A year of growth and change for The Ledger
In a tough media industry, our business remained strong in 2025
Looking back on 2025, it was a rough year for a lot of media companies.
Federal cutbacks put pressure on public media. Other outlets have warned about advertising drying up. Charlotte lost its city magazine. And an avalanche of AI-generated text and social media has made it harder for established brands to stand out in an increasingly noisy landscape where credibility is harder to discern.
Against that sobering backdrop, a lot of people ask me how The Charlotte Ledger is doing.
Given the many troubles and challenges out there in our industry, I feel a little sheepish telling you that, as a business, we are doing … pretty well, actually.
Every year at the end of the year, I like to update our readers on how we’re doing as a company — not because I love talking about ourselves (I don’t), but because I think it’s only fair that if we seek transparency from businesses and government as we do in our reporting throughout the year, we should offer transparency to you, our readers.
Revenue and subscriptions up
In media, you sometimes see companies touting different metrics as examples of their growth, such as page views, Instagram followers, newsletter subscribers and so on. While those can be indicators, the best way to measure the financial health of any business is to examine its income statement, which details revenues and expenses. (This is sometimes known as a “P&L,” or profit-and-loss statement.)
Let’s take a peek at some of The Ledger’s key financial numbers for 2025:
Overall revenue rose 38%, compared with 2024.
Our subscription revenue rose by 30%. That’s in part because of a price increase we instituted in February, but we also added nearly 300 paid subscribers (net) in 2025 — about the same pace as last year. As of today, 5,072 people receive our paid edition. They’re part of a total email list of about 29,300 people.
Our sponsorship revenue rose by 110%, which means it more than doubled this year compared with 2024. This is partly a result of having more space to sell, as we added newsletters this year, but also reflects increased interest and the hard work and creativity from our business-side team.
Our revenue mix stayed similar to previous years, with 67% of our revenue from subscriptions, 24% from sponsorships and the balance from things like events and our events board.
Expenses rose 18%, driven mainly by higher spending on staff and freelancers.
Overall, I’d say we’re in strong financial health. We’re not rolling in bank vaults full of cash, and nobody is getting rich from this operation, but we pay our bills and hire reporters with the money we generate. We have no debts to pay off or investors to satisfy. Our revenue is rising, and we’re spending less than we take in.
Our team has done a tremendous job not only providing smart and essential information for Charlotte, but also ensuring the health and sustainability of our business in an industry that most people think of as volatile.
I started The Ledger in 2019 with the idea that good local journalism could be good business — that there is a market for in-depth, context-rich news and information without having to resort to clickbait and to gushing coverage of pizza and tacos. Now nearly 7 years old, The Ledger continues to prove that idea year after year. (And still with no clickbait or taco coverage!)
Human-centered approach: Even as AI becomes prevalent elsewhere, and upends many writing and design jobs, we still see a bright future for our approach — sending actual humans to talk to other humans, and sharing original information and insights in a way that is honest and independent. ChatGPT can’t talk to barbers in east Charlotte about the effect of Border Patrol arrests or tell you that an automotive manufacturer is moving a big headquarters to Plaza Midwood a month before it is announced, unless someone does the actual work of uncovering that information first. That’s what we do, and we don’t see the demand for reliable, truthful information gleaned from humans to be disappearing anytime soon.
New faces join us
The Ledger’s financial position brightened so much this year that we were able to expand our staff and add a fourth full-timer. Ava Mikeal joined us in May as our director of business development and is doing a great job strengthening our business in conjunction with our business partners, working closely with our versatile part-time operations manager, Brie Chrisman.
The other big Ledger staffing news this year was on the reporting, editing and production side. We were delighted to add Ashley Fahey, who had spent most of the previous decade with the Charlotte Business Journal and its parent company, as our managing editor in September, and she is quickly making a mark. Ashley joined us after Cristina Bolling — who was instrumental in building The Ledger from its early days — departed in June to take a new job. Meanwhile, Lindsey Banks, our capable reporter for the past three years, was promoted to assistant editor this summer and has shined as she has taken on more responsibilities.
