COURIER’s Explosive Year
By many metrics, 2025 was the biggest year ever for COURIER. Here’s what we accomplished together.
As we prepare to head into another guaranteed political doozy of a year, I am so unbelievably proud to look back on how much our COURIER team accomplished in 2025, and how powerfully our work has shaped the national conversation among some of the most politically important audiences online. Building and scaling a media network that measures its success in terms of civic engagement and impact over cold, hard dollars has never been easy - but I will be the first to admit that it has, in some ways, become even harder in America’s new oligarchy moment, where bad billionaires are literally buying up legacy news outlets and social media platforms to advance their own financial and political interests, while the wealthiest Americans with a soul or conscience are becoming harder to find.
Despite the darkening political and financial headwinds, COURIER still managed to grow our reach and impact faster and farther in 2025 than we had in the previous 5 years combined, became one of the most viewed media brands on TikTok, and shaped the conversation in ways that helped secure democracy wins big and small across the country.
Here are just a few of the team’s biggest wins in 2025:
We saw exponential growth across all social media channels.
2025 was, perhaps unexpectedly, COURIER’s most successful year for audience growth. With a much smaller budget than 2024 and nearly zero dollars spent on social audience acquisition, we more than doubled our audience network-wide from 4 million on Election Day 2024 to nearly 9 million today. That growth was spread across key platforms where millions of Americans spend their time, like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
…and our national audience grew influence among Americans under 40.
While the progressive media ecosystem (finally) began to grow across the board this year, our team filled a key gap in reaching audiences decades younger than most other left-leaning outlets. I often joke that many funders and industry operatives first become familiar with COURIER’s work because their teenage or college-aged kids follow us online. There’s a reason for that: On TikTok, @couriernewsroom has become one of the largest and most-engaged news brands in the United States, and our audience there is 64% under age 34. Similarly on Instagram, 57% of our followers are under 44. We have truly become a primary news source for young people - and I will remind you, in 2028, the majority of eligible voters in America will have been born after the year 1990!
We leveled up our local social operations and built new creator partnerships.
On the ground from Phoenix to Milwaukee, our state newsrooms have been relentlessly reaching local audiences directly in their feeds through localized content and trusted messengers.
In Virginia, we built a first-of-its-kind, test-driven local news creator program, partnering with a dozen trusted social media influencers to reach their audiences directly with our news content in their social feeds. Over five months, our VA newsroom, The Dogwood, partnered with these Virginia-based creators to deliver factual, relevant local reporting on the Trump and Youngkin administrations and the governor’s race — shaping public awareness while also testing new models for sourcing, paying, and building long-term creator collaborations. Collectively, these creators gained over 13MM video views informing Virginians about their state elections and mobilizing them to participate civically in their communities, and made lifelong friendships (and many collab partnerships!) along the way.
…Continuing to build out our live events portfolio.
On both the local and national front, our team worked to build community, cultivate partnerships, and raise revenue via hosting compelling events. We held 3 national events and 5 local events in 2025, with over 1,000 in-person attendees and tens of thousands of livestream viewers, as well as a new and powerful revenue stream we’re stoked to scale in 2026.
We began to diversify revenue with grassroots support.
As Americans grew outraged by the Trump administration’s actions, many looked for ways to support meaningful opposition causes and pro-Democracy media outlets. For COURIER, that translated into a historic increase in grassroots support, with our team raising over $1.5 million this year from 45,000 small dollar donors in all 50 states.
…and most importantly, our team published hundreds of stories detailing the direct impacts of this corrupt and cruel administration on our local communities, and drove key off-year election coverage, channeling our increased reach into support for anti-MAGA victories.
Both nationally and locally, our team stepped up to produce original reporting, compelling social content, and on-the-ground coverage of the key off-year elections that took place in 2025. Whether it’s the release of the Epstein Files, the fight over redistricting in California or the statewide elections in Virginia, these political moments and races in November mattered deeply as a first major test of MAGA’s popularity since the 2024 presidential campaign. Week after week, we educated our audiences about the stakes of the elections, and voters ultimately turned out in a historic sweep for the anti-MAGA opposition.
Looking ahead
As we move into 2026, another critical election year for our country and democracy, COURIER is poised to reach more people than ever — grounded in the mission we started with: to inform, empower, and engage communities through news and information that actually meets them where and how they want to consume it. We will have so many new plans and updates to share in the new year, but for now, I just wanted to express my deep gratitude to everyone who has helped us build so much momentum in 2025, and will keep the wind in our sails next year.
Here’s to the power of hope, hard work, and practicing both in community with all of you. Wishing you all a healthy + joyful holiday season.
Tara
What I’m reading this week
The Most Powerful Politics Influencers Barely Post About Politics (WIRED, 12/17)
“New research shows that social media creators have enormous influence over their audiences’ politics—especially those who don’t normally share political content.”
Breaking precedent, networks interrupt prime time for Trump political diatribe (Popular Info, 12/18)
“Typically, networks will interrupt their primetime schedule for presidents to address wars, crises, or very significant new policies. In his remarks on Wednesday, Trump delivered his standard talking points, bragging about his mass deportation policies and tariffs and attacking Democrats and the Biden administration. The only crisis was Trump’s sagging approval ratings…”
Dan Bongino announces FBI exit (Axios, 12/17)
“Dan Bongino said Wednesday he’ll leave his role as FBI deputy director in January, hours after President Trump told reporters the former conservative commentator “wants to go back to his show.”
Nearly $900 Million Flowed in Secret to Help Harris and Trump in 2024 (NYT, 12/18)
“As part of the post-election debate, some Democrats have wondered whether the Future Forward nonprofit group left any money on the table that could have been used to help the party more. The tax filing shows that the nonprofit ended 2024 with $26.7 million on hand, but an aide to the group said that this leftover money was ineligible to be used for electoral purposes.”