The State of Independent Progressive Media with Lucy Ritzmann | Hello Merge Tag Ep. 49

Lucy Ritzmann is a progressive digital strategist and a founding member of Courier’s national newsroom. She’s a former co‑author of FWIW, their must-read weekly email for us political digital nerds. I first met her collaborating on The FYP — a weekly Courier email covering political TikTok, specifically focused on how the two presidential campaigns were approaching one of the most important and complex platforms in politics.

Lucy is currently in law school at Georgetown, but when she’s not buried in casebooks, she’s writing a great Substack newsletter called The Group Chat Correspondent.

I invited her on the pod to talk about the current state of independent progressive media, what trends she’s following at the moment and a whole lot more.

We covered:

• Why Substack is more than just a newsletter platform — and how it’s becoming a community infrastructure tool

• “It’s what Bluesky was supposed to be” — building in a space without trolls

• How Lucy is growing The Group Chat Correspondent — what’s working and what’s not

• What success actually looks like for an independent progressive media outlet

• The 2026 landscape for progressive independent media

• Who’s crushing it right now in progressive digital

• Why campaigns need to build relationships with creators and media early — not weeks before Election Day

• The role Twitch could (and maybe should) be playing in campaigns

• Why politics and culture aren’t separate — but rather one interwoven tapestry

• The biggest stories of the day that people aren’t paying attention to

• What the future of traditional media looks like

• The state of Kamala HQ — and where we go from here

• Why every department on a campaign needs a digital deputy at the table

Sadly something happened with my mic and my audio’s not great. Fortunately, Lucy sounds amazing 🙂

Listen to the full episode right here, or wherever you stream podcasts.

Find all episodes at HelloMergeTag.com or wherever you stream podcasts.

Links

 

Big thanks to our sponsors:

Civic Shout. Learn more about the great work they’re doing to help Democratic campaigns and progressive nonprofits build their lists ethically at civicshout.com/partners.

 

Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and has not been copy-edited. While it can serve as a helpful guide to our conversation, it may contain errors or omissions. For the most accurate representation, we recommend listening to (or watching) the full episode.

Josh Klemons: Lucy Ritzman is a progressive digital strategist and a founding member of Courier’s national newsroom. She’s a former author For what it’s worth, Courier’s must-read weekly email for us political digital nerds. I first met her collaborating on a weekly courier email covering political Tik Tok, specifically focused on how the two presidential campaigns, this was Biden and Harris and Trump, were approaching one of the most important and complex platforms in politics.

Josh Klemons: Lucy is currently in law school at Georgetown, but when she’s not buried in case books, she’s writing a great Substack newsletter called the group chat correspondent. I invited her on the pod to talk about the current state of independent progressive media, what trends she’s following at the moment, and a whole lot more. So Lucy, thank you so much for joining us today. super happy to have you here, longtime fan and friend and whatnot. so, okay, let’s talk about Substack first of all.

Josh Klemons: So many progressives and even now a bunch of celebrities are ing You’re one of those people that has joined Substack. So, let’s start with what do you think makes Substack unique? and I’ll just give the preface that I’ve been focused on Substack for years and one of the things that I’ve really noticed them doing is trying to be literally every other platform in one. So, I guess I’m curious your take on that, but also just like why’ you choose Substack over something else and…

Lucy Ritzmann: Mhm.

Josh Klemons: how are you thinking about Substack in the 2026 media landscape?

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, definitely.

Lucy Ritzmann: And I was laughing. I don’t know if you saw Troy Savon just joined Substack. it’s literally everyone and their mother. Haley Seinfeld made news be by being the first celebrity to announce a pregnancy on Substack.

Josh Klemons: Okay. …

Josh Klemons: We’re at that level.

Lucy Ritzmann: It’s that level.

Josh Klemons: Okay. Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: It’s really crazy. I’m like I have everyone in my family being like, “Can I make one?” And I’m like, “Yeah, you can.”

Josh Klemons: Why not?

Lucy Ritzmann: I totally agree with the issues you’ve identified…

Lucy Ritzmann: because in my mind I can talk about Substack as an email platform, as a newsletter platform and I can also talk about it as a social platform. I don’t know if that’s good that I can talk about it in both ways. on a superficial level, I think it just is currently existing in the life cycle of a social media platform where things have not become entrenched and horrible yet. I think the thing that I hear the most from new Substack users, whether they be, popular figures who start with already 10,000 subscribers or just brand new people to the site that don’t have any following, is that the feeds and the comments and all that still exist with positivity. There’s very little trolling at this point in time. so I think people find it refreshing in a way. it was what Blue Sky was supposed to be, which I don’t know if Blue Sky ever fully realized. but it’s still very positive.

Lucy Ritzmann: I don’t think Substack can ride that way for much longer though because this is the life cycle of a social media platform. The divisiveness, the biases, the anger will become entrenched. The, …

Josh Klemons: Mhm.

Lucy Ritzmann: scammy bots will find their way there. So, I think they’re kind of in their honeymoon period still, but that is going to end. And of course, the more users end up on the platform, the more attention it garers, the faster that’s going to end. now to the more deeper interesting features of Substack. So when I started Substack, I don’t know if you were on it at this point in time, started I think the first time I was ever on was 2021. It was just newsletters. that was before the feed had been rolled out. There was the network which the superpower of Substack is the network where you recommend and you funnel engagement to your friends and to people in your world. and I remember thinking the feed was so bizarre and no one was ever going to use it. And I still kind of stand by that was not what you were going to Substack to do.

Lucy Ritzmann: But of course they then incentivized usage of the feed for authors there was a time where we’re advising everybody to post two to three times every time you send a newsletter. that was compounded upon by a live video. if you were on Substack last year and you wanted more followers you go live and they did a good job getting us to change our behavior to adopt the social media aspects.

Lucy Ritzmann: But I agree in the fact that it’s confusing and it’s this behemoth now that is part engine but it doesn’t really have targeting tools like you can’t segment your email list on subst. I mean you can try but it’s really messy and doesn’t really Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: No. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: Yeah. No segmentation. Just paid and unpaid is I think the primary ways to segment, right? Okay.

Lucy Ritzmann: And you can get funky with it and get into your subscriber list and hand select and stuff like that,…

Josh Klemons: Yeah. Right.

Lucy Ritzmann: but I don’t know if you’ve tried to explain it to an actual digital campaign fundraiser. They’re like, “Okay, can you do list A?” I’m like, “What is list?” …

Josh Klemons: This B is also everyone. Right. Exactly.

Lucy Ritzmann: You want no one to see it or everyone to see? yeah. So, that’s been really weird. And then this forced enforced incentivized social usage is really interesting. The live video function was fascinating,…

00:05:00

Lucy Ritzmann: but it had a ton of glitches and I’m sure Katie Kurrick her first live didn’t work, so they had to switch to Instagram. That’s not good. that’s a pretty and…

Josh Klemons: Not good.

Josh Klemons: Yeah, that’s for sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: it happens as someone who’s had tech cra every tech platform has crashed on me before. It’s okay.

Lucy Ritzmann: But yeah, it’s really weird. And then I feel kind of in the middle, maybe the end of last year, kind of the whole year, there was the resurgence kind of Beehive and Ghost, which are alternative newsletter platforms that are really focused just on newsletters. There’s much less of a social aspect.

Josh Klemons: Mhm.

Lucy Ritzmann: Patreon’s also kind of getting in the game, but with a kind of different take on it. and I feel like that was really popular for a minute and I was kind of like, a is Substack moment over? But I think they made it through that thing. And I don’t know if it was the social features that ultimately made it stand out or gave it longevity. I don’t know if it’s the fact that it had just been legitimized enough by celebrities at that point when they had real competition. but yeah, I really was wondering at some point if there was going to be a mass exodus and I have not seen it. I made the choice to double down on Substack this year, last year.

Lucy Ritzmann: So yeah, it’s fascinating to me because all of them have glitches,…

Lucy Ritzmann: all of them have issues, all of them have amazing, features, but Substack has it seems like it has staying power for right now.