We’ve always relied on talented local freelancers for writing, editing and other tasks, and we leaned on them more this year amid some of the staff transitions.
It was a busy second half of the year for us, getting everyone acclimated to new roles — all while still producing at least seven original newsletters a week, plus a weekly podcast, social media, events and more. As we head into 2026, I’m excited about our team. We’re looking forward to some new things in the new year, including monthly webinars on important and timely topics and a few other things we plan to roll out to keep us growing on a foundation of strong local journalism.
2025: New newsletters, voter guide spinoff, revamped social media
The key to The Ledger’s growth and success over the past seven years has been our continued commitment to thoughtful and original articles, and 2025 was no exception.
Ashley highlighted some of our favorite articles of the year in a post last week. We’re counting down the 10 most-viewed stories of the year on our Instagram and Facebook accounts. I’m impressed by the range of topics our writers continue to explore — by breaking news, looking into trends and telling our audience new things. Compared with summarizing press releases and rehashing news that’s already been reported, unearthing new facts and stories is time-consuming and costly — but that’s what we do, because we believe that’s the right approach.
This year, we also:
Spun off our voter guide, called The Election Hub, into its own 501(c)(3) nonprofit
Launched two new newsletters: Real Estate Whispers and Toppman on the Arts
Overhauled our social media to reach new audiences, including nearly doubling our Instagram followers to 12,000+.
Celebrated our 6th year of Charlotte Ledger 40 Over 40 winners at a big celebration in May. It will be back again next year, and we’ll be stepping up our smaller events, too.
We celebrated 40 people over age 40 who are making Charlotte better at our annual 40 Over 40 awards in May. (Photo: Grant Baldwin Photography) Won a national “Transformational Impact” award from trade association LION Publishers, awarded for our “dedication to improving operational resilience, financial health, and/or journalistic impact” and for having “a positive effect on the communities they serve.” Work we published on health care and the arts also won national and regional awards.
I could keep going — I have a lot of thoughts about local journalism! — but in the interest of brevity, I’ll leave it here for now.
This holiday season, I’ve been reflecting on gratitude.
I’m grateful for the team we’ve built and am excited about 2026. I’m grateful to all of the people we work with in so many different ways to make The Ledger a success. And I’m grateful most of all to you, our readers, for supporting us in our mission of delivering important, interesting and relevant information to the Charlotte area. I think it’s needed more than ever, and it’s gratifying to see that so many of you agree.
All the best in the new year,
—Tony Mecia, executive editor, The Charlotte Ledger
P.S. If you want to help us continue with our mission of providing smart and essential information for Charlotte, there are a few things you can do:
Tell a friend about us
Share ideas for us to pursue. (We can’t get to everything, but we need your eyes and ears! Some of our best stories come from reader tips.) Email editor@cltledger.com.
If you’re a free subscriber, upgrade to a paid subscription ($12/month, $129/year)
If you’re a paid subscriber, upgrade to a premium subscription ($379/year, comes with six subscriptions and a monthly shout-out, like this)
Have your company sponsor a newsletter, podcast, event or webinar. Find out more here, and check out our 2026 media kit. Contact ava@cltledger.com for details.
Give The Ledger a one-time gift. If you have a passion for election information, donate tax-free to The Election Hub, a separate 501(c)(3) that we work closely with.
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The Charlotte Ledger is a locally owned media company that delivers smart and essential news. We strive for fairness and accuracy and will correct all known errors. The content reflects the independent editorial judgment of The Charlotte Ledger. Any advertising, paid marketing or sponsored content will be clearly labeled.
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I prefer to eat tacos, not read about them. Thank you, Ledger...
The constant jabs at Axios are off putting and unnecessary. You can discuss your business and your different way of doing things without demeaning others. Hopefully this practice stops in 2026.