The Scoop
The progressive movement’s largest donor network plans to invest “tens of millions” of dollars in new media sources, its president told Semafor after a three-day retreat to set priorities for the 2026 cycle.
“It became crystal clear after 2024 that we collectively had relied too much on forms of media that were not reaching people,” said Pamela Shifman, the president of Democracy Alliance. “Too much focus on paid advertisements, too much focus on broadcast television, and that is simply not where the majority of people consume their news.”
Founded in 2005 to pool the resources of liberal funders, the Democracy Alliance has put more than $2 billion into think tanks, media outlets, and pop-up electoral campaigns.
In 2024, it focused on flipping House seats in New York and California, with considerable success. But it couldn’t stop Republicans from winning a governing trifecta — one that has used its power to probe and hobble some successful and long-lived liberal institutions.
That convinced some Democracy Alliance members that electoral work couldn’t be truly effective if voters’ media diets were steering them toward MAGA and conservative views. In a memo shared with Semafor, the group recommended that its donors — who do not need to disclose their identities — put their money behind a new media fund it’s created.
“Donors are more fired up, are more clear about the stakes, and more ready to go all in to defeat authoritarianism,” Shifman said. “Because it is more than just about one election, right? It is about defeating authoritarianism.”
The fund would boost organizations that have been making content that breaks through to young people, like the Emmy-winning More Perfect Union. It would also compete in a space that conservatives have dominated, to liberals’ dismay, like the non-political content of Make America Healthy Again influencers.
“The right has spent decades cultivating and organizing young people,” the memo explains. “They build relationships through culture and community — and engage in politics after. We can’t cede these voters. It’s time for progressives to invest heavily in our own trusted messengers who can meet young people where they are — both online and in-person.”
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While the retreat in New Mexico, attended by 200 alliance members, included discussions of other investments — it ended with an emergency strategy session on responding to the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision — the emphasis on new media delighted activists who’ve worked to grow progressive channels.
“It was hard to get folks in the pro-democracy movement, on the left, to actually understand how the media ecosystem has changed,” said Tara McGowan, who in 2019 founded the left-leaning Courier Newsroom, which was closing in on 10 million subscribers.
“The old way of working through traditional and legacy outlets was not going to actually get factual reporting, never mind progressive values-driven reporting, in front of the American people,” she added. “The DA stepping up to the plate is a very good thing for democracy.”
Convincing donors that left-leaning media was worth investing in had been difficult. Some, said McGowan, associated the idea with Air America, a Bush-era startup that lasted less than six years. It produced or trained progressives who would end up hosting influential shows on traditional media, like Rachel Maddow, or popular independent programs, like Sam Seder and Marc Moran.
But the liberal philanthropy world saw more immediate benefit in funding turnout and campaign work.
“Everybody has their own media diets, and a lot of the donors and philanthropists in this movement are older, to be really frank,” said McGowan, 40. “I still find that there’s a pretty big learning curve with Boomers or older people about how media works today.”
Polls have consistently found that Democrats are more likely to trust established media outlets, while Republicans barely trust them at all. Democracy Alliance donors were being urged to stand up content creators whose work got to young voters that didn’t consume old media at all.
“I live in New York, and I saw the Mamdani campaign use media and tactics that reached people, that spoke to people, that resonated with people, and that was joyful and positive and compelling,” Shifman said. “It doesn’t have to be negative to reach people.”
Doing that didn’t mean moving to the right on cultural issues, either. “That is not why we are losing, because the Democrats are too ‘woke,’” said Shifman. “Our strategy really is about meeting people where they are. And we also need to have a vision of what we are going to do to improve people’s lives.”
David’s view
The race to capture America’s young minds, and their For You pages, has occupied conservatives and liberals for years. One of the most common gripes I hear on the left is that conservative donors, who spent decades building alternative media to make the “legacy” press irrelevant, got a massive head start. I think McGowan explained it well: Many donors didn’t see a point in creating liberal alternatives, when they and other Democrats were satisfied with their old media diet.
The 2024 election dramatically changed minds, before and after. Democrats tried to connect influencers to their candidates in the Trump vs. Harris election, with some success. After the election, a months-long conversation about finding a “liberal Joe Rogan” convinced donors that a generation of young men and women were simply not hearing, or trusting, the same news they were.
And the liberal perception that some trusted outlets were kowtowing to Trump (The Washington Post, CBS News) sped up that change.
So liberals have been here before, telling themselves that a new investment in progressive content creation will win hearts, minds, and votes. But they feel a desperation that wasn’t there when they stood up Air America.
Notable
- Earlier this week, I went inside the annual States Summit put on by America Votes, getting a look at how the progressive movement’s independent groups and labor unions are strategizing.