Please read this important email about the future of Daily Kos

I want to make sure you saw Amanda's email, friend because it's important. This has been an extremely difficult year for news outlets, and it comes after a long and difficult decade. Since the Great Recession in the late 00s, tens of thousands of news jobs—more than a quarter of all news jobs!—have been lost. It's staggering to think about, and it couldn't have come at a worse time, as right-wing media has embraced and promoted ever-more hateful and unhinged conspiracy theories and fake news. [We need progressive, independent news outlets like Daily Kos to debunk right-wing lies and propaganda. We don't have billionaire backers or big corporate sponsors. We have you, our readers. Small donations from readers like you make up more than half of our revenue and, right now, we need your help to make ends meet. Can you donate $5 now to help close the books on April?]( [DONATE]( Thank you again, Michael Langenmayr, Daily Kos --------------------------------------------------------------- Friend, just last week we learned that BuzzFeed News will be shutting down. It joins an ever-growing [graveyard]( of defunct digital news media sites like Gawker, ThinkProgress, Toast, Input and Outline. [Daily Kos succeeds because we do things differently than any other media organization around. We are the country's first and only participatory, grassroots-funded, news and activism hub. Unfortunately, our revenues are falling behind our projections. We need to raise $95,296 by the end of the month. Can you donate $5 today?]( [DONATE]( BuzzFeed tried hard to evade dwindling revenue returns. Investors were withdrawing from the company and digital advertising was shrinking. Just a few years ago, Buzzfeed attempted to become a publicly traded company, unfortunately, that only acted as a Band-Aid and was not the lifeline they needed. In a [letter to employees](, Buzzfeed News CEO noted their financial woes saying "we've faced more challenges than I can count in the past few years." The list includes the pandemic, the declining digital advertising market, tech recession, a tough economy, and ongoing audience and platform shifts. Like BuzzFeed News and so many other news media outlets, Daily Kos is all too familiar with these financial struggles. At one time, we relied only on advertising revenue to cover our costs. As Daily Kos grew to include more direct activism, advertising just didn't cut it anymore. We evolved and diversified our revenue sources. Today, Daily Kos relies on three sources of revenue: community fundraising, advertising, and list building, in which Democratic campaigns and organizations pay for us to offer our readers connections to their campaigns. Unfortunately, so far, 2023 has been one of our hardest financial years yet. Two of our major revenue streams, advertising and list building, have been falling behind our projections. In hopes of making up the difference, we have increased our fundraising goal for April by $150,000. Daily Kos is reader-funded. We don't have billionaire investors or big corporate sponsors. We have you, friend, and tens of thousands of readers and activists donating what they can to help us make ends meet. We literally cannot do the work we do without support from our community members. [Please support progressive news you can do something about with a donation of $5 to Daily Kos.]( [DONATE]( Thanks for all you do, Amanda McKay, 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. 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](.