“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. Nonprofit news outlet 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 nonprofit news outlet traffic — 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%), representing a general upswing in nonprofit news outlet traffic.

Nonprofit News Outlet Traffic Spotlight: The War Horse

The War Horse, which covers the U.S. military and veterans’ issues, saw its nonprofit news outlet 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 nonprofit news outlet 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.

Read the full article about nonprofit news outlets' traffic in January by Joshua Benton at Nieman Journlism Lab.