Josh Klemons: Yeah. have you so notes was one of the many kind of Substack for our listeners…

Josh Klemons: who don’t use Substack started as just emails, and then it sort of launched into rolling out a toolkit including live video. Now they have a TV app they’re rolling out which is just wild. I guess…

Josh Klemons: if you want to watch Mike Nellis on your TV, you can do that now. but then they also rolled out a Twitter competitor after Elon bought Twitter called Notes and there was a minute there where notes seemed like it had a lot of staying power to grow your newsletter. I personally had one ever one note go viral huge numbers and…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Wow.

Josh Klemons: I actually gained hundreds of people to my newsletter but I’m working with a client right now who has massive following over there and…

Josh Klemons: he’s had some huge hits and it’s hardly driven any traffic. So, I’m curious if you’ve seen notes help you drive any traffic to your newsletter or if they’re completely disconnected for you.

Lucy Ritzmann: No, I do it…

Josh Klemons: None. Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: because it’s checking the box. It’s showing the algorithm or something. My driver has been Tik Tok. I like this was a product for me.

Josh Klemons: Interesting.

Lucy Ritzmann: I make a form of the newsletter every time I send it for Tik Tok that’s optimized for that platform. and I had very low hopes for it because I didn’t do the link.

Josh Klemons: Wow.

Lucy Ritzmann: I don’t even think I could do a link. I just do text on screen. the URL of my newsletter drove a ton of people. I got 300 subscribers off one video where the people had to physically type in. that’s not good for conversion.

Josh Klemons: No. Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: Was not expecting that.

Josh Klemons: Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: And that pattern has continued. I would say it’s more of a slow and steady than bursts of virality.

Lucy Ritzmann: But yeah, it’s it shocked me. But that is…

Josh Klemons: Interesting. Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: where I’m getting people from on social media. it’s not Substack’s native notes platform, interestingly. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: So, I was going to ask how else are you growing it? Is that the primary way? Is just Tik Toks or you like So, and again for folks who don’t know Substack, they have this discovery engine through notes which can be cool. Although, like I said, it worked really well for me a year ago. It hasn’t really since. And this client of mine who I’m working with who has big numbers is barely getting anything. The other big thing is recommendations,  So, somebody likes your newsletter, they recommend it. And I get tons of subs from two in particular. I recommend a lot and a bunch recommend me. There’s two in particular that seem to drive the majority of the traffic. it’s hard to say I’m not monetizing them, so it’s hard to say if any of it matters in that regard, but have you used recommendations, but do you find any traffic from it or Okay.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: That is the Substack secret sauce. I think that is my favorite part of the platform for sure. I think most people would agree with me and for every single newsletter I’ve ever worked on. that is an incredibly helpful tool.

Josh Klemons: Specific Tik Tok or…

Lucy Ritzmann: So yeah, very much utilized that. and I’m sure you do this too. my network is built around people that I actually know and are close friends and that I’ve worked with and stuff like that. So I feel like it’s nice because it is an actual genuine network working together. and then other things I do, yeah, social media is a big one and talking head videos with my head is helpful for the newsletter. and anyone’s head honestly specific to Tik Tok.

Josh Klemons:

Josh Klemons: in other places as well? Have you tried Instagram and…

Lucy Ritzmann: I’m sure I need to do more on Instagram.

Josh Klemons: not seen success or it’s just Tik Tok’s been easier for you to jump into?

Lucy Ritzmann: I mean, they’re all evil now. I just downloaded Upscroll and as another like who knows, maybe this will be better.

00:10:00

Lucy Ritzmann: I don’t know if it’s because I’m Gen Z less than I am a millennial. I just don’t do Instagram in the way that some of my peers are wizards.

Josh Klemons: I’m older and most of all the content I post these days is Tik Tok over Insta. Although we’ll see what Tik Tok looks like in a month. we’ll get to that later. But yeah, I was just curious you’re creating the content anyway. You’re not like uploading it to YouTube shorts or Instagram. You’re just kind of sticking to Tik Tok.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, I am really a believer and…

Josh Klemons: Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: this is a change for me it used to be like okay you have you have vertical content you should put it on every vertical content site did advise for campaigns if that’s your option right if the option is this or nothing but I do kind of believe in order to do a good job on a platform it’s got to be 100%

Lucy Ritzmann: % of your energy when you’re making the content. so for me it was kind of the trade-off of …

Lucy Ritzmann: okay, I can do Tik Tok and I really know the platform. I really know how to edit and all that. and I’ll put all my attention to this versus trying to just throw it on other sites because I know myself and then I’ll want to check on the other sites and I’ll distract myself. yeah.

Josh Klemons: I do it for sure.

Josh Klemons: I distract myself for Got to say but I mean and for me I’m trying to learn what’s working so I can teach my clients. It’s like, I’m growing an audience, but I’m much less interested in the audience I can grow than the audience I can help my clients grow. understanding really understanding…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah. Agree.

Josh Klemons: what pops on YouTube shorts and the short answer is I have no freaking idea. YouTube shorts is so random and so hard to navigate. But even Instagram reels, it’s very different than Tik Tok. It’s quite interesting what takes off on one versus the other. And sometimes it’s really hard to guess which is going to do well where. And so yeah, I try all three with some content, not everything.

Josh Klemons: But again, for me, I’m mostly just always pushing the boundaries of the algorithm, trying to figure out so I can teach others, what the hell is going on in any given day.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, I also felt like Instagram was exhausting trying to stay up to date with the admissary updates.

Lucy Ritzmann: I like was so Yeah.

Josh Klemons: It’s like he has a bad breakfast and suddenly the algorithm has to be changed to match his mood.

Lucy Ritzmann: And that was so frustrating because People would ask and thoughts and we’d be in readouts and it’s like I have no freaking clue…

Lucy Ritzmann: because when I made this three days ago since then there have been four algorithmic changes. I have no idea. He’s giving us this advice. It’s so vague it makes no sense. Sorry to shade him. But I appreciate the transparency I guess but

Josh Klemons: Yeah. No,…

Josh Klemons: I Yeah. He thinks out loud in a way that’s probably not ideal for somebody at his level…

Josh Klemons: because” he’ll tell you to use more hashtags and be like, “Actually, don’t use any hashtags.” actually, it’s like contradictory advice and…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: he’s all over the place, but he is by far the most open I know he’s not the CEO, but he runs Insta. I don’t think there’s any other CEO who’s so actively involved with their audience, giving them advice day. he is an interesting character, but yeah, not always helpful.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: Agree that Right.

Lucy Ritzmann: I encourage anyone try and sit there with your notepad and your pencil and pretend to be us trying to write down what the actual actionable part pieces are just like you said it’s like you have to use four t four hashtags exact and…

Josh Klemons: Right. I know.

Lucy Ritzmann: if you do anything wrong you’re not getting any views for the

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: Yeah. They shut you down. random. let’s talk about what does success look like for you as an independent media newsletter person? Are you approaching this do you focus do you think that Substack feels more like a news an email list or more like a social channel? you’re putting stuff out.  There are comments and likes, but again, you can’t target the list. You can’t segment how do you approach this when you’re writing it? Are you thinking about it more? what are your KPIs that you’re focused on your key performance indicators?

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. I feel like there’s obviously open rate and reach. I am really close to being subscribed to in all 50 states which was a huge goal of mine.

Josh Klemons: Hell yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: There are a handful of states that if I really hope one of your listeners is from that and please it’s the Dakotas.

Josh Klemons: Name them. We can ask around.

Lucy Ritzmann: I really need help in the Dotas and Arkansas.

Josh Klemons: I know somebody in North Dakota. I think I can get you there. And maybe too. I’ll do my best. But if you’re listening and…

Lucy Ritzmann: Thank you.

Josh Klemons: somebody in the Dotas or Arkansas, have them sign up. the links will be in the show notes, of course.

