NowThis

About NowThis

NowThis is an American social media-focused media organization that produces short-form video news for Gen Z and millennial audiences. Founded in September 2012, NowThis pioneered the model of creating news content designed specifically for distribution on social platforms rather than on a traditional homepage, becoming one of the most-viewed news brands on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Its explainer-style videos, which break down politics, climate, and culture stories into digestible segments, made it one of the defining news organizations of the social-media era. After passing through ownership by Group Nine Media and Vox Media, NowThis now operates as an independent company within the NowMedia Networks portfolio. Its latest coverage is available at nowthisnews.com.

Founding in 2012

NowThis was founded in September 2012 by Kenneth Lerer, the co-founder and former chairman of HuffPost, and Eric Hippeau, the former chief executive of HuffPost. The founders' thesis was that younger audiences were abandoning traditional news homepages in favor of social feeds, and that a news organization built natively for those feeds could reach audiences that legacy outlets could not. The company's first editor-in-chief was Edward O'Keefe, previously the executive producer at ABC News Digital, who led the newsroom from 2012 to 2014. As of 2013, NowThis was producing roughly 50 video segments per day and receiving 15 to 20 million views per month, figures that quickly validated the founders' bet on social distribution.

The social-first news model

NowThis's defining innovation was its decision to treat social platforms as the primary product rather than as a distribution channel for a website. In 2015, the company announced that it would not have a homepage at all, focusing exclusively on Facebook and other social platforms, a position it maintained until reversing course around 2018. The videos themselves were engineered for the feed: short running times, on-screen text that made them watchable without sound, clear visual storytelling, and topics chosen to spark conversation and sharing. This format allowed NowThis to scale its audience rapidly without the costs of a traditional broadcast or print operation, and it became the template that many competitors later copied.

Editorial focus and audience

NowThis specializes in short-form video coverage of news, politics, and social issues, with a stated mission of making news engaging and relevant for young adults by humanizing a complicated world. The company's target audience is Gen Z and millennials, and as of its mid-2010s growth period, 68 percent of its audience was between the ages of 18 and 34. The outlet developed deep roots in coverage of sustainability and climate change, becoming a top news brand on those topics, and it built a large following around progressive politics and social-justice storytelling. The company has described itself as an American progressive media organization, and its editorial voice reflects that orientation.

Funding and the Group Nine era

NowThis raised significant venture funding as it grew. On December 8, 2015, the company raised $16.2 million in Series D funding, capital that management said would be used to launch more focused video channels. In 2016, NowThis joined with The Dodo, Thrillist, and Seeker to form Group Nine Media, a digital-media holding company whose backers included Discovery Communications. The Group Nine roll-up was designed to achieve scale in an advertising market dominated by the largest platforms, combining several youth-focused brands under one corporate roof. NowThis became one of the flagship properties in the Group Nine portfolio.

Acquisition by Vox Media

In February 2022, Group Nine Media was acquired by Vox Media, bringing NowThis into the same company as Vox, The Verge, New York Magazine, and other major digital brands. During its time as part of Vox Media, NowThis was ranked as the top news publisher in the United States in 2022 by the Reuters Institute, with more than 8.5 million followers across its news and politics accounts. The company was also described as the most-engaged News and Politics digital-first publisher in the U.S. across Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, and the top news publisher on TikTok globally, with more than 10 million followers and 70 million monthly views on that platform. Vox Media's parent company celebrated NowThis as a winner of an Academy Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Cannes Lions Award.

Spin-off backed by Accelerate Change

In April 2023, just over a year after the Vox Media acquisition, NowThis was spun off as a separate independent company. The spin-off was backed by Accelerate Change, a nonprofit digital media lab, investor, and incubator founded in 2012 by Peter Murray that focuses on news, culture, and lifestyle properties serving underrepresented audiences. Under the agreement, Vox Media retained a minority ownership stake and continued to sell and produce advertising campaigns for NowThis, including managing its direct ad sales and branded content, while NowThis's editorial and personnel operations became fully independent. Then-editor-in-chief Samara Mackereth and head of production and operations Jessic Borovay stayed on through the transition.

New leadership

In December 2023, Sharon Mussalli was appointed chief executive officer of NowThis, the first woman to hold the position. Her appointment marked a milestone for a company whose leadership had previously been dominated by its male founders and investors. Mussalli took the helm as the company navigated the transition to independence under Accelerate Change's backing, with a mandate to sustain the growth that had made NowThis the leading social news brand for young audiences. Her tenure began amid a challenging period for digital media advertising, which would soon force difficult decisions at the company.

Layoffs and restructuring

In February 2024, NowThis announced layoffs affecting roughly 50 percent of its workforce, describing the cuts as part of a broader initiative to realign resources and structure to ensure a long-term sustainable business in the evolving media landscape. A second round of layoffs followed in November 2024, predominantly affecting unionized employees. The cuts reflected the financial pressures facing social-dependent publishers as platform economics shifted and advertising markets tightened. The restructuring was among the most significant downsizing events in the digital news industry that year, drawing attention to the vulnerability of even the most successful social-native news brands.

NowMedia Networks

In March 2024, the formation of NowMedia Networks was announced, an identity-driven media network reaching 190 million people that combines the publishers NowThis, PushBlack, Pulso, ParentsTogether, Feminist, and PlusMas. The network model is designed to give identity-focused publishers shared scale while preserving their distinct editorial brands and audiences. NowThis serves as the flagship news property within the network, contributing its massive social audience and video production expertise to a collective aimed at reaching diverse communities across the United States and beyond.

Impact and legacy

NowThis's lasting contribution to journalism is the social-native news format it pioneered. Before NowThis, most news organizations treated social media as a secondary distribution channel; NowThis treated the feed as the product itself, proving that high-quality video journalism could be made specifically for platforms and find enormous audiences there. Its caption-driven, sound-off-friendly video style became the industry standard for social news. The company's trajectory — from startup to roll-up to Vox Media acquisition to independence — also maps the broader story of digital media consolidation in the 2010s and 2020s, as publishers sought scale through mergers and then rediscovered the challenges of sustaining video news economics.

How to follow NowThis

NowThis publishes daily across its website at nowthisnews.com and, more characteristically, across its social channels on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat. Its TikTok account alone has more than 10 million followers, and its news and politics accounts collectively reach tens of millions of viewers each month. The company also operates subsidiaries including NowThis Impact and Salary Transparent Street, extending its brand into issue-driven content. For young readers who get their news primarily from social feeds, NowThis remains one of the most prominent and widely watched news sources in the United States.