The corporation, founded in 2016, is overseen by a board that includes former Tulsa World president and publisher, Robert Lorton III, and Ziva Branstetter, a former special projects editor of the Tulsa World. She was one of two Pulitzer Prize finalists who founded The Frontier. In 2017, The Frontier's staff included Publisher Bobby Lorton, former World staff reporters Dylan Goforth, its Editor in Chief, and Clifton Adcock, Senior Staff Writer, as well as Kassie McClung. It originally charged $30 a month for the investigative stories on its site, but subsequently dropped its paywall. At the time it had about 650 members and aimed for 850 in its first 12 months, said Lorton. About the initial hires, which included Carey Aspinwall, “They were some of the best writers and editors the World had,” said Andy Rieger, journalism professor at the University of Oklahoma, “That gave it credibility not only in Tulsa, but in Oklahoma.” 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 a problems with a wealthy Sheriff's department contributor, 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. The Frontier was honored as a finalist for Best New Website in the 2016 Great Plains Journalism Awards. It also partnered with local, state and national media outlets for groundbreaking investigative projects and experimented with novel ways to tell stories. It is one of Oklahoma’s leading advocates for transparency in government and has fought for access to records on the public’s behalf. In 2018, it was chosen as one of three finalists for the 2017 annual award in the Scripps Howard Foundation's Community Journalism category, for its series, “Shadow Land: How Rape Stays Hidden in Oklahoma.”
Operation
The Frontier gets its operating revenue from subscriptions and donations along with funding from sponsors. The Frontier's competitors include the state's major daily newspapers, The Oklahoman,published by GateHouse Media owned by Fortress Investment Group and its investorSoftbank since October 1, 2018 and formerly owned since 2011 by Denver based billionaire businessman Philip Anschutz and his Anschutz Corporation, and the Tulsa World, which was sold in 2013 to Berkshire Hathaway's BH Media Group, controlled by billionaire Warren Buffett. It has partnered on Oklahoma stories with national media, such as the Marshall Project.
