COURIER’s Year in Review 2024
The 2024 election made it clear that proudly pro-democracy media is more important than ever. Over the past year, COURIER has reached millions of Americans with news on the local, state, and national levels that empowers civic engagement and counters right-wing propaganda. Through our social media and email-first model, we’ve grown our audience of less politically engaged Americans and passive news consumers by reaching them directly in the digital spaces where they spend their time. Despite the dangerous and disheartening results of the election, we are so proud of the work our newsrooms have done this past year to increase the flow of good, factual information and storytelling to audiences that have been left behind by traditional media.
Here are just five great accomplishments the COURIER network achieved in 2024:
We grew rapidly as a company.
This was a huge year for COURIER. In 2024, we nearly tripled our audience size, growing from 1.8 million online subscribers to over 5 million. That’s over 5 million people who have opted into getting our pro-democracy news directly in their inboxes and social media feeds every single day. Our average monthly reach of our content skyrocketed to over 250 million impressions. We also expanded COURIER, opening our 11th state newsroom in Texas and growing to over 100 full-time employees.
Our newsrooms also saw a huge amount of organic growth in the days following the election, showing how audiences are hungry for news that won’t capitulate to Trump.
We empowered audiences with pro-democracy election coverage and voting information.
Our 11 state newsrooms and national team produced a truly impressive amount of coverage in the lead-up to the 2024 election — in the 90 days before E-day alone, we published over 2,455+ election-related articles and gained 1.8 billion social views and impressions. In addition to covering the stakes of races up and down the ballot, we focused on several key editorial beats, such as emphasizing the joy of voting, pre-bunking election conspiracies, and providing rapid responses to election disinformation. Our state newsroom “voter hub” sites provided need-to-know info on how to vote and garnered 370K+ organic page views and over 25,000 link clicks.
We delivered news to hard-to-reach audiences with our boosted news programs.
In 2024, we ran a record-breaking 45 boosted news programs targeting hard-to-reach audiences in key states and demographics. Our model of boosting news on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch to break through the algorithm and reach Americans who otherwise wouldn’t seek out political news is proven to make an impact. Promoting our original content via advertising helped drive informed voter turnout in races like the Nevada U.S. Senate, North Carolina Supreme Court, North Carolina Attorney General, Iowa State Legislature, and Michigan Supreme Court.
We became a leading source of news on TikTok.
TikTok was *the* social media platform of 2024, and COURIER pivoted our strategy to invest big in this key channel for reaching younger and less politically engaged audiences. Our team ramped up our TikTok production, dramatically increasing our output on the platform — and it paid off! Our state TikTok program resulted in 470K+ new followers and +706m video views, while our national TikTok saw huge growth, surging past one million followers and becoming one of the biggest political news accounts on the platform in just one year.
We embraced new events, partnerships, and products.
In 2024, we continued to diversify our model and explore new opportunities. This included expanding into live events, with two successful national events in DC — including a keynote conversation with Nancy Pelosi — as well as one hosted by our Nevadan newsroom in Las Vegas. We worked with 44+ underwriting partners to support our editorial output, and we launched new products, such as the award-winning Vibes Only weekly news podcast, our limited Supreme Court series Grave Injustice, and our election video series Closing Strong with our founder Tara McGowan and Hopium Chronicle’s Simon Rosenberg.
Looking ahead
As we look ahead to 2025, expect to see even more growth, innovation, and risk-taking from COURIER as we work to defend our democracy and expand our reach and impact. Building a well-resourced, expansive, and diversified media ecosystem that will hold dangerous demagogues accountable has never been more urgent. COURIER will continue to loudly and proudly call out threats to democracy and expose dangers to people’s lives and communities. Americans need to understand what’s at stake, and we are more committed than ever to reaching them with the truth and empowering them to fight back. Be a part of it by donating today.