Lucy Ritzmann: I appreciate that. yeah, that was and that I will flag going to Circle Back that was…

Josh Klemons: Your people. Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: because of Tik Tok growth. that was my videos reaching people because I’m from New York City originally, so I have a big New York contingent. I knew that was going to happen. I have a big California contingent. I have a big DC contingent. I have a big Illinois contingent. I have a big Texas contingent. that’s what you expect with a political newsletter. and all really amazing humans. but when I started seeing other states come in deep red states which people that are blue in deep red states I don’t know stronger people they ride so hard I admire those people so much. but yeah I got followers from Alabama and Utah and I’ve never been to those places. I was like how is this happening? it was literally girls my age on TikTok seeing the videos. so that was really really cool. where is it? success.

00:15:00

Lucy Ritzmann: So that’s one marker that I’ve put in my head because I need KPIs to function having done digital this long.

Lucy Ritzmann: And then there’s open rate, there’s the more technical stuff. there’s I mean yeah,…

Josh Klemons: Do you care about likes and…

Josh Klemons: comments or do you see that those numbers go up on a particularly banging issue or you’re really just focused on open rate Okay.

Lucy Ritzmann: something that was fascinating for me is back in June I did a special post tracking all of Zoron’s media appearances right after he won the primary. and I didn’t send it. I can think at that time I was scared to spam an audience. I had just made a promise, put a concept forward for context, my newsletter was brand new at that point in time. and I didn’t want to hit them up with a random send. So, I just posted it, which for people unfamiliar with Substack, if you just post, you expect four views. No, you expect 40 50

Josh Klemons: Yeah. 99% of my views when I send one out is in your inbox and…

Josh Klemons: a handful of people might see it in the platform. So yeah, that makes sense,…

Lucy Ritzmann: We’re basically not pushing it out at all,…

Lucy Ritzmann: and…

Josh Klemons: right? …

Lucy Ritzmann: But I posted about it on LinkedIn, which we haven’t talked about, huge driver in this cycle. Crazy. on I want to see I really think the first person…

Josh Klemons: I mean, yeah, I’m seeing big numbers there, too, for not big numbers, but a lot of engagement over there. that’s where my peers who left Twitter we’re hanging out on LinkedIn now, which is awesome. So, it’s so weird, but there we are,

Lucy Ritzmann: who cracks like dropping ACT blue links in an interesting way into LinkedIn is going to raise a lot of money.

Josh Klemons: I don’t disagree.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah.

Josh Klemons: Yeah, for I’ve had a couple campaigns focus on LinkedIn, but only a couple. and I’ve raised some money there, but not big numbers or anything, right?

Lucy Ritzmann: I think it’s got to be the way we used to fund raise on Twitter where it was genuinely a funny tweet or a good tweet. So you’ve got people laughing ready to click on the link or you’ve got people inspired ready to click on I think the first person that does that for LinkedIn is gonna make a lot of money.

Josh Klemons:

Josh Klemons: Hell yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: A free idea.

Josh Klemons: Let’s make it happen.

Lucy Ritzmann: I would like a cut.

Josh Klemons: Exactly. If law school doesn’t work out. Yeah. Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: No, I’m kidding. but what was it saying? Drivers, LinkedIn.

Josh Klemons: We were talking about engagement and whatnot.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah. so yeah,…

Josh Klemons: You were talking you did the post about Zoron and it did big numbers even though you didn’t share it.

Lucy Ritzmann: it did really well because it got a lot of likes and restacks and all that. Restack is retweet. but yeah.

Josh Klemons: So, it did well in notes or…

Josh Klemons: it interesting. Even though you didn’t put it in people’s inboxes, it still reached a lot of people.

Lucy Ritzmann: No, the actual send.

Lucy Ritzmann: Which that was Yeah.

Josh Klemons: I’ve never tried that with an email there. Interesting.

Lucy Ritzmann: And at that point a lot was like a thousand.

Josh Klemons: Everything’s relative, but sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: But for I didn’t expect anyone to see it. So that was really interesting. So that kind of clued me into doing more with the buttons at the top of the Substack newsletter, which I knew, but I guess I was ignoring. and something that I think I’ve learned slash this is just normal. I do it to other people now. when my friends post a newsletter, when someone who I think is really smart posts a newsletter, I hit all the buttons in the top and I found that energy is reciprocated a lot,…

Lucy Ritzmann: which is really which goes back Substack is still kind of a warm fuzzy community, which is great.

Josh Klemons: Interesting. No.

Lucy Ritzmann: and you need people meaningfully engaging just because they support you as a writer or as a creator. so that’s been interesting. I don’t have any specific metrics because I’m sure they’re not as transparent as Instagram on what’s …

Josh Klemons: Right. Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: but I think it’s a good thing to do and it’s something

Josh Klemons: Even Mailchimp has much better you can’t really track link clicks and things like that. they show you how many people opened the email and how many saw it in the feed and the metrics are not there but I mean a lot of the tool kit is quite powerful but yeah the metrics are harder to so I subscribe to a ton of substacks that I read religiously.

Josh Klemons: I pay for a lot of them. I don’t click the buttons at the top. So I guess I should start helping them out.

Lucy Ritzmann: I think I’m Yeah.

Josh Klemons: Yeah. I’m opening my credit card for them but yeah I’m not hitting that button because I don’t know. I read it. Sometimes I even post it somewhere, but I rarely do it right from the email. So, that’s good flag that I can help out the people I like doing that. That’s good to know.

Lucy Ritzmann: I have no idea how much it helps, but it’s something I started doing.

Josh Klemons: Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: I think people just they notice it, too. and I notice it when I get a like because I feel you said not people actually like the substack in the email. So when it happens I absolutely know who did it. I’m appreciative like yeah.

Josh Klemons: Yeah. That’s cool.

Lucy Ritzmann: I think people notice it a lot.

Josh Klemons: What do you think is the landscape of progress? you’re part of why I wanted to talk to you because you’re starting your own progressive media space, but also you come from Courier, which is one of the biggest in the industry at the moment,…

Josh Klemons: very independent progressive. what do you think is the current landscape of progressive independent media in 2026? Is everything f*****?

00:20:00

Lucy Ritzmann: Okay.

Josh Klemons: is there hope how are you take fascism and authoritarianism out of it because obviously that’s beyond what we can talk about here but as far as what you’re seeing emerge are you hopeful for the industry or is everything broken and it’s like the fact that Ken Clippenstein has to break all these stories is a sign that everything has failed us how are you feeling about Thanks.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, I mean from a platform perspective, I have a lot of stress. just I mean thinking about what happened on Tik Tok over the weekend. I’m sure they did have a power outage and things went haywire. I don’t think that accounts for what happened.

Josh Klemons: For sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: That’s really concerning.

Lucy Ritzmann: I, see a lot of creators that I love Suzanne and Barrett and others who do amazing, but I know that they are fighting against impossible forces. all the views that they get are a coup.

Lucy Ritzmann: It probably should be double that. it’s and people, get their videos deleted. if you’re a progressive on that app, you are aware that app hates you. but is still one of our most powerful engines. And I think just all the apps hate us because I won’t get too much into this because you said don’t think about fascism. But yeah,…

Josh Klemons: I mean,…

Josh Klemons: you can I just don’t want my goal here is not to solve that. It’s just to look at the landscape of what can we do better within the confines of the terrible reality we live in. So, feel free to comment on fascism. you don’t have to.

Lucy Ritzmann: yeah, one that I think in the same way we talk about Supreme Court capture which is terrifying and had court capture has happened like there’s social media capture.

Josh Klemons: Of course I’m trying not to.

Lucy Ritzmann: They’re all gone.

Lucy Ritzmann: And actually I still tweet. I know it’s bad. I came up way.

Josh Klemons: I do occasionally, but try not to these days. Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: And here’s the thing, every time I think about alternatives, I’m like, “No, that’s bad and that’s bad.” it’s really hard and depressing to try and find alternatives these days. but I posted something stupid I’m begging one Democratic billionaire to buy an already popular social media platform…

Josh Klemons:

Lucy Ritzmann: because we’re getting crushed out here. And 100% stand by that. I had of the few people who are still on Twitter, I got a lot of DMs for God’s sake, can JB Pritsker buy back Twitter or buy in?

