The audience Pro-Democracy media can’t afford to leave behind
News-avoidant Americans are critical to the future of our Democracy. Founders, funders, and creators should take note.
According to one major, hotly-debated theory of 2024, Trump’s election victory wasn’t decided by a massive surge in new voters swinging from Biden to Trump or emerging out of nowhere to go full MAGA on Election Day. Instead, as my friend Mike Podhorzer argued in January, the election was decided by about 19 million Americans who voted in previous years but sat out this time around. Those voters, who cast a ballot for Biden in 2020 but chose to simply not vote in 2024, certainly could have sat out the election for a host of reasons - maybe they felt gaslit by Democrats who told them that inflation wasn’t that bad (it was), or they were less inclined to vote for a party that was defending institutions they no longer trusted to put their families’ needs over greedy billionaires (because it hadn’t). Regardless of the ultimate reason that kept them from participating, an important and overlooked factor that has to be a bigger part of this conversation is whether or not these voters were even being reached by Democratic messaging at all.
Recently, there’s been increasing (and long overdue) interest among pro-democracy groups and donors in investing in new left-of-center media companies, social-first content operations, and creator engagement work. This has been extremely welcome news for those of us who have been beating this drum for nearly a decade and doing the non-sexy work of building trusted media brands and infrastructure with too little resources and support. A small but mighty ecosystem of companies, creators, and organizations are rapidly growing on key platforms to reach different groups of Americans. But, as these new progressive media efforts continue to grow, it is critical that founders, funders, and operatives do not lose sight of one of the most critical audiences: news-avoidant Americans.
The news-avoidant, or sometimes called passive news consumers, were left behind by the traditional press years ago. This audience over-indexes as non-college educated, lower income, and lower propensity or non-voting Americans, and thus are not paying for paywalls, which means the pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, as well as most remaining local news publications, are inaccessible and irrelevant to their lives. Instead, they hear about what’s happening in Washington and elsewhere via their social media feeds, family, and friends. Maybe they’ll see a bit of news while scrolling on Instagram, or they’ll see their aunt or uncle comment on a piece of partisan clickbait on Facebook. For younger audiences, they may watch a popular non-political creator comment on the news in a video on TikTok.
These millions of people are not by any means a homogenous group and don’t have monolithic online interests. Some may regularly consume sports content, while others may be interested in celebrity news and reality TV. The men may spend a lot of time on YouTube, while the younger members of the cohort could disproportionately spend their days scrolling TikTok or Reddit.
Because of the varied interests of these audiences, intentional left-of-center media efforts must invest in new, niche, cultural, and non-political programming to reach them on their terms. While it is valuable to have progressive media efforts that “preach to the choir” and build an army of hyper-engaged grassroots Democrats, it is even more important to create year-round infrastructure aimed at providing something of value and culturally resonant to less political audiences. Why? These are the audiences that actually determine the outcome of close elections - whether through their vote choice, or their choice to not vote.
The Right figured this out years ago. Less political, culture-first brands like Barstool Sports provide audiences with good, entertaining content, and occasionally share a conservative or pro-Trump POV. Longtime conservative commentator Candace Owens has recently shifted to speak about celebrity content and other less overtly political content. And even Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, a conservative media juggernaut, sees itself as a counter-cultural force, creating everything from children’s programming to big-screen movies that only give subtle nods to overt politics - despite the fact that Shapiro and most of Daily Wire’s most influential talkers built their careers in conservative politics and political media.
At COURIER, our state newsrooms have been laser-focused on reaching and earning the trust of news-avoidant audiences since our inception, understanding this population is made up of Americans who often share our values, but are less reached by traditional media and advertising. Understanding how and where this audience consumes information has informed how our reporters cover local and national news, from the conversational, no-bullshit way they write their headlines for skimmability, to the way they break down complicated policy issues in vertical video explainers rife with cultural references or humor to keep viewers engaged. Ditching 2,000-word web stories for scrollable, swipeable content on social media has helped us bring in a wider audience than just people who typically care about the news, or who vote regularly. Creating viral content reaching tens of millions of people on TikTok has helped us reach beyond the Democratic political bubble and publishing local food guides, tourism tips, and lifestyle content has diversified the types of audiences we speak to day-in and day-out.
As more donors and operatives become receptive to the reality that they have been failing to even compete in the information wars that got us into our current political nightmare, my passionate plea is that they prioritize their investments in more media like COURIER that reaches beyond the choir to earn the trust of new audiences, and in creators who do not come from politics, but who have earned the trust of niche communities that left Democrats behind. While less sexy than some of our favorite pro-democracy outlets that are starting to build formidable revenue streams off of their politically engaged audiences who need no convincing to vote or vote against MAGA, media outlets like COURIER and creators who don’t play the rage-bait content game are the ones who are in need of the most urgent funding to scale. If you agree that Democrats became the party that lost touch with the majority of Americans last cycle, let’s not make the same mistake when it comes to building new media that can actually help us correct course.
- Tara
More news from our team
The team and I are also excited to share the news that COURIER has reached an agreement with the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAEast) for the voluntary recognition of COURIER’s staff union. As a progressive and pro-labor news organization, we strongly believe in the rights of workers to organize and will uphold our commitment to supporting unionization to strengthen our culture and community for years to come.
What I’m reading this week
Report on Conservative Media Dominance Reveals What Progressive Donors Don't Want to Hear (Parker Molloy, 3/17)
“Progressive donors need to take a page from the conservative playbook by making long-term, substantial investments in digital media with fewer strings attached. They need to fund not just serious policy content but also entertainment, comedy, sports, and lifestyle content that can reach beyond the already converted.
More importantly, they need to recognize that building media power is not secondary to political organizing — it's an essential prerequisite. In an era when a single podcast host can reach more people than all the major cable news networks combined, media isn't just about informing people about progressive policies; it's about creating the cultural and informational environment where those policies can even be considered.”
A Crack in Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire (The Bulwark, 3/20)
“CEO Jeremy Boreing helped build the conservative media empire—and now, with no fanfare, he’s out.”
As Markets Whipsaw, Conservative Media Shrugs (NYT, 3/13)
“Nervous investors seeking news about the plunging markets on Monday afternoon would have been out of luck if they turned to the websites of The New York Post, The Daily Caller, One America News or The Blaze. Not one of those right-leaning outlets featured articles about the sell-off as the closing bell rang, cementing Wall Street’s steepest decline of the year.”
With recent appointments, Fox News enters a new stage of Trump closeness (Washington Post, 3/13)
“The president named two prominent Fox hosts — Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingraham — to the Kennedy Center board, while they’re still covering him.”
Ambitious Democrats Have a New Game Plan: Yak It Up About Sports (NYT, 3/9)
“Prominent leaders are flocking to sports radio shows and podcasts, an early sign of how the party is trying to reach apolitical young men who have tilted toward President Trump.”