New York Times’ 1619 project, aiming to reframe our country’s history by centering it around the consequences of slavery and contributions of Black Americans. Within the Kirkwood community, Kirkwood students exposed racism, from personal experiences to redlining and redistricting policies. 

In the words of Amy Chen, editor-in-chief of The Beachcomber, a student news site in Ohio: “While I respect the administration’s desire to protect students, I often wonder who their decision protected: those marginalized or those in power?” 

Mitch Eden is the adviser to the Kirkwood Call and on the National Scholastic Press Association Board of Directors. He was chosen journalism teacher of the year in 2019 by the Missouri Journalism Education Association

Three out of every four American adults are fooled by fake news headlines. That was the finding of a survey authorized by BuzzFeed. 

I found that too when I started BD Fact Check, Bangladesh’s first fact-checking organization. I was looking for a model to identify fake news. 

Fake news stories have more engagement than real news stories in social networking sites. Sinan Aral, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management finds that false news stories are 70 percent more retweeted than the true stories on Twitter (http://news.mit.edu/). Social media algorithms tend to show the most-viewed or engaged content first without checking whether it is true, false or fabricated. As a result, people are getting more confused about what is true or false on social media outlets. 

The Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee of the U.K. parliament considered fake news as a direct threat to politics and democracy as it misleads audiences. 

Scholars and practitioners agree that the augmentation of media literacy among the people can be helpful to reduce the amount of fake news on the internet. 

The BD Fact Check, which is committed to the International Fact-Checking Network’s (IFCN) code of principles, identified 213 fake news items in Bangladesh. As a professional fact-checker, I have tried to identify characteristics from this study that identify stories as fake news. 

I find 14 characteristics that set fake news apart: anonymous sources (82.63 percent), lack of proper evidence (73.24 percent), problems in quoting sources (52.11 percent), no author’s name in the byline section (84.98 percent), no detailed information in the “About Us” section on the website (57.75 percent), fake domain names (38.5. percent), lack of coverage in other mainstream media (88.73 percent), opinion piece (50.23 percent), grammatical mistakes (60.56 percent), spelling mistakes (50.70 percent), punctuation problems (45.53 percent), excessive usage of adjectives (69.01 percent), problems in mathematics (45.53 percent), and no publication date (67.13 percent). 

Finally, I categorize these characteristics of fake news under four sections to create the SPOT  (S- Sources, P-Publishers, O-Three Os, and T-Timeliness) model of identifying fake news. The SPOT test will be helpful for fact-checkers, as well as for the general public to identify fake news. 

SPOT test

S-Source

Some common news sources are radio, television, newspaper and magazine, press release, press notes, press statement, handout, verified Twitter account and Facebook account. An audience can check sources by asking some questions to identify fake news. 

Is the source real?

The study finds that 82.6 percent of fake news has no real source. Fake news producers use some fake research organizations like “Peoples and Politics,” “The Statistics,” “We are the People,” “Global Intelligence Network” and media organizations like “The Arab News,” “The National,” etc. Fake news producers use such sources to make the article appear credible to the audience. Audiences can check whether the source is real or fake by using search engines on the Internet. 

Is the evidence provided by a source factual?

Sometimes the source presented in the fake news is real, but the evidence is fake. As an example, a fake news article presents evidence in this way:

 “John Keane is the Professor of Government and International Politics at the University of Sydney who explored the similarities between the two leaders. He called Sheikh Hasina as the new Mahathir of Asia. He stressed, ‘The way Mahathir transformed Malaysia, Sheikh Hasina will do the same by breaking the chain of poverty.’ He further said, ‘The way Mahathir’s controversy lost with the passage of time and remained only his achievements, perhaps, the same thing will happen to Sheikh Hasina as well.’” 

Keane told BD Fact Check, “This is fake news. I never said any such thing.” John Keane is the Professor of Government and International Politics at the University of Sydney. The evidence provided here is not true. So, by checking with the source an audience can easily identify fake news.

How is the source presented?