Lucy Ritzmann: I know it’s going to take a lot of money and maybe they’ll never give it to us, but I think we’ve just lost so abysmally and we didn’t notice it was happening or we did but we didn’t do anything about it. so now we’re expecting everyone’s strategy is centered on influencers but we didn’t lay any infrastructure to make influencers successful. you want outreach on Tok, Tik Tok is not going to let us do GOTV content point blank.  it’s all going to get glitchy or they’re not going to come out and say there’s a strike against this video and then you repost it there’s still a strike like anyone who’s relying on it for the midterms I’m scared so I’m just putting that out there the other thing I’ll say about the landscape and media folks and new media folks and I just think it would be helpful if we all saw each other as one big team.

Lucy Ritzmann: I feel like and I loved being a courier…

Josh Klemons: Yeah. Right.

Lucy Ritzmann: because we were a team already. we are individuals and a lot of us make our own content. but we’re very team-minded and it’s the type of and I think a lot of my friends in the space are the same way. If I have a content idea and you want to make it, please make it. I am not precious. this isn’t all hands on deck. I just feel like I’ve seen some weird internet fights break out with those of us in the general space that just don’t feel productive.

Lucy Ritzmann: And I get the frustration of I don’t know this is a really hard time for everybody…

Josh Klemons: Interesting. Right.

Lucy Ritzmann: but I just feel like sometimes we don’t act like we don’t all have the same goal.

Lucy Ritzmann: And also this is what I always say. We are in one of the rare industries where our resources and what we can do is technically infinite. me having a follower does not mean you can’t have that follower. We both have that same follower…

Josh Klemons: Yeah. Interesting.

Lucy Ritzmann: which is so rare and such a beautiful thing. there’s no ceiling to the work that we do which makes it so exciting. But then I don’t necessarily understand any conflict that obviously there’s going to be conflict but especially taking it public and fighting and this is a greater part I think it’s a reflection of what’s happening with the Democratic party as a whole where at our darkest moment we are all fighting each other and tearing each other to shreds and it’s not accountability because accountability is with the intention of solving it right like alerting the person that they’ve done something wrong there’s something that needs to be fixed and…

Josh Klemons: social channel.

Lucy Ritzmann: then moving forward.

Lucy Ritzmann: There’s so much just squabbbling. I think it’s scary because if you start a Twitter fight, Twitter fight, whatever social media fight, you’re gonna gain followers. Everyone knows that, But at what cost? and the absolute majority of people in the space are not like that and would never do that and are fully committed to doing good in this world. but for the small percentage of people that I think have just realized that if they fight online, it raises their personal brand, like we cannot be doing that. that’s what scares me the most about this media landscape. I think it’s like we can’t put aside our differences. We shouldn’t put aside our differences. That’s part of holding each other accountable. But realizing that we have one goal and our goal hope is not to become a sponsored creator. I hope it’s not to have

00:25:00

Josh Klemons: I go. Yeah, sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, if you want to be an Amazon influencer, go do that. don’t be here doing this.

Josh Klemons: Good. Right.

Lucy Ritzmann: So I think yeah, it’s just we’ve got to realize we’re all on the same team and the stakes have never been higher. And like I said, we have one of the most uniquely powerful verticals of progressive politics where the sky is quite literally the limit.

Lucy Ritzmann: And we have to use that. I don’t know what the point is if we’re not doing right by that.

Josh Klemons: anybody you’re seeing use that anybody you’re excited about who’s doing a good job obviously courier I know you’re not there anymore…

Josh Klemons: but they continue to crush it if folks haven’t listened to my conversation with RC Dezo from a few months ago cannot recommend it enough he pulled back the curtain on all their secrets it was amazing…

Lucy Ritzmann: Heck yeah.

Josh Klemons: but beyond courier and some of the bigger brands that might style who are doing this?

Josh Klemons: Are there any other smaller creators or folks even without big audiences that you’re excited about or following or it’s more broad for you?

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, it’s interesting…

Lucy Ritzmann: because I feel like the couriers and the Midases this is and they kind of ex impact they kind of all exist in a separate category in my head. and obviously a lot of people are crushing it. It’s been really cool to see. RC is a genius. You should definitely listen to that podcast.

Josh Klemons: He’s amazing. Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: I will use her story because I think it’s proof of what just happens when you’re authentic online. Suzanne Lambert, I feel like everyone knows her now. what was interesting for me is she was one of the first creators that I like I think I followed her when she had less than 10,000 followers. and just watch I think she’s close to a million now.

Josh Klemons: yeah. Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: And I think she became very famous for talking about Republican makeup. how they’re bad.

Lucy Ritzmann: and the lesson to learn from, also she came from a conservative background, so talked about becoming progressive against, a background that didn’t necessarily point her in that direction. she is so authentic and funny and a little mean and I think that was really resonant. another person that does that is Barrett a dare who’s been in the space for a long time. Barrett is so funny. she’s genuinely funny. So I think she’s grown by a crap ton in the last couple of weeks. Not that she wasn’t already big. so that’s really cool to see. there’s I don’t know his full name. It’s Eli’s Substack. I like this kid. I think he might be just fearlessly going out there just so much content that’s hope core but it’s Resist LIB but for a new generation. That’s really cool to see. I’m trying to think who else.

Lucy Ritzmann: It’s been weird because I’m sure you’ve had this too. I’ve gotten so many DMs and…

Josh Klemons: Right.

Lucy Ritzmann: flags over the past week about creators who are not finally speaking out. So I feel like my brain is flooded with everyone being I guess they’re a political influencer now. And I think that’s actually the wrong way to think about it. I think they’re humans who finally hit a breaking point and we can celebrate that. not the breaking point but that they have to help.

Josh Klemons: Welcome to the team kind of thing. Yeah, for sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: But yeah, it’s interesting. Although I will say, and this is something that I think we’re starting to address more, we’ve always had a bottleneck problem with influencers in the Democratic party in such we kind of pick a couple and…

Josh Klemons: Kind of sounds like…

Lucy Ritzmann: use all of our resources on them and they are fabulous. having had the chance to work with many of them, a lot of them are really inspirational, great people, but no,…

Josh Klemons: how we fund campaigns as well.

Lucy Ritzmann: it literally replicates itself. Exactly. It’s crazy.

Lucy Ritzmann: And I’ve always because when you go to events and stuff like you will see the same people over and over and over again and I’m there too. I’m part of the problem. I can’t say but I’ve always wondered what it would be like if we diversified funding and infrastructure that we give to people instead of me when I was doing partnerships at Courier emailing the same person that I know seven of my other friends are emailing. what if we all had our own people and then that would also support folks in other states because a lot of these people tend to live in the states where we live. yeah, I think we’re doing a better job than we did last cycle. but I think there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done there.

00:30:00

Josh Klemons: Yeah. I mean that’s been a running theme on this podcast for I hosted Ashwath Nayan from Social Current and…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah.

Josh Klemons: we talked about the fact that it’s just a running pro.

Josh Klemons: I’ve talked to some folks with big audiences as well. even the people who are kind of doing it for a living, people come out of the woodwork six weeks before election day to be like, “Can we give you money to do this?” It’s like, “Dude, that is not how this works.” you can’t fund campaigns that way. You can’t fund ads that way. And you sure as hell can’t fund influencers that way. you got to build long-standing relationships with these people.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: And I think the right has been so good at cultivating homegrown like the Charlie Kirks, whatever of the world. how much money was he able to raise so that he could build a freaking media empire while some of the best in our business are struggling just to get that $500 brand deal so they can keep the lights on.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: And if we could actually invest a small fraction of the money that we’re putting into a handful of Senate races that are not actually flippable into some actually longstanding infrastructure. I mean, who knows what change we could see, but yeah, our party is very focused on

Josh Klemons: okay, it’s three months out now. Let’s start building. And it’s cycle. We continue to make the same mistakes. It feels like

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, I’ll say this.

