Let Us Report.

We’ve always been aggressively transparent with our Court Watch subscribers so we thought we owed you an update on where things stand for our news organization. There is also a pitch in this email. We’re losing more paid subscribers than we’re gaining every month. We need paid subscribers. Make the jump here. 

It’s been five months since we moved from Substack to beehiiv, as part of their Media Collective. We continue to believe strongly that transition was the right call. But the economic winds point to stormy weather ahead. We’ll explain that aspect in a bit but first, a short recap of what we’ve done since the move.

The Last Five Months

Court Watch’s exclusive reporting has spurred dozens and dozens of national and local media stories. We’ve had more scoops than should be allowed for a newsletter run by an quirky academic and a widely impressive recent college graduate. We’ve reported on the largest law enforcement seizure of homemade explosives in U.S. history, which was picked up by every major news organization, some of which gave us credit for the reporting, many of which neglected to do so. That’s the nature of the business. We were the first to report that a key law enforcement investigative tool was deemed unconstitutional. We’ve scooped major papers around the country with our reporting on threats to ICE agents, a would-be mass school shooter, and TikTok threats to President Trump. Every week we have a new exclusive, some of which get traction, others that stay within our reader community. We write them because we think the public deserves to know, virality be damned. 

We also played a small part in chiding Congress and the Administration into keeping open an Inspector General office that has saved the taxpayers half a billion dollars. It is no exaggeration to say that would have not happened without our reporting. We were the only ones that worked that story, and we worked it hard. 

The move to beehiiv opened up support to create and customize our new site. We’ve leaned on beehiiiv’s legal support to run particularly sensitive stories through our defamation lawyers, the costs of which are borne by beehiiv. That has been a godsend. All in all, we’re been exceedingly happy with their support of Court Watch. 

Subscriber Status.

When we left Substack, we had 9,750 subscribers, of which 338 chose the paid option. As of today, that number is 13,323, with 498 paid members.

We got a massive influx of new free and paid subscribers with our landing page of lawsuits targeting Trump Administration actions. It was helped dramatically when longtime Court Watch subscriber and local Dallas basketball fan, Mark Cuban, tweeted out a link. (Thanks, Mark but you’re still picking up our bar tab next time we’re in Texas.) We’re still continuing to update that page, now with links to almost 400 court dockets. It’s admittedly a slog, but we see it as a public service. And the public has responded, we’re at more than 150,000 views on that page alone. Unlike other lawsuit trackers, we took no editorial license, just direct links to court filings. That’s always been our vibe. You read the documents yourself and make your own opinions. We’d probably have more subscribers if we took a political bent, but we’re a dying breed of old-school reporters that try not to put our finger on the scales too hard. 

Our “open rates” for emails is north of 52% which we’re told is crazy good for our industry. Our “click thru” rate is also amazingly high, clocking in at more than 11%. Since our move to beehiiv, every newsletter we sent has more views than the week before. That’s not nothing. 

But here’s the headwinds. 

The Substack recommendation algorithm, for all its many faults, did provide a bit of a driver for new subscribers. We no longer enjoy that benefit. Our new subscribers are coming from word of mouth, and much slower than before save for the one-time bump from the lawsuit tracking page. 

We tried to run a few ads through beehiiv, but decided that the return on investment vs. the fact that sometimes triggers a “promotion” tag in inbox filters is not worth the lower open rate. That assessment would change dramatically if and when we get paid advertisers directly so if your company wants to reach some of the most influential newsmakers and policy wonks in America, maybe pitch your ad department to become a sponsor. 

In the last month, similar to other newsletters, we’ve lost more paid subscribers than we’ve gained. We’re also seeing a number of yearly subscribers decide to not renew. Perhaps that is a reflection on economic concerns. We saw this coming, so we’ve run one-time specials like a PACER training for those who signed up for a monthly membership. That small bump helped offset the attrition. A lot of our departing paid subscribers were government employees who have apologized profusely for dropping their subscription but need to make hard choices after being let go. We get it. If the choice is paying your mortgage or reading about quirky court records, you should pick a roof over your head every time. 

When we did our third year pitch, we mentioned that we were dangerously close to not being a money losing news organization but it could go south quickly. We’ve happy to report that we’re essentially breaking even between paid subscribers and costs such as PACER fees, Peter Beck’s (way too small) honorarium, freelancer payments, and other items required when running a media organization. We still take no salary so the numbers only work with our editor’s free labor. 

Here’s the rub.

Right now, we’re hanging on. That’s something to be proud of. We’re not big-time names. We grind every week and punch significantly above our weight. We like being scrappy and enjoy profusely having people wonder how the hell we beat the big name media organizations.

But reading the newsletter economic tea leaves tells us that the break-even assessment is changing quite quickly. We very much like this gig. Over the last three years, we think we’ve developed a voice and track record of reporting important stories that wouldn’t have been reported without us. We’d like to continue to do so. But that only works if more of you transition from a free subscription to a paid one. 

The Ask.

So let’s close with the most explicit of asks possible. Become a paid subscriber. Our goal is to be at 1,000 paid subscribers. That keeps us viable going into our fourth year. Help us not only survive, but thrive. Let us continue to report the news.