| NowThis | |
| Location City: | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Key People: | Sharon Mussalli (CEO) |
| Founders: | Kenneth Lerer Eric Hippeau Brian Bedol Fred Harman |
NowThis Media is an American progressive[1] [2] social media-focused news organization founded in 2012.[3] [4] [5] The company is specialized in creating short-form videos.[6] Their target audience is Millennials and Generation Z.[7]
NowThis was founded by The Huffington Post co-founder and former chairman Kenneth Lerer and former Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau in September 2012.[8] NowThis originally focused exclusively on social-media platforms, such as Facebook, having announced in 2015 that it would not have a homepage. By 2018, it had changed this position.[9]
On December 8, 2015, NowThis raised $16.2m in Series D funding. By this time, the company said that 68% of its audience were millennials between the ages of 18 and 34. It was announced that this funding would be used to launch more focused channels.[10] Between 2012 and 2014, the editor-in-chief was Edward O'Keefe, who previously was the executive producer at ABC News Digital. As of 2013, NowThis produced about 50 segments per day and received about 15–20 million views per month.[11]
In 2016, NowThis joined with The Dodo, Thrillist, and Seeker to form Group Nine Media, which was acquired by Vox Media in February 2022.[12] [13]
In June 2020, numerous accusations of sexual misconduct were levied at NowThis associate producer Jackson Davis after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quote-tweeted a graphic he created.[14] [15] NowThis suspended Davis. Following an external investigation, he was removed from the company.[16]
In April 2023, it was announced that NowThis would be spun off as a separate company from Vox Media.[17]
In February 2024, it was announced that NowThis had laid off roughly 50% of its workforce.[18] The organization said that the staff layoffs were part of a “broader initiative to realign our resources and structure to ensure a long-term sustainable business in the evolving media landscape.”[19]
NowThis's content is targeted at left-leaning members of generations Y and Z. An analysis from BuzzFeed News found that NowThis was the most popular left-leaning site on Facebook between 2015 and 2017; along with Occupy Democrats, it accounted for half of the 50 top posts on Facebook.[20] According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism NowThis' videos are primarily emotion-driven in order to generate views and shares[21] and the group been accused of making partisan content.[22] [23]
In 2015, NowThis published a conspiracy theory that claimed CNN deleted a poll of Facebook users asserting that most participants thought that Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the first 2016 Democratic Party presidential debate. NowThis created a video titled "It looks like CNN is trying to help Hillary look good, even if that means deleting polls." PolitiFact found that CNN did not delete the poll in question and in fact displayed the results of the poll during its broadcast and also published the poll on its Facebook page. The claim was rated as "Pants on Fire" false by PolitiFact.[24]
After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, NowThis posted a clip of CNN commentator Van Jones giving a speech about the election results on their social media. The posted clip generated over 23 million views on Facebook, and NowThis included its own logo in the upper corner, not CNN's. CNN accused NowThis of violating their intellectual property rights and stated that video "was used without attribution or permission", and they were "exploring [their] options with regards to NowThis, Facebook and Twitter." NowThis removed the clip from their Facebook, while it remained on their Twitter.[25]
During the 2016 United States presidential election, NowThis repeatedly claimed that Trump lied about Bill Clinton signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) using videos posted on Facebook and YouTube. PolitiFact found that Bill Clinton signed the final version of the NAFTA as Trump had stated, and rated the claim false.[26]
In September 2019, NowThis tweeted out that "Republicans in North Carolina used a 9/11 memorial to trick Democrats into missing a key vote", which was later shared by Senator Elizabeth Warren. PolitiFact rated the claim false and discovered only one Democrat was at a 9/11 memorial during the time North Carolina Republicans held a controversial budget vote. NowThis did not correct their claim.[27]
In January 2020, NowThis removed a segment of a video they posted where a George Washington University student falsely claimed that Holocaust diarist Anne Frank did not die in a concentration camp. Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in either February or March 1945.[28] [29]