The most important precaution is to see how the source is presented. Fake news creators use myriads of ambiguous phrases like, “anonymous sources say,” “a lot of sources ascertain that,” “various sources said,” “sources say,” “they think that,” “researchers said,” “it was said that,” “it is found in research that,” “it was concluded that,” “survey said,” “administration sources said,” “Saudi authority,” etc. Professional journalists do not present sources in such a casual or unprofessional way. Another important consideration is that professional journalists keep sources’ quotes in quotation marks to make the report more credible. Thus, check the sources’ presentation to identify fake news.

P-Publisher

Fake news creators utilize different strategies to make the fake news believable. Audiences can identify fake news by asking three questions:

Who is the author?

Most of the fake news does not have an author’s name in the byline text of the article. Some fake news stories start with “desk report,” or without any credentials. If there is byline, search the internet to find more information about the author. Also search LinkedIn. It is also useful to know the author’s ideology, whether the author is being paid and by whom.

Check the domain name. 

The study finds that fake news producers create news websites by mimicking the traditional and lawful news outlets to make the fake news more believable. To mimic, the fake news creators take almost the same domain name with a different ending of the website’s URL: .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, .int, etc. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election myriads of fake news websites have appeared to mimic traditional and lawful news outlets. As an example, ABCnews.com.co was a fake news website which mimicked the url, design, and logo of the ABC News website owned by Disney Media Networks. If you want to know more about the website, search the domain name in https://whois.icann.org website’s search option. The organization provides the name, address, email, contact number, and administrative and technical contact addresses. 

Check the “About Us” section.

The “About Us” menu of a website tells about the organization and its goal and objectives. The study finds that 57.75 percent of fake news websites did not have any “About Us” menu on their website. Only 24.88 percent of the websites have the “About Us” menu, but they did not give enough information to know details about them.

O- Three Os (Opinion, Other Outlets, and Odd writing)

In this section, audiences need to check a couple of items: whether the news article is an opinion piece or not, is the article covered in other traditional and lawful news outlets or not, and the quality of the writing. 

Is the news an opinion piece?

There is a strong boundary between news and editorial. In a news article, a reporter should not express his or her opinions and thoughts freely. They can only synthesize the facts, events, and perspectives to draw a conclusion. On the other hand, opinion pieces feature interpretations of events where the expert gives their own opinion. Fake news creators present opinion pieces as regular news. Thus, audiences must confirm that they distinguish between reading news and opinion. 

Do other outlets cover the news?

The study finds that 88.73 percent of fake news items are not covered by the mainstream and lawful media outlets. It is a good indicator to check the news items in other outlets. If other news outlets cover the item, audiences still can find the different perspectives of the event. 

Is there anything odd about the writing?

Professional journalists follow a journalistic style of news writing. If an audience checks a few items in the article, readers can figure out how professionally the news article has been written. An audience can look for grammatical, spelling, punctuation, and mathematical mistakes in the report. A news article is edited by professionals. As a result, professional news outlets report higher quality material. On the other hand, there is no professional organization to create and produce fake news, and it does not filter through editors. Thus, fake news has less quality. The study finds grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes, wrong punctuation, and mathematical mistakes in most of the fake articles. Moreover, audiences should be careful about excessive usage of adjectives in the article. Professional journalism doesn’t allow reporters to judge whether a party or person is good or bad, journalists can describe the situation only. 

T-Timeliness

The study finds that 67.13 percent of fake news items do not have any dateline at the beginning of the article. The dateline is a short piece of text included in the news article that demonstrates when and where the news article is written. The study also finds inconsistencies in articles when a fake news article indicates any specific event. Fake news articles sometimes mention vague time like “a few days ago,” “some time ago,” “at night,” or without any time. Thus, an audience easily can spot fake news by checking its timeliness.

In the age of social media, the spread of fake news is so rampant that it seems almost impossible to combat it. Only machines effort can’t go far away without the help of human’s critical thinking. In the future, human faculties will lead while machine efforts will play supporting roles to fight against fake news. At the same time, we need to increase media literacy and critical faculty among the people to identify fake news, and the SPOT test will help them in the process. 

Zahedur R. Arman is the founding president of BD Fact Check. He is a doctoral student in the SIUC College of Mass Communication and Media Arts. He is interested in strategic communication and social network analysis.