PRESS RELEASE: Wednesday, April 2, 2014
CONTACT: Lisa Graves and Ruth Conniff, (608) 257-4626


MADISON -- The Progressive magazine and the Center for Media and Democracy are merging, leaders of both organizations announced today. “Together, we will have a greater reach, a bigger impact, and a sturdier financial base,” said Ruth Conniff, the editor-in-chief of The Progressive.

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"Even as American journalism faces unprecedented challenges, there has never been a greater need for reporting and analysis of all the ways private interests threaten the public good,” said Conniff. “We will break news, and we will hold the corporate powers accountable.”

The boards of both organizations passed a unanimous resolution approving the merger in March. In the combined institution, Lisa Graves, will become President and Publisher of The Progressive Inc. Ruth Conniff will be Editor-in-Chief of The Progressive and a Vice-President, and Mary Bottari, who has served as Deputy Director of CMD, will be a Vice-President and the Editor of special projects and investigations. Matt Rothschild, longtime publisher and editor of The Progressive, will be part of the merged organization’s leadership team and remain Senior Editor.


Graves and Conniff. Image courtesy of The Progressive

The two media groups have complementary media platforms and financial models. CMD has a large online presence as the publisher of PRwatch.org, ALECexposed.org, and its wiki, Sourcewatch.org, with nearly 150,000 people on its list of subscribers, fans, and followers. The Progressive is a print magazine with more than 40,000 paid subscribers and thousands of devoted small donors. Together, their combined email and social media lists total nearly a quarter million people and their collective web traffic amounts to more than 10 million page views per year. CMD’s original research and reporting are often cited by other new outlets, and both CMD and The Progressive are often sought out for their analysis of national and state policy issues.

The Progressive, a monthly magazine that has been in print for 105 years, was founded by Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette in 1909 to fight corporate power, champion women’s suffrage, campaign for democracy, and oppose war. It has published such social critics as Jane Addams, James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, John Kenneth Galbraith, Helen Keller, Molly Ivins, June Jordan, Martin Luther King, and Howard Zinn. Political figures such as George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, Tammy Baldwin, and Paul Wellstone have also appeared in the magazine over the years. Since 2011, when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker launched his "divide and conquer" strategy, attacking teachers and other public employees, The Progressive has been reporting on the dangers to civil society posed by Walker and the national, coordinated rightwing assault on the states.