The State of Independent Progressive Media with Lucy Ritzmann

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 :)

Find links, transcript, more episodes and more at HelloMergeTag.com.