The future of Daily Kos (please read)

Friend, I want to follow up on my email about the difficulties news outlets have faced not just over the past year, but over the past decade. Amazon, Google and Facebook have come to dominate the online ad market, taking in [nearly two-thirds]( of all online ad spending. News outlets around the country have been forced to make drastic cuts year after year as the revenue that once sustained fact-checked, proofread journalism went instead to tech giants. At Daily Kos we are not immune to these trends, and have confronted tough times in our past. However, we did have a novel solution. When we were faced with some grim numbers, we turned to you, our readers and activists, for help. The response was overwhelming. We never had to make layoffs. We hired more writers and organizers. That growth allowed us to run our biggest campaigns ever—saving Obamacare, fighting Trump's court nominees, demanding his impeachment, and Getting Out The Vote in 2018 and 2020. [Daily Kos wouldn't exist without you. That's why I'm asking you one more time to please click here to start a $5 monthly recurring contribution now if you haven't already. It is literally the most powerful thing you can do to support our work.]( [CONTRIBUTE MONTHLY]( [Can't contribute monthly? Please click here to contribute $5 one time.]( In solidarity, Chris Bowers, Daily Kos --------------------------------------------------------------- Friend, I wrote to you last year about the dire state of the news media. After more than a decade of terrible developments, the pandemic threatened to become, as Buzzfeed accurately dubbed it, "[a media extinction event](." Now, we finally know the full extent of the damage, and [it's astonishingly bad](. A record-breaking 16,160 newsroom jobs were lost last year. This, during a presidential election featuring the lying-est president in American history and the mainstreaming of fake news and conspiracy theories that eventually led to violence at the Capitol on January 6. The scary thing is no part of the news media is safe. Print, television, and online outlets all shed jobs as the ad dollars that once sustained fact-checked, proofread journalism instead went to tech giants Facebook and Google, who have effectively duopolized online ad revenue. Scarier still, there are no signs of recovery. In 2019, ThinkProgress, one of the largest and longest-running progressive news sites on the internet, shut down. No new outlet emerged to take its place. In 2020, many more traditional, but still left-of-center, outlets like Vice, Vox, and Buzzfeed were forced to [make layoffs, furloughs, benefit cuts, and pay cuts]( to stave off even greater layoffs. The collapse of the news media has terrifying implications for Americans' ability to hold elected officials accountable, and also for how we get our information in moments of crisis, such as the ongoing pandemic. Daily Kos was able to avoid the mass layoffs last year and throughout the past decade because, unlike almost everyone else, our largest source of revenue comes not from advertising, but from grassroots support—that is to say, contributions from readers and activists like you. Contributions of just a few dollars at a time makes sure that we can pay our bills. But what's more, it makes us accountable to you—not to a billionaire backer, hedge fund, or corporate advertisers. We know that in order to keep operating, we have to fight and deliver for what you believe in. [Daily Kos is not immune to the financial challenges facing news publishers today, but we've been able to weather this storm thanks to the support of readers and activists like you. It is essential that independent, progressive media continues providing you news you can do something about—most especially during a time of national crisis, as we work to repair the damage Trump inflicted on our country. Please, click here to start a $5 monthly recurring donation to Daily Kos today.]( [CONTRIBUTE MONTHLY]( [Can't donate monthly? Please click here to make a one-time donation to Daily Kos.]( In solidarity, Chris Bowers, Daily Kos If you wish to donate by mail instead, please send a check to Daily Kos, PO Box 70036, Oakland, CA, 94612. Contributions to Daily Kos are not tax deductible. (Please note that we may be slow to process checks during the coronavirus outbreak.) Sent via [ActionNetwork.org](. To update your email address, change your name or address, or to stop receiving emails from Daily Kos, please [click here](.