Lucy Ritzmann: If you’re on a campaign and your current plan has influencers just in the GOTV section, no, put it all the way in fundraising. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but do it because that is fundraising. you won’t see iate return. That’s okay. Do you see that much immediate return in call time? Probably just think about it like that. and I will say I had a crazy enlightening experience. I guess it was a year ago now where I was on a panel for New Media and what the panel ended up being was four or five of us on a stage and just influencers in the audience asking us a ton of questions. and it was so interesting.

Lucy Ritzmann: It made me like doing the work I could stand up for every decision we had made and that was a good feeling in that room because it was a lot of people influencers being I don’t have healthcare. I’m not supported. I went out and did this video on abortion and then I got torn to shreds and I was alone in that. and it turned into a huge conversation about how we can support and be there for people. Also, if we send someone out with complicated policy talking points, we need to help them. we can’t expect them to talk about something that someone studies their entire career to learn about and…

Josh Klemons: Did you see that?

Lucy Ritzmann: then be like, “Okay, go talk about this incredibly hot button issue with no help.” there should be a policy expert hotline to help them. I will flag something that was really sad and upsetting to see because a lot of these people, they would ask questions and I’d say, “Listen to me, get represented by an agency.”

Lucy Ritzmann: I hate that that’s my fix in this situation, but get yourself onto an agency. there’s a legal team. protect yourself. Especially against MAGA, protect yourself. and so many of them, but more so creators of color were like, “No agencies will sign me.” That made me so disappointed in the Democratic party. I was like, What do you mean?” cuz and there are people saying “I’m a black person. I’m speaking out about this issue and now they won’t touch me. They won’t help me with this.

Lucy Ritzmann: they won’t support me. And that just made me so disappointed.

Lucy Ritzmann: What is the point in any of this if that’s what’s happening? but yeah, I also for the party of labor that supports workers having an entire contingent of people that we expect to do significant labor for us without offering them health care or stability or any type of job security, any type of they can’t join a union. it’s not structured that way. it’s so disappointing. so I’m hopeful that changes.

Josh Klemons: I have nothing to add to that. Yes, that’s all heartbreaking. One thing I will say though, you mentioned the fundraising. I was just recently working a race where we had a lot of influencers get involved we pitched some and…

Josh Klemons:

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, finally.

Josh Klemons: some actually came to us and actually let me tell you I think the future of democratic politics is Twitch. If we could figure out how to use Twitch, I could not believe how much money we raised on Twitch during this one. it wasn’t a consistent thing because we had to find somebody with a big audience to bring us in that that is one channel that I never touched and I’m like, man, maybe I should just be spending all my time there because people on Twitch couldn’t give money faster. It was wild. But also, a Substack live also brought in some serious money. again, we were working with an influencer who had a huge audience. So, it’s not like we did a Substack live and brought in money. but we went to their Substack live and people donated and it was pretty wild to see cuz I feel like last cycle I didn’t see anybody doing I certainly was not involved in anything with Twitch or Substack Live. This cycle we’re seeing Cat Abigazelli she’s been on the pod twice talking about it,…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Hey.

Josh Klemons: but she’s been raising tons of money on Twitch and really just reinventing she’s like I don’t want to do call time so I’m doing Twitch, Instagram, YouTube lives. Now, granted, she started with a s** ton of followers, but I don’t know. I am quite wondering if that’s where we should all be investing our time and energy moving forward because the Twitch community is amazing if unruly and complicated. And I love them. I just think, they don’t take s*** in a way that to the next level of other platforms,…

00:35:00

Josh Klemons: So, Okay.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. No,…

Josh Klemons: So, we kind of jumped over what your newsletter is, but it’s a pretty interesting format. I mean, it’s not like you didn’t reinvent the wheel. You’re doing curation in a very deep way, which is quite cool because it’s quick you describe it. How do you talk about your newsletter and then I’ll ask you some questions about it. Describe how you would see your newsletter in the scheme of the space.

Lucy Ritzmann: I think so.

Josh Klemons: Are you there? Did I lose you?

Lucy Ritzmann: Am I back?

Josh Klemons: I can hear you now. I’ll cut this out.

Lucy Ritzmann: Okay. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: All good. so yeah, no worries. I’ll just cut that. So, yeah, describe your newsletter for us. How do you talk about the space that your newsletter plays?

Lucy Ritzmann: So general spiel is it’s pop culture, social media, and tech from the perspective of a millennial.

Lucy Ritzmann: the way that it came about is I, read a billion news briefings a day. That was my job. I have not weaned myself off of it. I think this is how I’ll be for my entire life. and I think for most of the time I felt stressed out by the chaos, because I would be reading world news like wars and I’d also be reading celebrities did this and I’d be reading social media platforms did this and I feel like I was fighting a war in my brain for a long time about how to parse those things and put them in buckets and learn how to categorize them and then something really shifted for me in 24 when we started talking about how politics and pop culture are the same and just culture in general it’s not a ven diagram that has a lot of overlap. It’s one circle.

Lucy Ritzmann: and in that moment, I think I stopped fighting the urge to categorize all the news I was putting together and wanted to see it as one giant picture, which was the inspiration of the newsletter. And knowing that’s overwhelming and clashing, but also knowing that I have to The picture that is painted is very combative and hard to understand and complex and nuanced. and I wanted to stop being afraid of that.  So what the newsletter was born of it was like I’m going to put these big categories together in one place and instead of shying away from there should be a newsletter about tech, there should be a newsletter about politics, there should be a newsletter about pop culture, I’m like no, It’s a tapestry. We have to see it all together. So I’m sure people feel jolted by how native communities in Minnesota are revolutionizing the way that we’re protesting there.

Lucy Ritzmann: two stories down, Sydney Sweeney arrested or might be I’m sure that’s jarring.

Josh Klemons: I give it the bronze.

Josh Klemons: Yeah, that’s what I was going to use as an example.  Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: That’s the point. that is the world that we exist in now. And if you want to understand voters, if you want, especially young people, I can speak the best to my demographic, which is going to be key because we’re acting a little crazy right now.’s they’re consuming. That’s what their feeds look like. That’s what their brains look like. and they’re making connections between those stories because that’s what brains do when they see them all together. so that was the impetus behind it. And then a kind of gloss on that was I really wanted to highlight stories that I didn’t see anywhere else. you’ll note and obviously a lot of the emerging themes are similar, but I wanted to reward journalism that actually found a new angle or did something interesting because that’s the point where it’s supposed to stretch our brains.

Lucy Ritzmann: I mentioned the story about how native communities are organizing in Minnesota because I thought that was a fantastic perspective. then it’s really interesting. it’s people that I’ve never seen interviewed about this type of work. and that’s been my goal to elevate narratives and stories that I think are really important to reward the journalism that’s doing that.  And since my readership evolved out of my personal and professional circles, knowing that these are people making narrative decisions for organizations for candidates and all of that being like, “Hey guys, pay attention to this.” this is a narrative I’m not seeing Axio’s push that I’m not seeing Politico post push or if they are pushing it, it’s buried at the bottom of some whatever. yeah, just interesting things.

Lucy Ritzmann: But yeah, the idea is to see pop culture, politics, social media, tech, all of it as one big tapestry all together. To embrace the craziness that your brain goes through when it sees it because that’s really the only way to understand this moment. And hopefully by doing this exercise of just reading the newsletter and…

Lucy Ritzmann: seeing all those things in conjunction, hopefully make us all better operatives by better understanding the state of mind that all the voters that we’re talking to are in.

