| The Democracy Docket Rocket |
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| Marc Elias’s Democracy Docket has quietly become a pro-democracy media force, expanding its newsroom to 20 staffers as it surpasses 50,000 paid subscribers.
Earlier this month, Marc Elias, the prominent Democratic lawyer turned media entrepreneur, was at his home just outside Washington when the milestone arrived. The outlet he founded in 2020, Democracy Docket—a digital news organization that covers voting rights, elections, and the courts from an unapologetically pro-democracy standpoint—had been inching toward 50,000 paid subscribers. The team didn’t expect to cross that line until after Labor Day. But a stronger-than-anticipated August put the number suddenly within reach, only 17 months after launching a premium membership program.
| “Every day I would ask, ‘When do we think we’re going to hit it?’” Elias told me by phone on Thursday.
Then, on Wednesday, August 13, his phone buzzed with a text from managing director Allie Rothenberg. She sent a screen shot showing the paid subscriber tally at exactly 50,000. Elias, describing it to me as a “momentous and meaningful” marker, immediately emailed the team with the news. Two weeks later, Democracy Docket celebrated again, this time surpassing 500,000 subscribers on YouTube.
| For Elias, the success has been vindicating. From the start, he believed there was a sizable audience hungry for in-depth coverage of the legal and political battles shaping American elections. “When Democracy Docket started,” Elias recalled, “I’d tell people, ‘I’m going to build a media company.’ And they’d shoot back, ‘You’re definitely not going to do that.’ And I’d respond, ‘No, I am.’”
Today, Democracy Docket is thriving. At $120 per year.
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