In November 2022, many people watched Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover with fascination. Some of us also watched with horror.
Here was the richest person in the world, who assembled most of his wealth by building the world’s largest electric vehicle automaker, pivoting to being what appears to be the sole overseer of the world’s most important organizing platform with a renewed penchant for climate denialism — what could go wrong?
As is now abundantly clear, we are in a climate emergency.
The systems that created the climate emergency are built on extraction, colonialism, racism, and white supremacy — the same forces that are now powering Elon Musk’s Twitter. These systems — including policing, capitalism, and borders — are designed to separate us, commodify our lives, and concentrate power in people that are using fascism to keep it.
Every aspect of climate change is intertwined with the dangerous desire to abuse the natural world — and marginalized people — to extract wealth for personal gain. There is no justice without climate justice, and there is no climate justice without the climate movement aligning itself with all other justice-seeking movements.
In fact, according to the IPCC, these systems must be transformed. Achieving our collective goals of limiting climate change requires: “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”
The good news is that none of those systems that are accelerating the climate emergency are inevitable or permanent. And what’s more, none of the systems that were designed to harm us are needed to foster a thriving planet where everyone’s lives matter and have meaning.
My prediction is that in 2023, social media will fragment — spurred by Twitter’s ongoing collapse as a left-leaning organizing space — and the social media platforms that emerge will accelerate the rise of the political power of marginalized people in U.S. politics.
I founded Project Mushroom to amplify the voices of marginalized people to achieve climate justice — and our work was just made about 100x easier because of Twitter’s ongoing collapse.
In just four weeks, starting from scratch, Project Mushroom was able to assemble a waitlist of more than 30,000 people, fully fund a $200,000 Kickstarter, and land tens of thousands of dollars in advertising deals from organizations perfectly aligned with our audience — people working for climate justice and willing to partner to make it happen. We were able to charge advertising rates at 3x the national average because of that alignment.
In short, Elon Musk just created a new era of social media: Niche verticals of like-minded people that can charge premium advertising rates and accelerate the interests of their communities.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen what happens when the richest person on Earth brings his personal brand of fascism to what was previously one of the most powerful organizing spaces ever created. Almost overnight, Twitter has lost a vast amount of its usefulness for people wanting to make the world a better place, and our feeds have been flooded with climate denial and climate accelerationism.
Project Mushroom is built as a comprehensive creator platform of like-minded folks and is intended to increase people’s ability to collaborate on meaningful projects that help change the world. This platform is being built to fit creators’ and communities’ broad needs for safety and community — not just as a replacement for Twitter.
Project Mushroom will offer at least four types of creator services: Newsletter hosting/publishing (including setup, maintenance, discoverability, and easy-to-use creator tools via Ghost), live events hosting (audio, video, in person, and creator support), a curated Mastodon-based social media network with paid moderators (that’s already live), and onboarding assistance for your followers to join you (that’s also already live).
All of these services are intended to be free for creators. Not only that, we’ll do our best to support Project Mushroom creators with sustainable funding streams that aren’t evil.
Project Mushroom will be constantly shaped by our creators and subscribers and we are aiming for a horizontal organizational structure that puts the voices of BIPOC folks at the center of everything we do.
This isn’t a typical approach for an organization focused on climate. But then again, typical climate organizations haven’t worked very well so far in limiting the impacts of climate change on marginalized people.
This is a welcome change, because it aligns platforms with their target audiences. Despite Elon Musk’s best intentions otherwise.
Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist and the founder of Project Mushroom.
In November 2022, many people watched Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover with fascination. Some of us also watched with horror.
Here was the richest person in the world, who assembled most of his wealth by building the world’s largest electric vehicle automaker, pivoting to being what appears to be the sole overseer of the world’s most important organizing platform with a renewed penchant for climate denialism — what could go wrong?
As is now abundantly clear, we are in a climate emergency.
The systems that created the climate emergency are built on extraction, colonialism, racism, and white supremacy — the same forces that are now powering Elon Musk’s Twitter. These systems — including policing, capitalism, and borders — are designed to separate us, commodify our lives, and concentrate power in people that are using fascism to keep it.
Every aspect of climate change is intertwined with the dangerous desire to abuse the natural world — and marginalized people — to extract wealth for personal gain. There is no justice without climate justice, and there is no climate justice without the climate movement aligning itself with all other justice-seeking movements.
In fact, according to the IPCC, these systems must be transformed. Achieving our collective goals of limiting climate change requires: “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”
The good news is that none of those systems that are accelerating the climate emergency are inevitable or permanent. And what’s more, none of the systems that were designed to harm us are needed to foster a thriving planet where everyone’s lives matter and have meaning.
My prediction is that in 2023, social media will fragment — spurred by Twitter’s ongoing collapse as a left-leaning organizing space — and the social media platforms that emerge will accelerate the rise of the political power of marginalized people in U.S. politics.
I founded Project Mushroom to amplify the voices of marginalized people to achieve climate justice — and our work was just made about 100x easier because of Twitter’s ongoing collapse.
In just four weeks, starting from scratch, Project Mushroom was able to assemble a waitlist of more than 30,000 people, fully fund a $200,000 Kickstarter, and land tens of thousands of dollars in advertising deals from organizations perfectly aligned with our audience — people working for climate justice and willing to partner to make it happen. We were able to charge advertising rates at 3x the national average because of that alignment.
In short, Elon Musk just created a new era of social media: Niche verticals of like-minded people that can charge premium advertising rates and accelerate the interests of their communities.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen what happens when the richest person on Earth brings his personal brand of fascism to what was previously one of the most powerful organizing spaces ever created. Almost overnight, Twitter has lost a vast amount of its usefulness for people wanting to make the world a better place, and our feeds have been flooded with climate denial and climate accelerationism.
Project Mushroom is built as a comprehensive creator platform of like-minded folks and is intended to increase people’s ability to collaborate on meaningful projects that help change the world. This platform is being built to fit creators’ and communities’ broad needs for safety and community — not just as a replacement for Twitter.
Project Mushroom will offer at least four types of creator services: Newsletter hosting/publishing (including setup, maintenance, discoverability, and easy-to-use creator tools via Ghost), live events hosting (audio, video, in person, and creator support), a curated Mastodon-based social media network with paid moderators (that’s already live), and onboarding assistance for your followers to join you (that’s also already live).
All of these services are intended to be free for creators. Not only that, we’ll do our best to support Project Mushroom creators with sustainable funding streams that aren’t evil.
Project Mushroom will be constantly shaped by our creators and subscribers and we are aiming for a horizontal organizational structure that puts the voices of BIPOC folks at the center of everything we do.
This isn’t a typical approach for an organization focused on climate. But then again, typical climate organizations haven’t worked very well so far in limiting the impacts of climate change on marginalized people.
This is a welcome change, because it aligns platforms with their target audiences. Despite Elon Musk’s best intentions otherwise.
Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist and the founder of Project Mushroom.
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Ayala Panievsky It’s time for PR for journalism
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team, R.I.P.
Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Jennifer Brandel AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more.
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
Moreno Cruz Osório Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
An Xiao Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
Nicholas Jackson There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Janelle Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Mario García More newsrooms go mobile-first
Raney Aronson-Rath Journalists will band together to fight intimidation
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Ryan Nave Citizen journalism, but make it equitable
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.
Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy
Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
John Davidow A year of intergenerational learning
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
David Cohn AI made this prediction
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community