00:40:00

Josh Klemons: as someone…

Josh Klemons: who reads your newsletter every issue that added a lot of context to me I didn’t put together that that was how you were thinking about it. So that personally makes it even more interesting and again I open every episode I look through every issue so no that’s really interesting way to think about it. what would you say are some of the biggest stories you think people should be paying attention to right now that we are not paying attention to as the master curator of the entire world’s news? what are the big…

Josh Klemons: what are the big themes that folks are missing? You think

Lucy Ritzmann: I think,…

Lucy Ritzmann: and this is just a hunch I’ve had for a minute, and I think a lot of people are dis going to disagree with me, and I welcome it. YouTube is having issues. The vibe session on YouTube is real. I’ve seen the smart tech journalists start to pick up on it more. on the one I just pushed out, YouTube is trying to callull a slop, I think, to try and gain some control back to creators and…

Josh Klemons: elected the president. Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: all that. and I struggle with that because people love the slop. what does that mean? when we talk about democratizing social media, we need to consider maybe people only want slop. we can’t Yeah. yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: I think that’s really interesting especially since I see so much investment in YouTube and I don’t think that’s wrong by any stretch of the imagination but I think that platform has bigger issues and I would anticipate in two to three months we’re going to see especially as we get closer to the midterms like a lot more complic because the news cycle for YouTube last cycle was it’s amazing it’s this miracle place I don’t think that’s what’s going to be coming out in the media this cycle other things I think I mean everyone’s kind of tracking this but

Lucy Ritzmann: Like Jenzy men, I thought the Vox article recently about how Jenzie men want to be parents. they’re the main drivers of wanting to have children,…

Josh Klemons: Don’t know.

Lucy Ritzmann: but they don’t want to be stay-at-home parents. They find that emasculating. that’s I know something we’re all trying to get and the Young Men’s what’s their last word on Young men’s research initiative. I’ll send it to you. they’re doing great stuff on this, too. there’s something to the point of you have to read their surveys and polls of young with young men in conjunction with pop culture stories that aren’t actually about young men that are about basketball or football or anything like that to actually contextualize the research. I feel like that’s something that I hope will shift and…

Josh Klemons: Yeah, that’s interesting.

Lucy Ritzmann: it’s not just doing polls of them.

Lucy Ritzmann: It’s like doing polls of them and then you sit down with a popular ESPN guy and then you sit down with a streamer and you talk through the research with them and make them give you their thoughts. I think there’s a layer of nuance that we’re missing. but it’s weird. It’s like Gen Z men they’re coming like they’re very sensitive and I think that’s something that people like it’s weird. I don’t know how to describe it but yeah I think it’s a narrative that needs more attention. obviously thinking about Minnesota and ICE, like something that’s been really scary to me that I’m seeing more of now is that there have been eight ICE murders in 2026 and we know almost nothing about the six other people. so I hope as hard as it is to be flooded with this coverage,…

Lucy Ritzmann: these murders are going to continue, but when they happen in detention centers or to people of color,…

Josh Klemons: So Tanish,…

Lucy Ritzmann: honestly, we’re not giving them as much attention.

Lucy Ritzmann: I want to see everyone go balls to the wall for everyone that perishes because of this horrific regime. put aside though, we’ve already done this story, whatever. No, I want to see full page in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal for every single person that’s gone because of this. and I think that’s something a huge blind spot we’re missing that there are deaths that we’re not paying attention to and they deserve just as much.  Yeah.

Josh Klemons: what do you think about the current state of traditional media? As somebody who reads so much news simply to distill it down for your readers, like I’m assuming the majority of people are not clicking through on most of these articles. They’re reading the headlines. They’re seeing your occasional note. you’re reading your takeaway. do you feel like the media is meeting the moment or completely failing us or somewhere in between and I know what the narrative is but I read a lot of news but very clear you’re reading way more news than I am on a daily basis.

Josh Klemons: How are you feeling about the consumption that you have available to you at the moment?  Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, I think I try not to make blanketed statements…

Lucy Ritzmann: because even the organizations that I feel really not good about every now and again there’s a good reporter or there’s a story that I think is good. but overall I really think Legacy Media is floundering. I think as we know a lot of them are losing a lot of money. I don’t think we realize this. a lot of them have a lot less money than they did and it’s happened rapidly and so I think we’re not noticing but it’s interesting to see what’s going to happen. their resources are simply not what they were and all of us in our minds these are behemoths, they have a billion dollars. They’ll never run out. That’s not true anymore. but overall I just like it’s corporate capture. they all have to please their editorial board who all have certain interests. They all have corporate interests.

00:45:00

Lucy Ritzmann: I feel like they’re playing this bizarre like trying to catch up game with the public without realizing that the public doesn’t want them, without realizing that their entire value ad was they directed the public. they were never supposed to be in the position of trying to chase other people’s interests.

Josh Klemons: Yeah, shut the phone.

Lucy Ritzmann: They were supposed to set the news tell the interest and they don’t have the capacity to do that anymore. Capability. They’ve given up their credibility I think in a lot of way shapes and forms. So now they’re forced into this posture that does not work for them at all. that’s an industry like many industries with a lot of ego. So I think I see a lot of journalists get angry quickly and the whole rush to break the story and getting s*** wrong which happens all the time. they’ve done studies on there used to be a handful of corrections published.

Josh Klemons: Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: Now it’s like every day there’s tons and tons of corrections because people are not being careful what they write and put into the world.

Lucy Ritzmann: which it’s worse for them and I will say it’s worse for them because they are automatically legitimized by the banner on top of their whatever newsletter tweet whatever they can’t f****** and they do it all the time. so I really wonder if it’s done if this is legitimately going to come to some kind of close soon or if there’s going to be some actual real resurgence. it’s just hard for me to picture what that would be.  I think they have to fundamentally reimagine a new place in society for themselves, which that’s hard. I don’t know how they’re going to do it.

Josh Klemons: They obviously don’t either. I think we’re seeing the floundering, but no, it’s really interesting. Again, it’s somebody who just like consumes so much content from them. if you’re feeling so speaking of slightly larger organizations,…

Josh Klemons: our friends at Crooked Media, liked the name of your newsletter so much that they took it for themselves. was that more flattering or annoying? And do you have a message for our friends at Cricket?

Lucy Ritzmann: No comment.

Josh Klemons: No comment.

Lucy Ritzmann: No comment.

Josh Klemons: I really liked Open Tabs as a name from you. they’re not meeting the moment the same way, but that’s fine. We’ll leave it there. So, we talked about six already. I was going to ask you a bunch of questions, and you kind of answered a lot of them, but I do want to talk about one thing. So, we spent…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah,  Wow. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: what seven months covering the Trump Tik Tok presence and the Biden, which then became the Harris Tik Tok presence. we watched and raised alarms. I mean, Yi and Kyle Tharp For what it’s worth, who now runs what the Chaotic Era, which I love. I read every one of those, of course. we were raising alarms.  We were seeing it went from the Trump campaign was not figuring out Tic Tac and suddenly they were figuring it out with a vengeance and it was pretty scary to watch in real time as they caught up and then surpassed Harris. My question to you is that’s an account that I feel so much like love and I watched her TikTok for a job with you, last cycle. They have not posted since election night of 2024.

Josh Klemons: And I’m just wondering what you think that says about the Democratic Party and our investment in digital that we built this massive program and…

Josh Klemons: literally haven’t used it since the election of 2024. am I reading too much into that or is there something to share from that? is there a metaphor here worth digging into or it happens campaigns end things get shut down we move on?

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, it goes beyond that.

Lucy Ritzmann: You and I were working with tools that cycle that I was really excited about that, Yeah. And that’s just like we just shut it all down when things got bad. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault besides the people who stopped funding things. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: Yeah. I mean,…

Josh Klemons: it goes back to the same problem, the infrastru they only cared for a couple months before the election instead of saying, how do we make sure this doesn’t happen again in 2028?” and I don’t know if anybody’s doing it, but I know me, and Kyle aren’t doing it. And I don’t see anybody else doing it, the work. So, I don’t know. It’s pretty scary. Yeah. In new roles,…

Lucy Ritzmann: And I wanted to say it is not for lack of talent.

Lucy Ritzmann: I have known now several alumni from the Biden the Harris campaign that are brilliant, are good at what they do.

Josh Klemons: they’re behind the Gavin, his accounts and stuff, right?

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, we had such a group of tremendous talent in that campaign.

