Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Howard Polskin, 1/9/25
Headline: “Will Progressive and Mainstream Audiences Keep Switching off the News?”
Subhead: “Post-election, my newsletter saw a big dip. It is not alone.”
“For the past seven years, I’ve been publishing TheRighting, a free newsletter for mainstreamers and progressives that informs them about thinking from the right. A daily collection of headlines from right-wing sources forms the beating heart of my enterprise. My modest subscription list has grown over the years from a handful of friends and family in year one to thousands of faithful readers scattered around the country. The growth trajectory has almost always pointed north.
“Readers subscribe because they want to know what the right is saying by scanning the seventeen headlines I aggregate every morning. For them, it’s like a polar-bear swim in the chilly waters of right-wing media. A quick dip—two minutes to scan the headlines and absorb a sentence or two, and then it’s back to the warm welcome of MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or wherever they get the news that affirms their political beliefs.”