🔥 For the First Time We Just Slipped in the Rankings — and I’m Asking You to Help Me Fight Back
Why I’m doubling down on independent Gaza and justice reporting and need you in the inner circle to keep building The North Star.
Family,
For the first time in six months, The North Star slipped in the paid News rankings. We were sitting at 13th, and now we’re in 14th. It’s a tiny drop on a chart, but to me it feels like a warning light blinking on the dashboard: either this work grows, or it gets drowned out in a world that would love nothing more than for us to go quiet.
Not one person above me writes a word about Gaza. Or police brutality. Or mass incarceration. Or Sudan. Or anything else I cover DAILY.
I’m not saying that to shame you. I’m saying it because I believe this community is stronger than that slip. And I’m asking you, today, to help me prove it.
Before I explain what I’m trying to build next, I want to ask you from the heart to become a member today. I keep this reporting free for the world — for readers in Gaza, in refugee camps, in prisons, in public schools, in deep poverty — because a smaller circle of people who can afford it choose to carry some of the cost. If that’s you, I’m asking you right now to click here to become a member or click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member. Your support keeps this work free for them, and even for you when you can’t afford to pay.
Let me tell you why this matters so much.
Every day, I’m writing about things that powerful people desperately want buried: war crimes in Gaza, international courts being bullied, babies freezing to death in tents, police killings, corruption, all of it with names, dates, and receipts. There’s no big media company behind me absorbing the blowback. When I publish something hard-hitting, there is no corporate board cushioning the impact.
It’s just us. It’s you opening these emails. It’s me sitting here writing as my hands ache. It’s the invisible thread between us that says, we are not going to let them have the only microphone.
The reason we were ever 13th in the paid News rankings — the reason we’re even in the top 20 — is because a group of you decided that this work shouldn’t live or die based on algorithms and billionaire whims. You decided to fund it yourselves.
Now we’ve slipped a notch, and I’m asking you to help me push back in the opposite direction.
If these pieces have ever given you language for a hard conversation, if they’ve ever made you feel less alone, if they’ve ever helped you see through the fog of propaganda, I’m asking you to match that feeling with action and click here to become a member or click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member.
Here’s what your membership actually does.
It keeps the Gaza coverage free when so many others are putting theirs behind paywalls or softening the language. I refuse to do that. I refuse to stop saying “genocide” just because it makes governments or donors uncomfortable. I refuse to pretend that babies freezing in tents are “tragic winter incidents” instead of the predictable result of a brutal siege.
It funds the deep, boring work that nobody ever sees on social media: digging into court filings, FARA registrations, UN reports, hospital testimonies, local news in other languages. All the ugly paperwork that exposes what leaders really did when the cameras were off.
And it builds what comes next: The Shaun King Show, a video-first podcast where I can sit with you face-to-face, bring in guests, show receipts live on screen, and reach the millions of people who will never read a 3,000 word essay but will absolutely watch a powerful conversation. To do that well, I need to be able to hire and support the team that can help research, produce, and edit that work.
None of that happens because a foundation writes a big check. None of it happens because a corporation “partners” with us. It happens because people like you say, I want this to exist in the world, and I’m willing to help carry it.
Sisters and brothers, I know money is tight. I know some of you are reading this and thinking, “Shaun, I love your work but I’m choosing between groceries and medicine.” If that’s you, hear me clearly: you are the reason I keep this free. I am not asking you to give what you don’t have. I want you to stay. I want you to read. I want you to share. You owe me nothing.
I’m speaking right now to those of you who do have some margin, who can look at your monthly expenses and say, “I can make room for this.” I’m speaking to you if you’ve ever finished one of these pieces with your heart pounding and thought, “I needed this,” or forwarded it to a friend and said, “Read this right now.”
If that’s you, I’m asking you to take sixty seconds and move from appreciating this work to owning it with me.
Click here to become a member.
Click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member.
You’re not tipping a creator. You’re building a platform — a revolutionary, courageous, independent, global platform that answers to its people, not its sponsors.
I want The North Star to climb, not for vanity, but because ranking higher means more people are finding us instead of sleepwalking through propaganda. It means more people hearing about Gaza from a voice that refuses to lie to them. It means more people learning how international law really works, how power really moves, how to stand up in their own communities with facts and courage.
I am going to keep doing my part. I’m going to keep writing the pieces that cost me sleep. I’m going to keep telling the truth as plainly as I know how. What I’m asking you today is: will you do your part too?
If this work has ever moved you, if it has ever steadied you, if it has ever given you words or courage you didn’t have before, I’m asking you one more time — click here to become a member or click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member.
Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun