Something the left needs to invest in, regardless of how the midterms shake out, is owned media that is honest, nimble, and that reaches the millions of Americans who've been shamefully ignored by legacy news orgs + paywalls, but are being reached by right-wing disinfo everyday🧵 Our 8 newsrooms at @CourierNewsroom reach millions of Americans who primarily get their info by scrolling platforms like FB, Instagram + TikTok with factual, shareable news content every day, year round, puncturing their echo chambers + shaping the conversation at the local level

Wonder why this is? See this 🧵 - and news boosting friends, these might be worth adding to your programs as the world watches this man murder thousands of innocent lives: newsweek.com/majority-repub… From 2016, worth boosting. washingtonpost.com/opinions/globa…

Can you imagine what would be possible if we had a progressive media marketplace even half this competitive? (I can)

"The bottom line: Several operatives said they could easily go a whole primary without needing to engage at all with the mainstream media"
axios.com/newsletters/ax… Tens of thousands of people who died from COVID would be alive today, millions of Americans would know who kept their children safe + delivered the only financial relief they received in the pandemic, guns, not books would be banned in schools, empathy would be louder than hate..

🚨 @Facebook has the ability to up-rank factual news over disinfo + HADN'T ACTIVATED IT 🤬🚨
"Days after the election, Zuckerberg agreed to increase the weight that FB’s algorithm gave to NEQ scores to make sure authoritative news appeared more prominently"nytimes.com/2020/11/24/tec… "It resulted in a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages, such as Breitbart became less visible, the @Facebook employees said."

ARE YOU KIDDING ME I AM LOSING IT 🤬

🚨 WSJ confirms what we've suspected: Mark Zuckerberg directly intervened to prevent progressive news orgs like @CourierNewsroom from being included in Facebook's News Tab, while sharing meals with Ben Shapiro + exchanging texts with Jared Kushner 🚨
wsj.com/articles/how-m… "When @Facebook tweaked its newsfeed algorithm to minimize the presence of political news policy execs were concerned about the outsize impact of changes on the right. Engineers redesigned changes so left-leaning sites like @MotherJones were affected more than previously planned"

"There’s only one full-time newspaper reporter. @AshleyinFloyd's title is Managing Editor of the @FloydPress, but in practicality she’s reporter, photographer, layout designer + editor. Each week she single-handedly pulls together the 16-20 page newspaper."wvtf.org/post/she-s-one… "When big companies start to buy up papers it’s often no longer seen as a long term investment. @alisonkgraham worries that the lack of investment is a vicious cycle that can only be headed in one direction: Lee Enterprises eventually closing the paper."

Team, we have a problem. Women can and have won elections- and can strengthen a presidential ticket- but the biggest barrier standing in their way is a tried-n-true playbook that has effectively kept us out of positions of power- that even we "progressives" can fall victim to. We know from research + history that the most effective ways to take down a woman candidate are to make her appear unqualified, untrustworthy and/or unlikeable. We know there's a double standard + we know that standard is significantly worsened if you're a woman of color

As much as I'd like to stay off this site forever, it’s become clear the amount of misinformation flowing about ACRONYM + its relationship to Shadow has become a distraction from much bigger things. In the interest of full transparency, let’s get into it🧵medium.com/@taraemcg/a-no… First, I'm the CEO of @anotheracronym, a 501c4 nonprofit org I founded in 2017 to help build power + digital infrastructure for the progressive movement. I was adamant it be a nonprofit bc for-profit digital consultants on our side were failing + greed was losing us elections.

Spent time with my Bernie-supporting friend last night who still believes the Dem Party is “suppressing support for Bernie” + that Warren is a liar who “can’t not keep shooting herself in the foot” + “does NOT have the same policies” as Bernie. Zero interest in unity v. Trump🧵 And don’t even ask what he had to say about our other candidates 😳 It has me so depressed I can’t stop thinking about it. There is so much evidence proving that a divisive primary can + will weaken our eventual nominees’s ability to win the general.

Any Democrat who argues the digital spend discrepancy doesn’t matter because Trump is base-building +fundraising is misunderstanding the threat. If we’re not reminding voters every single day the stakes of this election, we are losing + worse, we are failing our future candidate. Trump’s digital $$$ -even to reach, raise +mobilize his base -all tells a very cohesive narrative about how Dems are extreme socialists who want to take away guns, open our borders + run a witch hunt. It drives the national media narrative + puts Dems on the defense at every turn

In the interest of self care, I outlined my greatest fear about #2020 in @thehill today.

TL;DR --> Dems are starting 2020 at a huge digital disadvantage. If we don't invest in smart digital infrastructure for the general NOW, it could be ours to lose.
thehill.com/opinion/campai… As Dems kick off an exciting but crowded primary season that will soak up time + resources, Trump's team continues to smartly leverage digital channels to define, spin + own the media narrative and is investing heavily in growing, exciting + fundraising off of his base online.

I’m so excited to announce @anotheracronym has acquired Groundbase, the best CRM + SMS tool on the political market, along with their incredible team led by @gjniemira + are launching Shadow, a new tech company to build smarter infrastructure for campaigns anotheracronym.org/introducing-sh… At ACRONYM, we talk a lot about building infrastructure that is nimble and can evolve over time to help Democrats run smarter campaigns and build political power. When it comes to technology, this continues to be a huge challenge + gap within the progressive landscape.