Covering the chaos
From the Musk-Trump feud to the ICE raids around the country, here’s how we’re framing the major political moments
This week has seen some of the most pivotal moments in American politics in years. Donald Trump is mobilizing the military to support mass immigration raids, crackdown on dissent, and throw himself an unprecedented military parade straight out of the North Korean playbook. At the same time, his largest benefactor and lieutenant, who happens to be the world’s richest man, launched a public feud with the President, accusing him of being a part of a pedophile ring. In California, a U.S. Senator was tackled to the ground by federal agents. In Congress, Republicans are still struggling to jam through the President’s radical right-wing agenda, and the conservative majority Supreme Court is now entering its closely watched decision season. Oh, and war is breaking out between Israel and Iran. I could, unfortunately, go on, but it’s Friday and we all need to take a deep breath.
The zone has officially been flooded, and Americans’ attention is being yanked in every direction possible. While the legacy media focuses its coverage on the sensational, and progressive advocacy groups each narrowly communicate to their communities about their pet issues, COURIER is leading the way in reaching Americans with robust, explanatory news and content on the platforms where they spend their time- and we’re doing it at the same pace the news is breaking.
Through 30 to 90-second video clips, explainers, graphics, and carousels on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, we are providing context to the flurry of news clips landing in Americans’ feeds. As a result, our team is seeing numbers we haven’t seen in quite some time. From June 2nd to June 8th, our national accounts (@couriernewsroom) earned over 150 million unique views on their content across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. More importantly, those posts saw over 11 million engagements - likes, comments, and shares from actual humans who took action after seeing our content.
By comparison, the Team Trump accounts (the President’s online political operation) received just ~45 million views during the same period on those platforms.
For many younger Americans, content like ours on social media is the primary way they’re consuming information about these events, and COURIER is the first to market at reaching them. On TikTok, we are already one of the largest and most-viewed news brands on the entire platform, and on Instagram, we are one of the fastest growing - adding over 400,000 net new national followers year to date.
And lastly, all of these big numbers don’t even account for the hundreds of pieces of incredible content our local network is producing every week to localize the news in their states and make what’s happening even more relevant to people’s lives.
During times like these, it is critical that those of us who share a core set of progressive values don’t get distracted, don’t look away, and find ways to combat news fatigue among our audiences. I’m proud of our team for thinking outside of the box and engaging our audiences on a massive scale, and I hope this work will help inspire you and your own teams, friends, and colleagues to share, create, and take action on what’s happening around us. And if you are not sharing COURIER’s national news coverage on your own social media accounts, now would be a good time to follow us!
I wish for you all some peace and quiet this weekend.
- Tara
You’re invited: Like & Subscribe on June 26th
I wanted to invite you to join COURIER for Like & Subscribe, an evening reception in Washington, DC on June 26th celebrating the launch of our newest national podcasts and digital series — hear from Akilah Hughes, Ryan Broderick, Ashley Ray and an exclusive preview of what’s coming from COURIER later this year. Details + RSVP here >>
Join me for a virtual briefing next week:
Powering a movement that wins: Please join me on Tuesday, June 17th at 5:00 PM ET for a briefing for new and long-time supporters of COURIER to hear from me directly on how our team is uniquely positioned to meet this moment. While others are just entering the progressive media space, COURIER has spent the last six years building data-proven strategies, audience-first content, and a scalable model that’s already making an impact. RSVP for the Zoom briefing here >>
What I’m reading this week
The Political Gap in Americans’ News Sources (Pew Research, 6/10)
“For years now, Democrats have been much more likely than Republicans to say they trust the information that comes from national news organizations. A new Pew Research Center survey gets much more specific: How do Americans feel about 30 of the country’s major news sources?”
Bob Costas Condemns Mainstream Press for Doing ‘MAGA Media’: ‘There Really Isn’t Two Sides’ (Mediaite, 6/10)
“In a speech touching on his career in broadcasting and the state of the media business through the years, Costas spoke candidly about the press in the Trump era, and singled out ABC News, CBS News, and CNN.”
Americans still have faith in local news — but few are willing to pay for it (Nieman, 6/12)
“Yet even as the local news industry declines in the U.S. — more than 3,200 local and regional newspapers have closed since 2005 — Americans still place much more trust in local news than they do in national news.”