Progressive media at a crossroads

For many commentators, the 2024 election drove home the power of the ever-evolving right-wing media ecosystem. There seems to be something about the parasocial bonds that people build with media personalities who they spend a lot of time with, and who offer stories to make sense of day-to-day public life, that goes deeper than celebrity endorsements, door knocks, or impact-tested ads.

So in 2025, the push to start building a competing media sphere is on the mind of many left/progressive/center-left activists, entrepreneurs, and donors. What will these efforts look like?

There have been online left-leaning media spheres in the recent past, both real and imagined. In the mid-2010s, BuzzFeed News, Vice Media, and Vox Media were seen as beacons pointing toward the future of online news. They were celebrated as innovative and savvily attuned to internet culture. And they arguably shared a (moderately) progressive outlook. Today, BuzzFeed News has shut down. Vice Media went bankrupt. And Vox Media has gone through rounds of layoffs.

The initial rise of such sites offered hope that the digital news boom would bode well for progressive voices. Today, the dream that the invisible hand of the commercial internet will deliver a popular and thriving progressive media sphere sits in an ashy dustbin. Next to it lies an earlier fantasy of techno-leftists and horizontalism enthusiasts who saw Indymedia and radical citizen journalists coming to power once the internet toppled media gatekeepers.

If a truly influential left media sphere is to grow from these ashes, it’s going to entail plenty of varied experiments — but also an against-the-headwinds commitment to building media that appeals to those beyond the ranks of college-educated, highly engaged groups already invested in progressive politics.

This won’t happen spontaneously. It’s going to take coordinated efforts. Media ventures that depend on money from loyal subscribers — or those that need to please donors by showing quick results in attracting engagement — will be pulled toward catering to the niche already cultivated by progressives. Perhaps they’ll grow at impressive speeds, but they’ll find themselves preaching to the choir.

Media scholar Reece Peck put it well when he told me he worries the danger for progressive media activists is “fetishizing the medium.” They may set their sights only on establishing progressive brands on online video and podcasting platforms, but continue to speak only to the kind of audiences that already share their tastes and socio-economic backgrounds. Moving more content onto these formats alone won’t be enough to compete with the right-wing media sphere. While some components of the right-wing media sphere have always been calibrated only to serve fellow ideologues, others have positioned themselves as entryways into conservatism. They have done this by appealing to popular tastes and speaking to social groups not otherwise courted by either mainstream media or progressive outreach.

This coming year will see major growth in online progressive media. What’s harder to predict is which communities will see themselves represented in this media. Which communities will hear this media speaking to their experiences and frustrations? Which communities will see this media speaking to their tastes and longings to make stories of political life captivating and maybe even re-enchanting?