Josh Klemons: That’s worse than nobody,…

Lucy Ritzmann: And it’s been so sad because I agree I don’t know specifics of what happened, but I assume they laid everybody off what happens when you lose a campaign. There was no thought about keeping people on. And when one poor intern who is being passed like everything for no money.

00:50:00

Josh Klemons: right? Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: I mean, keeping an actual I’ll say skeleton staff, but I mean five to seven highraed well- paid strategic thinkers. It’s so crazy. we threw away an immensely valuable resource that was staffed by a high-powered team that we know we’re going to need in four years. were we just betting on the fact that elections were over a period done? Because that’s a terrible bet to make and not one I hope it doesn’t make sense to me. And I think it’s about funding prioritization.  I mean, every vertical and campaign world will say they’re underfunded and it should be them that gets more money, but with digital, I think we have a real point.

Lucy Ritzmann: but it’s been remarkably short-sighted to me and I’m frustrated in advance for like you said in a year from now when everyone’s scrambling to get this back up and running again and it’s much harder and we’ve lost trust because there’s a total disappearance for years and yeah, I don’t know. I mean, the DNC is Yeah.

Josh Klemons: I mean,…

Josh Klemons: it seems to me that account should have been just transfer to the DNC and they should have brought maybe the same team or hire new people or use their people. But like that account I think people don’t appreciate just how it was the biggest political account on TikTok with the exception of maybe like the Trump one.

Josh Klemons: And there wasn’t a close second at the time so I don’t know if I checked it as recently as a day ago to confirm that I didn’t want to have this conversation. They’re suddenly live. The most recent video is November 5th, 2024 and it’s muted because they must have used music they didn’t have the rights to.

Lucy Ritzmann: No.

Josh Klemons: So, it’s like that is the last time that account posted and it was the biggest political account on TikTok and it’s just dormant,…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: and what a time where we needed to be able to reach people and again, I don’t blame Kla Harris in the slightest. it’s so much bigger than her. this is about our party not recognizing the need to invest in keeping things like that. They worked so much talent and money and effort went into growing this massive account and then instead of saying great, how do we keep this going for the next time they shut it down and I am sure that in August some DNC staffer will get the keys to it or…

Josh Klemons: whatever like it’ll come back or maybe it’s unclear to me who owns it. I’ve heard mixed thoughts on …

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, me too.

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: but regardless the fact that we as a party can’t figure out how to take this massive thing we built is a pretty dark ominous metaphor for the state of how we approach work is it matters during elections and then doesn’t matter after which you can’t win elections if you only work on this s** during elections and I can’t bring that bill louder but I don’t know here we pretty painful.

Lucy Ritzmann: I had the same question as you because there must be some legal issue fun finance issue like that’s blocking them. But I’m at that point hire lawyers and figure it out. it’s a valuable enough resource that it should be utilized. And I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.

Josh Klemons: So, what are some of the biggest things you learned about progressive media during your time at Courier really did they didn’t invent the genre by any means,…

Josh Klemons: but they really did take it to the next level. I think what we’re seeing in the progressive movement like media infrastructure. I feel charted a path. You can correct me if I’m wrong. You were inside. I was outside. But I feel like a lot of the folks that are doing phenomenal work today are doing it around or I feel like Courier wrote the playbook. And again, tell me if you think I’m wrong and…

Lucy Ritzmann: Thank you.

Josh Klemons: what did you learn? I mean, yeah, it was amazing to watch Courier go the name of RC’s episode was from zero to three billion views in a year, It was like they literally were nothing, So really rare and…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. What’s that?

Josh Klemons: I mean there’s some other people doing some bull work might touch crooked plenty of people doing very innovative things but I feel like so much of the internet for me at least my algorithm is people doing the courier thing and I’m sure occupied Democrats and some of the old school lib posters take issue with that…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah, it’s so…

Josh Klemons:

Josh Klemons: but they took it to the next level. Yes. What did you learn about progressive media during your time at Courier helping build it?

Lucy Ritzmann: because career national which is that vertical like the black and yellow one that you’ll see fun fact modeled off for what it’s worth colors because it’s so wild like this all started it was like me,…

Josh Klemons: So this is all Kyle and he gets all the credit.

Lucy Ritzmann: Kyle, RC, and Devin who’s our amazing video producer.

Lucy Ritzmann: the four of us in 20 Zoom room in 2023 writing this playbook,…

Josh Klemons: It’s a nice idea.

Lucy Ritzmann: writing out these goals, writing and when we’ve all written those goals like you work your hardest but you don’t think happen.

Josh Klemons: Three billion. I’m sure your goal number didn’t have that many zeros in it,…

00:55:00

Lucy Ritzmann: No, it did not. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: that was like I’m sure if you could have gotten 10 billion, you would have been thrilled, and here you are in the billions, within a year. So, it’s pretty wild.

Lucy Ritzmann: And it was I think all of us took our collective knowledge from other spaces we’d been in and RC and I come from campaign world so does Kyle but we’d all done kind of different things and…

Lucy Ritzmann: it’s so funny because I just remember having the conversation like bold text highlights and yellow arrows let’s do that just because logic yeah that works and it worked so much better ever guess and I remember I was an early on I made Tik Toks for the courier account and…

Josh Klemons: It’s so weird.

Josh Klemons: Okay. Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: they’re reaction style videos, very cat Abu inspired. but I remember the first time one of those videos hit a million and I was like, “What the hell?” It’s like I think it was genuinely because we were so nimble. We could be really adaptive and all of the content genuinely came out of our brains if that makes sense. we weren’t trying to reverse engineer anything. We weren’t trying to do anything crazy strategery.

Lucy Ritzmann: We had basic strategy based on what we knew worked. We had a desire for authenticity. We had a goal in mind to bring attention to the mission of Courier and…

Lucy Ritzmann: to just inform people in actionable ways. And it worked insanely And that’s one thing it’s been really cool to see like you said I see so many people that have black and turquoise or black and purple. and I love it’s good. But one thing that I will say is I think part what really worked was we weren’t following a formula if that makes sense. And a lot to his credit a lot of that was RC’s brain.

Josh Klemons: Right. Mhm.

Josh Klemons: Right.

Lucy Ritzmann: A lot of that was Kyle’s brain. I was the Gen Z on that call. So I was trying to inject things like that in there. We weren’t copying necessarily. we all exist in an ecosystem. We all take inspiration from each other 100%.

Lucy Ritzmann: like you said, we didn’t reinvent the wheel or we didn’t invent the wheel. but I think sometimes something I see us do in the Democratic party, and I was going to say this when you were talking about Twitch stuff too, when something works, everyone’s like, ” my god, we have to copy and paste it immedely.” Even if it makes no sense for my principal, even if what we do is really cool but unrelated to this, we just want to kind of force ourselves into this exact same model. I think we should continue to draw inspiration from each other 100%. But I think it was the authenticity. I think it was just like we have these ideas. We’re going to try them. we always talked about throwing stuff at the wall and…

Josh Klemons: right out.

Lucy Ritzmann: seeing that’s what everything we were doing. We weren’t following a script. We weren’t following a model. that’s my god the amount of times I’ve been asked what’s the model? How do we replicate it? I’m if you’re asking me that question I don’t know if that makes sense.

Lucy Ritzmann: So that’s just one concern I have looking at the landscape right now is absolutely draw inspiration from the successes of others, but always stay true to what you’re doing because it’s not going to make any sense if you copy and paste. And I think we tend as a party to do that. I think it also comes back to what there’s a feeling of desperation, everyone wants to do Twitch because everyone has an EOQ coming up and…

Lucy Ritzmann: wants a lot of money. So instead of sitting down and having time to reflect and being like, “Okay, what’s our Twitch?” what’s our version of this that has the virality potential? It’s Copy do exactly what they do. It makes diminishing amounts of money at every time. I think it’s going to be interesting to see if Twitch fundraisers in September are still or Twitch live streams, not my native platform.

Josh Klemons: right? Sure.

Josh Klemons: I wasn’t gonna go.

Lucy Ritzmann: It’d be really interesting to see…

Josh Klemons: I don’t know. Yeah. Not mine either. So Sure.

