Local stories by nonprofit college media resonated nationally at the start of 2026

At Nieman Lab, we’ve long covered the impact of student-run news outlets filling information gaps in their communities. Recent data from SimilarWeb shows just how far their work reaches.

In February, three Southern college media outlets — The Duke Chronicle (Duke University), The Daily Tar Heel (University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill), and the Red and Black (University of Georgia) — had major traffic gains as nonprofit news organizations.

The Red and Black’s February traffic increased by 36% over January, and then by 40% from February to March. It had about 210,000 visits in January and ended March with over 401,000.

Editor-in-chief Katie Guenthner said the growth is a combination of factors, including four February stories that made national news, along with newsroom workflow changes like publishing stories at 5:00 a.m. instead of 8:00 a.m., linking every Instagram Reel to a story on the website, and streamlining cross-team communication so published stories are pushed out on social media faster.

The Duke Chronicle’s visits were up 34% in February, from about 245,000 in January to 365,000. Editor-in-chief Dylan Halper told me via email that it’s likely due to three stories about a university professor’s longstanding relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The Daily Tar Heel also saw a 29% increase in February, up from 245,200 visits in January to 317,700.

The overall top gainers by percentage were Buffalo-based Investigative Post (February) and education inequality outlet The Hechinger Report (March).

Investigative Post saw its traffic increase by 241%, from 46,000 in January to 159,000 in February. Much of that came from Investigative Post breaking a national story about the death of a blind Rohingya refugee who was detained by Border Patrol on February 25. Executive director and editor Jim Heaney said that story and its related follow-ups garnered more than 240,000 pageviews.

In March, The Hechinger Report’s traffic increased by 171%, up from 197,000 visits in February to 541,000. Director of audience development Nichole Dobo said multiple factors contributed to the skyrocket. About 45% of March traffic came through Google Discover, which Dobo attributed to an algorithm update to the product.

Dobo also said five stories in March each got more than 40,000 pageviews through Google Discover. Those stories were about conservative attacks on math curriculums, New York State’s reading programs, an opinion piece from an Arkansas teacher, another op-ed about working class students, and a trend story about universities trimming bachelor degree programs down to three years. Those five stories together brought in more than 766,000 pageviews, Dobo said.

“Our mission is to report on inequality in education, and we have made a big effort to show expertise on topics that serve our mission as a nonprofit newsroom,” Dobo said. “It is why we do so well on [Google] Discover on topics like math instruction and higher education. We’ve done consistent, quality coverage on those topics. It is for our human audience, but this kind of consistency also sends the right signals to the algorithm.”

Dobo said the Hechinger Report also revamped its impact tracking strategies late last year. One change: adding short survey questions to every story. On the math curriculum story, for example, 41% of readers who read the story and answered the survey question said they looked for more information about the issue after reading, which “strongly signals readers are hungry for more stories on the topic of math instruction,” Dobo said.

“Overall, across all stories in March we logged about a third of readers saying a story changed how they think about an education issue and 21% talked to others about it,” Dobo said. “These are great things to know so that we can better understand how our journalism is being used out in the world.”

Other gains

Injustice Watch is an investigative nonprofit focused on reporting on the Cook County court system in Illinois. Its traffic shot up through the first quarter of the year, from 36,000 visits in January to 56,000 in February to 124,000 in March. That growth is a result of Injustice Watch’s local election coverage, particularly its judicial election guide published on February 12 ahead of Illinois primary elections on March 17.

“This year, for the second time, we also had live election night results for the judicial races — which were not available anywhere else, since the AP doesn’t publish results for these down-ballot races,” managing editor Jonah Newman said.

The guide garnered 120,000 visits online and is always a popular feature that’s frequented during election season, he said. Injustice Watch also passed out 170,000 print copies across the county.

Capital B — a digital nonprofit that covers Black communities in the United States — saw its traffic increase by 77%, from about 149,000 visits to 264,000.

Director of audience and innovation Mark S. Luckie said that traffic has been up across Capital B and its local verticals covering Atlanta, Georgia and Gary, Indiana. Traffic comes from a mix of sources, including social, Newsbreak, and Google.

“Google Search has been an increasing source of traffic for Capital B due to both distinct coverage of news and centering how it impacts Black communities and stories that have been undercovered and thus receive high search placement,” Luckie said in an email.

While he did not attribute the growth to any one story, he said two pieces — one about data centers and another about rural land seizure — were highly shared on X and Bluesky.

Radio Ambulante’s explanatory podcast, El Hilo (“the thread”), deep dives into one major story each week in Latin America or U.S. Latino communities. Its website traffic grew by 115% between January and February, from 53,000 visits to 116,000.

El Hilo’s website is its third-largest source of downloads, behind the major listening platforms, editorial director and host Eliezer Budasoff said. The team doesn’t typically focus on month-to-month traffic because listeners find episodes long after their release. But Budasoff said three February episodes — about Trump and Venezuela, Latinos in Hollywood, and organized crime in Mexico — likely performed well due to changes in the show’s format implemented at the beginning of the year.

“The main change is an adjustment in the focus of the episodes, which are now more analytical, reflective, and explanatory,” Budasoff said. “We’ve deepened the dimension of analysis and meaning-making based on current events, something that El Hilo has always had, but which has now become the central axis when planning production. We always provide context to understand the news behind the headlines; that’s one of the pillars of the show, but we reduced the narrative load to focus more on what what’s happening means.”

The Adirondack Explorer‘s visits grew by 86% in March, from 173,600 visits in February to 324,200. Editor-in-chief Melissa Hart that was mainly due to two stories: one story about an old growth forest that was picked up by Google Discover and a column about a trip to Yellowstone National Park that surfaced often in search.

“We hadn’t made any new changes to our content mix per se, but that particular story was part of ongoing coverage around mapping old growth forest and old trees’ important contribution to carbon sequestration,” Hart said. “While we don’t have immediate follow-ups planned, it’s definitely a topic we’ll continue to write about.”

Yale Climate Connections, a digital publication based at Yale University, saw a 54% increase in visits from February to March. Editor-in-chief Sara Peach said that was an unusual development; the publication usually sees its highest traffic during September and October — hurricane season.

Extreme weather, however, pulls in audiences all year around. Two of March’s top stories were about the ski industry’s response to climate change and record heat waves around the United States in February and March. Yale Climate Connections also attracts audiences with its Spanish-language coverage and international focus. In March, stories about a Mexican ranch and Indian musical instrument artisans were also top performers.

“Our main audience strategy is to encourage readers to sign up for newsletters in English and Spanish,” Peach said. We’re focusing on the newsletters because we view owning our audience list as more sustainable than relying on search traffic or algorithm-driven platforms.”

The National Catholic Reporter‘s traffic grew by 362,000 visits from February in March. Managing editor Stephanie Yeagle didn’t attribute the growth to any group of stories, but rather to an overall increase in organic search traffic, “showing that our team is writing on topics that interest people and winning at SEO.” Several stories have also been picked up by mainstream news outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and NPR. NRC also added weekend editor coverage, allowing NRC to report and respond to breaking news faster.

Executive editor Michael O’Loughlin, who joined the publication in January, said NRC has also been working on implementing his editorial vision of focusing on three areas of coverage: “hard news and analysis; stories that offer readers hope; and light-hearted pieces that explore the fun and quirky sides to faith.”

Hairy Dawg gets the Sanford Stadium crowd fired up during the UGA vs Austin Peay State University football game on September 6, 2025. Photo: Dorothy Kozlowski/ University of Georgia Marketing and Communications