The Frontier

The Frontier is an investigative news and multi-media platform website that practices long-form, watchdog journalism related to the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The Frontier is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The publication has become a non-profit corporation operated by The Frontier Media Group Inc. History The corporation, founded in 2016, is overseen by a board that includes Frontier co-founders, former Tulsa World president and publisher, Robert Lorton III, and Ziva Branstetter, a former special projects editor of the Tulsa World and currently an editor at The Washington Post. Branstetter and Carey Aspinwall, who is now based in Dallas covering Southern U.S. crime news with the Marshall Project, were finalists for Local News coverage for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. They had been nominated for their 2014 work on botched executions in Oklahoma. In 2017, The Frontier's staff included publisher Lorton, former World staff reporters Dylan Goforth, its Editor in Chief, and Clifton Adcock, Senior Staff Writer, as well as Kassie McClung and Aspinwall. Regarding its initial hires, Andy Rieger a University of Oklahoma journalism professor and former decades-long editor and columnist at the Norman Transcript said: "They were some of the best writers and editors the World had." "That gave it credibility not only in Tulsa, but in Oklahoma." It originally charged $30 a month for the investigative stories on its site, though it subsequently dropped its paywall. At the time it had about 650 members and aimed for 850 in its first 12 months, said Lorton. The organization has conducted research and enterprise reporting on issues important to the Oklahoma public, including a five-part series on rape in December 2017, problems within the Tulsa County jail, stories about major problems regarding a wealthy Sheriff's department contributor who was a reserve deputy who accidentally killed an arrestee, and the bonuses paid to CoreCivic, a for-profit prison operator, despite repeated riots in 2015 in its Cushing prison, at the same time the staff in state prisons suffered from stagnant wages.