Pulitzer-winning newsrooms are quietly publishing mountains of gambling slop

Some of the 17,000 gambling slop articles published by Advance Local publications since 2022.

A large network of prominent regional newspapers have posted thousands of low-quality articles promoting gambling and prediction markets — and pretending it’s journalism.

A Popular Information investigation found that Advance Local, which owns The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Star-Ledger, and several other award-winning newspapers, has quietly published more than 17,000 online articles since 2022 pushing promo codes for sports books, online casinos and, more recently, prediction markets.

The Patriot-News, for example, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for its landmark reporting on the sex crimes of Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky and publishes online at PennLive.com. On May 9, The Patriot-News published an article headlined, “Kalshi promo code PENNLIVE: UFC 328 Preview.” The piece noted that UFC 328, scheduled for that evening, was “an awesome opportunity for new users to grab the Kalshi promo code PENNLIVE and get a $10 bonus when they trade $10+.” Special Correspondent Christopher Feery then detailed the five steps required to “claim the Kalshi promo code and land a bonus in a flash.”

Feery published a nearly identical article about UFC 328 for The Star-Ledger, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 and 2011. He described the bout as “a fantastic time for new users to claim the Kalshi promo code NJCOM and receive a $10 bonus when they trade $10 or more” and outlined the five steps to claim the promotion in “mere minutes.” Another similar version of the UFC 328 piece with Feery’s byline appeared on the website of the The Birmingham News, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and 2018.

According to the “Gaming Policy“ that appears on all three websites, Feery’s article about Kalshi and UFC 328 meets “the highest journalistic standards.” It was also purportedly “reviewed by an experienced editor for adherence to editorial protocol and accuracy.” Each piece, according to the policy, is “unique“ and “created specifically” for the website where it appears.

The UFC 328 article is one of more than 17,000 pieces published across Advance Local’s network of news websites in less than five years. An analysis of the websites’ archives reveals the promotional articles for sports books began appearing on Advance Local sites in 2022, accelerating dramatically beginning in 2024.

In 2025, the Advance Local network added online casinos and this year, it added promo codes for the prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket. At the current pace, the award-winning outlets in the Advance Local network will publish more than 14,000 pieces of gambling-related slop in 2026.

In response to a request for comment, Advance Local’s Executive Director for Communications, Christine deWit, said that the company considered everyone who produced this gambling-related content a journalist. DeWit also maintained that it was accurate to describe each piece of content as “unique” to each website.

How promo codes translate into dollars

DeWit also said that Advance Local disclosed how it was compensated for promoting the promo codes. At the very bottom of these articles, in small print, is a disclosure: “If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation.”

The history of the program reveals more details of how the scheme works. Initially, Advance Local outsourced the production of this content to third parties. A March 2024 news release by Catena Media discloses that the company “published content in collaboration with media partners including Advance Local, owner of NJ.com and other news websites.” Catena Media describes itself as an “affiliate marketing specialist.” The company’s business model, according to its website, is to “attract and deliver players to operators of online casino gaming and sports betting platforms.” Once a player is signed up, Catena is compensated through a flat referral fee or a percentage of how much the player loses on the platform.

Crucially, Catena Media says it attracts players to gambling sites by “leveraging the visibility we gain from… high rankings on popular search engines.” This is why Advance Local is such an attractive partner for this kind of operation. Publications like The Oregonian and The Cleveland Plain Dealer rank very highly in search results because of the authority they have established through decades of producing high-quality journalism. These articles leverage that authority, and high placement in search engines, to attract new bettors.

The strategy is more apparent when you dig into the details of the individual articles. For example, on March 20, 2026, The Post-Standard, a news outlet in the Advance Local network that serves the Syracuse, New York, metro area, published a piece with the headline, “Arkansas DraftKings promo code launches $300 bonus!“ The article, published on The Post-Standard’s website, Syracuse.com, is about a DraftKings code that is available for “new users in Arkansas.”

It doesn’t seem likely that many readers of Syracuse.com live in Arkansas. But because The Post-Standard has been producing legitimate journalism for many years, it has a high Google search rank. Therefore, when an Arkansas resident searches for “DraftKings promo code,” the Syracuse.com article will appear near the top of the results. Articles about the Arkansas DraftKings promo code by the same author appeared in two other Advance Local properties, silive.com (Staten Island, New York) and newyorkupstate.com.

More recently, Advance Local has moved much of its promo code operation in-house. Advance Local now “employs a staff of experienced sports betting and iGaming reporters” who publish across the network. There are two dozen people dedicated to producing this content.

Many of the individuals producing Advance Local’s gambling and prediction market content previously worked for Catena Media or similar operations. One of the writers, Matt Boecker, worked at Catena Media for more than two-and-a-half years before joining Advance Local. While at Catena Media, Boecker “[c]reated SEO-friendly sports betting stories from ideation to publishing across three of Catena Media’s largest media partnership sites (NJ.com, AL.com, and OregonLive.com),” according to his LinkedIn profile. Another writer, Joseph Kata, was employed at Catena Media from November 2018 to August 2024 before joining Advance Local. According to Kata’s LinkedIn profile, while at Catena Media he “[t]ripled traffic on average across the board by tapping into regional authority for each site.”

Lee Enterprises, a competing network of local news sites, has produced a smaller volume of articles that is formatted similarly to Advance Local’s promo code content. But when articles with headlines like “DraftKings promo code: $200 bonus for Chiefs vs. Lions + deposit match up to $1,000“ appeared on Lee Enterprises sites, they included a disclaimer at the top: “If you make a purchase after clicking on links within this article, Lee Enterprises may earn affiliate commissions. The news and editorial departments had no role in the creation or display of this content.”

Most of the gambling slop published by Lee Enterprises was written by employees of Catena Media.