2024 Was Status Coup's BIGGEST Year!

From our Flint Fatigue documentary to leading coverage of anti-genocide protests and corporate chemical sacrifice zones, Status Coup had its best year yet.

Hey folks, it’s Jordan.

I’m happy to write you to share that as 2024 wraps up—and Happy New Year to you and your loved ones—Status Coup is wrapping up our best year since we launched six years ago.

Overall, we grew nearly 150,000 YouTube subscribers…and over 100,000 in the last three months! With that came over 20 million YouTube views. We also grew steadily in our paid membership, the core financial lifeblood of a truly independent outlet.

Some of the our 2024 accomplishments I’m most proud of:

• In April, we released a full-length documentary, “Flint Fatigue," exposing the sad and infuriating truth about the ONGOING Flint water crisis and cover-up. Showcasing our scrappy and independent grit, we shot the majority of the new footage and interviews in March and turned around a full-length documentary in less than a month. Kudos to Ty Bayliss, an amazing documentary filmmaker for his incredible work producing the documentary. Also kudos to videojournalist Jon Farina for shooting the footage. I’m incredibly proud to say Flint Fatigue won two film festival awards for Best Environmental Film and Best Whistleblower/Awareness Film at the World Film Festival in Cannes. If you haven’t watched Flint Fatigue, we’ve made it free! WATCH and SHARE.

  

• Personally, I’m proud to say I published my first book, “We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover Up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans.” The book, based on my eight years of investigative reporting on the crisis and cover up—and 21 reporting trips to the embattled city—would have never happened without YOUR support funding us continuing to report in Flint and digging on the story. Thank you to all of you who have purchased the book and audiobook. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and I am hell-bent to turn the book into more—maybe even a movie. Stay tuned!

• Videojournalist Jon Farina has led all media in covering anti-genocide, pro-Palestine protests in NYC, Washington D.C., and Chicago. We even covered protests across the country in Los Angeles thanks to Tina-Desiree Berg. Overall, Farina has covered over 100 protests—often in the wee hours of the early morning, late at night, in burning heat and frigid cold. He was also routinely harassed by police—which never deterred him from staying in the thick of the action to show you both the brutality aimed at protesters and the beauty coming from good people trying to save lives in Gaza. Many of our clips have gone viral and picked up by other media outlets. Jon’s dedication to this story resulted in Status Coup greatly growing our subscribers and viewership.
  

• We have continued to lead all media—mainstream and independent—covering the growing list of corporate sacrifice zones that most other outlets ignored. In 2024 we broke major stories on the ongoing EPA/Norfolk Southern chemical coverup in East Palestine, OH (which I continue digging on as we speak). We also covered:

  • The chemical gassing of a poor Black neighborhood in Kalamazoo Michigan.

  • The water crisis in “coal country” West Virginia

  • The chemical fire—and chlorine gas cloud—in Conyers, Georgia

  • The 14-year water crisis in Dimock, Pennsylvania

• We continued to lead the charge covering worker strikes: from UAW workers in Michigan to Amazon workers in NYC. We expect a lot more of this in 2025.

• We have led on covering the overwhelming national response to the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, including our ON-THE-GROUND coverage of arraignments for alleged shooter Luigi Mangione. We will continue to cover this critically important story—which is not just about predatory for-profit health insurance but about a corrupt predatory capitalist system.

All of these accomplishments were achieved with a small and scrappy band of independent journalists: myself, editor/producer Colin Tooley, videojournalist Jon Farina, and freelancers Ron Placone and Tina-Desiree Berg. We also appreciate our frequent guests Steve Grumbine, Zeynab Day, Peter Hager, and more!

As always, thank you very much for your support and dedication to real independent, investigative, ON-THE-GROUND reporting.

Let’s keep waking up the masses.

Jordan