BEAT THE PRESS

***Not your typical fundraising email; learn the behind-the-scenes origins of Status Coup***

Hey folks, it’s Jordan.

You get a ton of emails asking for money and, eventually, I’m going to do just that (for an exciting reason). But first, I want to share a story with you from seven years ago that you probably don’t know.

In January 2018, I met for coffee with an old colleague from my days working at MSNBC (if you’re unaware, I started off my career with three excruciating years at Fox News and then MSNBC). The guy I was meeting was a relatively high-up producer at MSNBC; we had become friendly and had previous conversations about how cable news and corporate media was essentially politics as a 24/7 professional wrestling match—fake, substance less, and manipulated.

“I admire what you want to do and I wish it could work…but Americans won’t pay for that,” he told me when I shared my plan to launch a guerrilla journalism network with reporters ON-THE-GROUND across the country covering the communities and stories outlets like MSNBC ignore.

I told him that based on my previous two years reporting on-the-ground—from the Bernie and Trump campaign trail, to inside trailer parks with foreclosed-upon Americans, to Flint and Standing Rock—I saw the OVERWHELMING hunger and demand out there for actual news on the controlled corporate demolition of the American working class and most vulnerable among us.

And I firmly believed if I could somehow reach the masses, people would pay $5-10 bucks a month to help fund this reporting. But there was a problem…

How the hell could I start an ON-THE-GROUND INDEPENDENT reporting network with…no money?

So I had another conversation with someone else who had been in media for a long time.

“Never put your own money into it,” he said, recounting blowing through tens of thousands of his own money in a failed media venture.

This one was tough for me; I had worked since I was 14 years old starting out by inputting receipts into an old-school computer at my dad’s small jewelry store. Now, at 32—through working and saving since I was a teen and a more recent infusion of money—I had been fortunate enough to save up a little over $50,000.

So…should I put my own money into this until we can grow?

I was hesitant, but I figured if I wasn’t gonna bet on myself and my vision, I couldn’t expect viewers to bet on either. So we launched and, for a short time, I paid our editor Colin, co-founder Jenn, and for initial travel costs out of my savings. In those early weeks and months, we started growing small—a decent number of paid member sign ups and growth on YouTube—but nowhere near enough to erase my growing anxiety watching my savings quickly dwindling.

Fortunately, I only had to pay out of my pocket for a short period; we were lucky that an old viewer of mine from my days at The Young Turks believed in our vision enough to invest $50,000. This allowed me to bring on our initial cameraman, Ty Bayliss, purchase equipment, and pay for more travel.

And the rest is history.

Needless to say, seven years later—despite many bumps and bruises along the way— I am more confident than ever that I was right and that initial MSNBC producer, and the rest of the phony gasbag journalists occupying mainstream media and much of the podcast/alternative media space— are wrong.

People DO want investigative, INDEPENDENT, and in-the-trenches ON-THE-GROUND reporting on UNSEEN and ABANDONED stories routinely covered up by mainstream media and much of the hot-take/reactionary YouTube content eco-chamber. Stories on:

• Corporate environmental sacrifice zones (frankly, it’s tough to even keep up as a new community pops up monthly)

• Water poisoning across America (also hard to keep up with as there are thousands of cities/towns with issues)

• Local and state-level corruption STEALING from working people and enriching plutocratic villains

• Worker exploitation, harassment, safety violations, union-busting

• The working poor, exploding homelessness, gentrification (which I more appropriately call economic terrorism)

• Oppression of and crimes against Native Americans

• Protest movements that are routinely ignored and erased by mainstream media

I am happy, and proud to report, over the last 6 months, Status Coup has had a mini BREAKTHROUGH. Since hitting 200,000 YouTube subscribers in August, we have gained 187,000 subscribers and are closing in on 400,000!

In that time period, we have also gained over 1,000 new PAID members. Between the YouTube growth, resulting additional YouTube revenue, and membership increase, we are getting closer to a financial level to hire:

• Another BADLY-needed full-time reporter

• Another BADLY-needed full-time producer

Both of these roles would SIGNIFICANTLY EXPAND the amount of reporting we can do and EXPAND our reach to new eyeballs—particularly the growing audiences that prefer to consume shorter-form content that we currently don’t have the time or resources to reach.

If we can convert another 1,000 viewers to paying members—for as low as $5 bucks a month—we will be able to post jobs and start interviewing.

So the question is: do you think REAL, LIVING, BREATHING, INDEPENDENT, ON-THE-GROUND journalism is worth 16 cents a day (that’s what $5 bucks a month is). Of course, if you don’t even have that to give, we understand if you don’t.

But if you do, it’s as simple as this: if we can build an army of people funding us at $5-10 bucks a month, we can expand and hire more journalistic soldiers to get out in-the-trenches and SHOW YOU WHAT THE F*CK IS REALLY HAPPENING all across the United Corporations of America—well beyond the current techno-feudalistic coup via President Musk.

So…what are you waiting for?

Help us wake up the masses.

Jordan