Lucy Ritzmann: if they’re actually making money or if that’s completely diminished.

Lucy Ritzmann: So yeah, it’s like you said, I think we set a genre, but the point of career was it was its own creation. I would like to see everyone do that as much as humanly possible while taking learn.

Josh Klemons: Let’s go.

Lucy Ritzmann: And I’m sure you feel this way too. anyone who ever wants to me and ask my thoughts on a question, I’m happy to answer. Cannot promise I’m right ever. But take what we’ve learned, take the lessons,…

Lucy Ritzmann: take all the pain and make something better out of it 100%. But do your own thing, Don’t copy other people. Okay, I have a Slack channel that’s just me and…

Josh Klemons: Yeah, fair,…

Josh Klemons: so my substack is called free digital tools. It’s not political, although it gets political. and I just share free digital tools. You read so much news. do you have any tools you’re using to keep up or you’re just tons of bookmarks and tons of scrolling?

Lucy Ritzmann: I send everything in there and then three to four times a day I sit through it and I categorize it.

Lucy Ritzmann: It is not an optimized system in any way,…

Lucy Ritzmann: form. It’s born entirely out of when I was 19 years old, I shared clips in a Slack channel. So, that’s my most comfortable space. yeah, it’s not good for my brain. I’m quite sure my brain is melting, but that’s how I do it.

01:00:00

Josh Klemons: We I guess so.

Josh Klemons: You got to get to an RSS feed for one. I feel like that would help make sense of some of this. I use Feedley, which I’ve talked about on free digital tools,…

Josh Klemons: and it’s free for up to 100 publications, which you might fly through, but if there was one journalist that you could lift up and make everybody know about tomorrow, who would it be? And if you don’t have an answer, that’s fine. But you read so much news. have is there a person or even small publication that we’re not listening to that we should be?

Lucy Ritzmann: H this is an obvious one…

Lucy Ritzmann: but 404 media if people aren’t subscribed to 404 media definitely I’m blanking on

Lucy Ritzmann: the name of my god, the digital guys. They’re so great.

Lucy Ritzmann: They don’t run on sub.

Josh Klemons: Google it.

Josh Klemons: I’ll Google it and I’ll delete this section if you want to Google it real quick.

Lucy Ritzmann: Okay. I mean,

Josh Klemons: I’ll just delete this. That’s fine. Just don’t say anything else you say his And if you can’t find it, that’s fine, too. We can just go at 404 media. Wait, you’re muted. I lost your sound.

Josh Klemons: Try talking Can’t hear Weird. You just looked down and now you’re gone. Yeah, it’s back. I can hear you now.

Lucy Ritzmann: Is it back?

Lucy Ritzmann: Okay. No,…

Josh Klemons: Did you find their name?

Lucy Ritzmann: but I’m scared. Keeping I’m gonna say something else. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: I’ll just re ask the question.

Lucy Ritzmann: I’m say Yeah.

Josh Klemons:

Josh Klemons: I’ll just ask the question. You can answer 40 or four and then whatever else you want. so you read it. One second.

Josh Klemons: My turn. you read a ton of media. who if there was one journalist that everybody could read or one small publication that you think people aren’t following that they should be. who is it?

Lucy Ritzmann: 404 media,…

Lucy Ritzmann: which I think everyone knows, but everyone should follow it. I’m going to shout out the Courier Substacks. in particular, as a law student, I love Lisa Graves’ Grave Injustice. she is brilliant and has much experience in the field. and writes as a brilliant legal mind with a ton of empathy, which is just really cool to see. I’m sure everyone knows McKenna Kelly, but she does amazing work. this is me and Dylan Wells went to college together, so I’m biased in saying this, but she’s like a native content user, and I think you can tell in her journalism about it. I think it gets it in a way that a lot of other journalists don’t.

Lucy Ritzmann: Dileia Kai I’m a big fan in more of the culture space. yeah, I think those are all the folks I mentioned. I have to find his last name, but Eli Substack on Substack I’m a big fan of. yeah.

Josh Klemons: No.

Josh Klemons: That’s And then, if candidates, organizations, or campaigns, whatever, we’re going to change one thing about their digital program tomorrow, is there something you would like to see them do differently? 32. That’s okay.

Lucy Ritzmann: One thing Okay, maybe too this is gonna be unhelpful for small campaigns and I’m sorry I have always said that you should staff a digital team with deputies in every single other department. you stop thinking of digital as a monolith because in this era it’s everything and…

Josh Klemons: It’s everything. Right. Right.

Lucy Ritzmann: you should have someone on everything.

Lucy Ritzmann: If you’re making your email guy film Tik Toks, odds it’s not a great use to anyone’s time. And that’s why I say for small campaigns,…

Josh Klemons: Yeah.

Lucy Ritzmann: I’ve done it.

Josh Klemons: That one person’s doing everything,…

Lucy Ritzmann: That’s normal.

Josh Klemons: but you’re talking about bigger races…

Lucy Ritzmann: Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Klemons: where they’re investing in staff. It’s a whole different story.

Lucy Ritzmann: Since 20 maybe 21, I have been begging if you have the resources, structure your digital team like an octopus where you have a deputy that touches every other single branch because it requires unique skill set, unique aptitude, unique personality. I would say a digital organizer is really different than a digital content girl,…

Josh Klemons: Kind of the point of this podcast is I definitely agree people need to take digital more seriously…

Lucy Ritzmann: very different than a digital fundraiser.

Lucy Ritzmann: And obviously a lot of us can play all those roles and have played all those roles, but it’s helpful when you get to inhabit one of those and really sit in it because digital is so powerful and its functionality to improve every single part of a campaign is unmatch Again, I’m biased, but I think it’s unmatched. so I think Yeah.

Josh Klemons: if we want to move the movement forward.  What’s up?

Lucy Ritzmann: And I’ve seen a lot and this hardens me on a campaign cycle traditionally the finance director is the first person on sometimes even before the campaign I’m seeing more and more digital director be up there with that it’s FD and DD first hires that should even possibly be digital first. especially because if you’re work with name ID issues and fundraising and all that it should be digital first.

01:05:00

Lucy Ritzmann: I genuinely advise anyone who’s thinking of starting a campaign like digital person should be one of your first hires, then build the rest of the department like an octopus and respect that it’s not monolithic. Just because one staffer can do everything does not mean that’s actually a strategic way to do it.

Lucy Ritzmann: And you’re actually probably diminishing the returns you get from your team by having them do it that way.

Josh Klemons: That’s super helpful advice,…

Josh Klemons: especially for bigger campaigns. Obviously, doesn’t apply to everybody, how can folks find your newsletter and where else should they be following you online?

Lucy Ritzmann: Group chat correspondent.news is where you can find me on Substack and elsewhere. And then my Tik Tok is lucy_ ritz_. and yeah, I do if you are a visual learner, that’s what I always say. There is a version of my newsletter for every newsletter I send on TikTok. So if that’s your preferred method of consumption, that’s there too.

Josh Klemons:

Josh Klemons: Yeah. And in two years, if they need a lawyer,…

Josh Klemons: they can look you up or whiskey and…

Lucy Ritzmann: If anyone has bar tips too,…

Lucy Ritzmann: I’m also available for that.

Josh Klemons: water gets you drunk, keeps you hydrated. That’s my part, too. Nice.

Lucy Ritzmann: I appreciate it. that’s emailing me campaign questions and they don’t know that I’m in contracts class.

Josh Klemons:

Josh Klemons: Thank you so much. I mean,…

Lucy Ritzmann: But yeah.

Josh Klemons: this was super interesting and again, I’ve known you and your work for a long time, but whole different way to think about…

Josh Klemons: what you’re doing and really fun following along. So, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing it with us.

Lucy Ritzmann: And I love your mission,…

Lucy Ritzmann: love your work. I think you democratize our field. You make it more accessible and easier to understand. It’s not exclusive to just the party. So, I really admire that. yeah.

Josh Klemons: Definitely not exclusive to the party.

Lucy Ritzmann: Thanks for having me.