Nonprofit news outlets had a strong traffic month in January

“The news gods provided us with a lot of reporting opportunities — good and bad — that resonated with people.” That’s the reason Colorado Sun editor Dana Coffield gives for her nonprofit news site’s strong traffic performance in January. Traffic was up 53% from the month before, according to estimates from Similarweb, going from 1.24 million to 1.9 million visits.

The site’s most successful stories in January were a very Colorado mix: a dispute over clearing forest land to build a road to 19 proposed luxury homes; a solo hiker killed by two yearling mountain lions; an Air Force captain setting a skydiving-in-formation world record (104 people!); and a local lawyer’s proposal to rename dozens of Colorado mountains. (Many of them to light-related names — ROYGBIV Peak! — and seven to each of the deadly sins. Damned Colorado bureaucrats, denying the people the chance to climb Lust Peak.)

This is the latest installment in our regular look at web traffic at the nation’s nonprofit news sites — a group which, for our purposes, is defined as the nonprofit members of the trade groups LION Publishers and the Institute for Nonprofit News.

January was a good month; the 100 most-popular nonprofit news sites totaled 72.1 million visits in January, up from 64.6 million in December. 70 of December’s top 100 saw traffic increase in January. Some of the biggest gainers included Columbus’ Matter News (up 297%), Illinois’ Lansing Journal (up 261%), Sahan Journal (up 181%; it was also the biggest traffic gainer in Q4 2025), Oaklandside (up 115%), Mississippi Today (up 113%), and The Texas Observer (up 114%)

Here’s January’s Top 25, followed by some additional detail on what worked well that month for The War Horse (up 238% over December), National Parks Traveler (up 75%), Votebeat (up 236%), and inewsource (up 211%).

The War Horse

The War Horse, which covers the U.S. military and veterans’ issues, saw its traffic jump 238% from December to January, from about 90,000 visits to 306,000. Hrisanthi Pickett, the site’s audience engagement editor, attributed the increase to a January 14 personal essay by an Army colonel reflecting on his retirement. (“The morning after my retirement ceremony, I opened the closet and stared…Who am I now, without the uniform?”)

“We did not do anything different when it came to publishing or promoting the story,” Pickett said. “The story found its own audience in private messaging groups (i.e., WhatsApp, Telegram). This was a bit frustrating to track.” The traffic uptick lasted about a week, and while it led to new newsletter subscribers and followers on social, the relative opacity of messaging platforms has made it difficult to replicate the success, she said.

National Parks Traveler

January traffic to National Parks Traveler was up 76% month-over-month, jumping from 113,000 to 198,000 visits. Editor-in-chief Kurt Repanshek said, unsurprisingly, that the Trump administration’s impacts on the National Park Service have been a major driver of interest. Two January stories stood out. One was this piece on an internal NPS email saying that placing a sticker over Trump’s face on your National Parks pass could invalidate it.

The other was this piece on Donna Shaver, one of the world’s preeminent experts on sea turtle conservation, being forced to resign her position at the Padre Island National Seashore after being critical of cuts to conservation programs. “This has been an ongoing story for some years, and there is great interest in how Shaver is being treated by the NPS,” Repanshek said. “I believe the story broke on a Saturday morning, and by Monday it had been viewed by more than 100,000.”

Votebeat

Votebeat had a banner January, with visits spiking 236% from December, from roughly 21,000 to 72,000 visits. (Those Similarweb estimates line up pretty well with Votebeat’s internal visits numbers, which were 22,957 and 88,903, respectively.) Lauren Aguirre, the site’s growth and community editor, pointed to this piece on a Wisconsin court battle over absentee voting (a hit on Google Discover) and this one on whether Trump can cancel the midterms (did well in search). About 30% of Votebeat’s traffic now comes from search, “a meaningful increase compared with our early years as a newsroom,” she told me.

inewsource

inewsource, the stalwart (if frustratingly uncapitalized) local news site in San Diego, saw its visits increase about 211% in January, going from about 36,000 to 111,000 in Similarweb’s estimate. Giovanni Moujaes, the site’s assistant editor for audience and innovations, said it’s seen “a pretty considerable traffic boost from Google Discover and other Google properties” over the past year. One area they’re investing in: Nextdoor. (“While not a large source of web audience yet, our Nextdoor community continues to grow, with two of our reporters regularly engaging with users on the platform.”)