StudyFinds

Ever since he was a kid, Steve Fink loved the news. So working in the news division for CBS Television Stations over a span of 20 years was a dream. His favorite part of the news? Those interesting studies peppered into broadcasts and posted on news sites.

“One of my favorite examples is a study about how red wine is good for your heart,” says Steve. “While that’s obviously an exciting conclusion for wine lovers, there’s a lot more to that study. How much wine do you need to drink for the benefit? What’s the demographic of the study? What are its limitations? These are the sorts of contextual little bits that you don’t often hear covered in a 30-second news segment.”

He wanted to delve deeper into these studies, so he launched StudyFinds, which started as a passion project that he worked on at night and on the weekends. The site’s mission was simple: produce credible, responsible, and more informative content about the many studies coming out of labs and academic institutions all around the world.

With more time to give to the site, Steve wanted to find new ways to drive traffic. So he had an idea for a new feature called “Best of the Best,” which aggregates data from top reviewers about the best consumer products — from the best martini glasses to the best moisturizer.

“This section immediately got a lot of traffic, which really boosted the sustainability of our business,” says Steve. As for capitalizing on this growing traffic, Steve had another tool in his tool belt: a powerful ad partner in Google AdSense.

Crucially, an ad-supported model keeps StudyFinds’ content completely unbiased. Research can lose its power when people feel there’s an agenda behind it — so with ads, Steve doesn’t need to rely on an outside owner who might influence the site’s content.

“We never want people to read our site and ask, ‘Who’s funding this?’” says Steve. “So ads help ensure our content remains completely independent and agenda-free.”

Steve was proud of his site earning a perfect score from media watchdog NewsGuard that evaluated StudyFinds for bias. “This was so gratifying because we’re really just trying to help people — we aren’t picking and choosing studies to make some sort of point. We just want people to be empowered with information.”

Now Steve wants to keep the momentum going.

“My hope is that I can continue to hire more writers and continue to boost output and get more studies out there,” says Steve. “I love the idea that we’re shining a light on studies by scientists who might not typically get their work showcased in the mainstream media.”

“There's so much fascinating research that never sees the light of day on a TV news broadcast or on the pages of a popular magazine. We hope to change that for the better.

But of course, the most important part of the process is helping readers live better, more informed lives.

“There's a lot of vulnerable people out there who make decisions based on what they get off the media and that can be really dangerous,” says Steve. “And so to be able to give people more information through well-researched studies was my goal from the beginning — and I think we’re really delivering on that goal.”