Cheers to independent journalism: A message to TNL readers
The first time I heard Amy Goodman’s voice on the independent news program Democracy Now!, it was 2016 and I was fresh out of journalism grad school. I was still new to Washington, DC, where I lived in an eclectic seven-person group house and wrote about earthquakes and asteroid dust for my (paid!) internship at a science news magazine.
Even back then, I knew I hadn’t picked the most stable or lucrative path. But I was idealistic enough not to care, because I believed journalists wield one of the most powerful tools for change – telling people’s stories.
Last Friday, after tuning in to Democracy Now! through 1.5 Trump administrations and a global pandemic, I found myself in Silver Spring, Maryland at the screening of a new documentary celebrating Goodman’s career as an independent journalism icon.
The film opens with Goodman chasing down Wells Griffith, a first Trump administration energy and environment representative, at the 2018 climate summit in Poland. Griffith high-tailed it up multiple flights of stairs as Goodman kept pace, asking him about the President’s climate denial and support for fossil fuels until he darted into the US delegation office. Goodman, to say the least, has never shied away from asking questions of those in power, whatever the stakes (or, in this case, cardiovascular demands).
As we watched her take on the world over more than four decades, the audience repeatedly cheered. The man seated next to me said he’d been a regular Democracy Now! viewer since the show first aired thirty years ago.
“There is an audience out there, a vast audience, that wants something different,” said Goodman when she took to the stage for a Q&A after the screening. “That believes in the first amendment and freedom of the press … that independent media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society.”
“Independent media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society.” — Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
My path to a full-time journalism job was a lot more circuitous than I expected, but I eventually got my break when The New Lede took a chance on me. TNL was just a few months old and powered solely by editor-in-chief Carey Gillam when I joined.
Over the last nearly four years, I’ve watched TNL emerge as part of a long and invaluable tradition of editorially independent newsrooms. I’ve been proud to belong to a small but dedicated team of journalists that shines a light on environmental issues endangering the health of people across the country and exposes corruption upholding toxic systems of power.
One of TNL’s strengths as a small newsroom is that we give in-depth attention to issues that don’t always get much play from larger outlets. This enables us to elevate the voices of communities that might otherwise slip through the media landscape’s cracks. I think readers have noticed. In 2025, with the addition of TNL’s managing editor Brian Bienkowski, our still-tiny newsroom published 200 stories. Our audience more than doubled from the previous year, hitting 666,857 website views.
Today will be my last at TNL, a bittersweet moment for me as I head into a new adventure. I’ll continue rooting for this newsroom and other small-but-mighty news outlets that bring attention to important issues often overlooked by the mainstream media.
When Goodman and a few other journalists started Democracy Now! in 1996, the daily radio program was practically a one-woman show, airing on just nine community stations. But today, even as pillars of news media crumble all around, the non-profit news program is going strong, with millions of viewers tuning in from around the world.
Democracy Now! is a force because its credibility is undeniable – Goodman has given her audience a voice they can trust. That voice has resonated and grown because it’s something people crave. Now more than ever, as mass layoffs shake the Washington Post and a proposed merger stirs fears at CNN and CBS, we need to rally around independent newsrooms so they can be that voice.
(Opinion columns published in The New Lede represent the views of the individual(s) authoring the columns and not necessarily the perspectives of TNL editors.)
Featured image: Shannon Kelleher/The New Lede.
