We’ve reached a milestone I want to share with you all.
Hey guys, it’s Sarah. These days, there is no shortage of stories about our media industry failing. I’m not just talking about news executives who are proving themselves unable to meet the moment. I’m talking about companies—major institutions—suffering a dramatic loss of trust, audience, and revenue. I want to tell you a different story. I want to tell you our story. So, let me take you back: It’s late 2018, and The Weekly Standard—the magazine my friend Bill Kristol founded—has just been murdered by its owner for being insufficiently pro-Trump. All of a sudden, with just a few weeks until Christmas, my friends at the Standard are out of jobs. I started fielding calls from people, plotting out how to get them jobs at a news aggregator project we had recently started. We called it The Bulwark. Fast forward more than seven years, and that site has gone from being a news aggregator into one of the largest and fastest growing independent media companies in the country. We brought on real-deal reporters to break news and tell the stories that the legacy players were missing. We released a whole slate of podcasts, several of which became chart-toppers. We started holding live, in-person events in cities across the country (plus Canada—we love you, Canada). And this past week, we crossed 1 million Bulwark subscribers. That’s 1 million real people who gave us their email so we would be in their inbox each morning, noon, and night with news and analysis on what’s happening in and to this country. This is only possible thanks to you guys—the people who have shown up, spread the word, and chosen to ride with us on this whole, surreal, incredible journey. This week, when the news landed, nearly all of us were gathered in our DC offices with a bunch of new colleagues, who we were only able to hire thanks to support of our Bulwark+ membership. It’s a weird time to be a media executive. We’re living through a paradigm shift in how people get their news and information. Now, for the first time in a long time, it’s an open question what the role of a free press is going to be in American civic life. Everywhere we see cowardly media executives catering to the Trump administration’s authoritarian pressure tactics. At the same time, many legacy outlets are being gobbled up by Trump-aligned oligarchs, who aren’t even bothering to hide the fact that they plan on MAGA-ifying their coverage to conform to the strongman’s wishes. And then there are the social platforms. I can tell you from my focus groups, this is where an enormous segment of Americans get their news. And most of the major platforms are now owned by—yep!—Trump-aligned oligarchs who are democracy-agnostic at best, and explicitly pro-authoritarianism at worst. We at The Bulwark have tried something radically different. We are proudly pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian. We don’t hide those biases, and we are honest about the stakes. Sometimes this is messy stuff and we hash out our thinking in front of you—our community. We tell you what we really think, in real time. And if we make a mistake, we admit it. We grow. We’ve gone through a lot of changes over the years. In the beginning, we didn’t ask for money—but people just started sending it to us, unsolicited. They were tracking what we were doing and they wanted to support it. Over the years, we added more people and built out the infrastructure for a real newsroom. Today we have more than 40 people on staff, and are still growing. And that’s all thanks to you. You guys keep us sane. I feel like I know you. We started this venture on a wing and a prayer, and it’s grown to become a thriving media company—all thanks to you. So thank you. From the bottom of our hearts. If this sounds like the kind of thing you want to be a part of, and if you haven’t already, the best thing you can do is become a Bulwark+ member right now. If you want to have skin in the game, if you want to take an active part in fighting autocracy, if you want to just be part of a real community of people who care and refuse to give up—well, this is the place for you. Come be part of this thing we’re building. Here’s what I can promise you going forward: We’ll keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing. We’ll keep delivering content that makes you smarter about the world, explains the inexplicable times we’re living through, and gives you hope to fight for something better. We’ll keep telling you exactly what we think. And we’ll keep adding more people, more content, more live shows, more everything. You guys are dug in for this fight, and so are we. We’re here to stay. One million is just the beginning. Sarah Longwell
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