2020 has been a singular year in so many ways: the COVID-19 pandemic that has infected more than 67 million people globally and killed more than 1.5 million; the police killing of George Floyd that sparked global Black Lives Matter protests; the conviction and sentencing of Harvey Weinstein in the trial that kicked the Me Too movement into high gear; the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett; and the election of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
In a year filled with history-making moments, one of the bright spots for us at HuffPost has been how much we’ve been able to connect with our members. Your support means so much to us, and your participation and feedback have given us so many great ideas that we have turned into stories, events, new features and more as we work to serve you better.
Now HuffPost is on the cusp of further change as we move to new ownership under BuzzFeed. Don’t worry, we’ll keep creating the empathetic, inclusive, people-first journalism that you’ve been reading and supporting – and will remain a separate, distinct website.
As part of the move, we will be temporarily suspending HuffPost Plus, our paid membership for readers who want to support HuffPost financially on a monthly or annual basis, as we transition to our new home. This means we are not accepting new HuffPost Plus memberships for now, and current memberships will be cancelled and refunded on a prorated basis. (If you have any questions about this change, please check out our FAQs here. If you’re a member with questions about your membership, email support@huffpost.com.)
We are still welcoming readers to sign up for our free, basic membership. Basic membership is your ticket to the HuffPost community, including participation in comments, invitations to members-only virtual events and text Q&As with HuffPost journalists, access to the HuffPost Insider newsletter and the ability to save and manage your bookmarks.
Unfortunately, the HuffPost Stuff store is closing, and any new transactions must be completed by Dec. 30. So if you’re an annual member who still needs to claim your free T-shirt or if you want to make any purchases from the store, get your order in now. Please visit the support site if you have any questions about HuffPost Stuff.
We want to thank all of our members for staying with us in 2020. We’re so grateful for the time you’ve spent with us keeping yourselves informed, joining the conversations in the comments, weighing in on our polls and participating in our events. Together we have built a community of over 138,000 members, double that of 2019.
Based on your feedback, in April we moved comments behind our free membership login and reduced toxicity with focused moderation on our most controversial topics. We also added a weekly commenting roundup to highlight top thoughts from our members, and more ways for you to weigh in – including polls and forums – and interact with our journalists, including launching interactive virtual events.
Our Live & Personal virtual events program drew more than 8,500 registrants and 2.8 million video views. We held 21 events on Zoom, including a misinformation workshop, a series of events about the elections, three events about parenting, three events about sex and intimacy, two events about the workplace, one event about Keynesian economics and 10 events about about COVID-19. We also hosted six Instagram Live events and six commenting events, in which members like you asked HuffPost journalists and experts your burning questions about the pandemic, self-care, U.S. elections and Thanksgiving.
(We’ve still got one more commenting forum to look forward to this year: an expert Q&A about the COVID-19 vaccines on Dec. 17. Leave your questions for HuffPost medical contributor Dr. Kavita Patel and senior wellness editor Lindsay Holmes here now!)
Throughout 2020, HuffPost’s loyal readers and members have contributed thousands of ideas – leading us to write articles about what’s safe to do during COVID-19, what to do if you can’t pay rent because you lose your job, nonessential businesses that won’t close during the pandemic, how to celebrate Thanksgiving this year and much more – and shared their own stories, such as in this Quarantine Diaries project that is documenting life under lockdown.
And you have supported unique coverage that won us more than a dozen journalism awards this year, including three Webby Awards for HuffPost Life, news and politics coverage.
Here are just a few examples:
- senior reporter Dave Jamieson’s piece on How Employers Make It Impossible For Working Women To Breastfeed, which won a Dateline Award;
- the HuffPost Life series on how to shop, eat and survive during a pandemic, which received an honorable mention for a Folio Award;
- our ”Should I call 911 if…” series that examined situations where police aren’t the best first responders and offered useful alternatives to calling 911;
- Data Disappeared, an account of the vast swaths of information the Trump administration has destroyed or distorted;
- senior reporter Emily Peck’s scoop on how female executives were treated at Ernst & Young;
- our Culture Shifters feature on activists, artists, entertainers and entrepreneurs who are changing America today;
- several augmented reality projects, including Art Is Revolution, which brought art of the Black Lives Matter movement to readers’ homes at a time when many museums and galleries remained closed.
We’re excited to continue telling empathetic, inclusive and people-first stories in 2021. We want to do that with you. Thanks for joining us.