We cover the machinery, not the noise.
Meridian was founded in 2009 by four reporters who kept noticing the same thing: the decisions that shape American life are made in rooms nobody covers — utility commissions, procurement offices, county planning boards, standards bodies. We go to those rooms. Then we explain what happened in language that respects your time.
We are reader-funded. Eighty-one percent of our revenue comes from memberships and print subscriptions; the rest is advertising, which our newsroom has no part in selling. We publish our funding sources every January and our corrections in full, permanently, on the story they belong to.
2009Founded in Washington
214Print issues published
41,208Stories in the archive
81%Revenue from readers
184kMembers and subscribers
How we work
Four rules that have not changed since the first issue.
01
Go to the roomIf a decision is made in a hearing, someone from Meridian sits through the hearing. We do not rewrite press releases.
02
Show the documentEvery claim that rests on a filing, contract or dataset links to it. Where we cannot publish a document, we say why.
03
Name the costPolicy stories answer one question first: who pays, and how much. Numbers get sourced, not estimated.
04
Correct in publicCorrections stay on the story permanently, with the date and what changed. We do not quietly edit.
The masthead
28 staff · Washington, Chicago, OaklandPortrait 4:5
Portrait 4:5
Seventeen years, briefly
2009Four reporters publish Issue 1 from a rented office above a hardware store in Alexandria.
2013The first investigation into municipal bond disclosures leads to three state audits.
2017Membership replaces display advertising as the largest revenue line.
2021Meridian Films launches with a documentary on port automation.
2024The archive is digitized back to Issue 1 and opened to members.
2026The Grid series runs across four issues and two hundred pages.
Standards