🌊 What We're Proudest of This Year

Our highlights from 2024…

In place of today’s Wrap, we share what we’re proudest of this year (hint: it has to do with you), but allow us to add a few honorable mentions that are slightly more self-indulgent here:

1) We accurately predicted the electoral outcomes of the swing states — despite blowback in the comments — simply by talking to people all across them. It turns out that some good ol' fashioned boots-on-the-ground journalism can do wonders. Who woulda thunk it? Certainly not pistachio milk-drinking Big News!

2) We stated last year that our 2024 goal was to bolster our original reporting, particularly with video. We launched two YouTube channels (RocaNews for on-the-ground reporting and We the 66 for deep dives), and as of today they have over 100k subscribers combined. We have seen more of the country this year than we have in our entire lives, and each of the Maxes had already visited 35+ states. It’s too early to say mission accomplished, but we are proud of this start.

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Dating Apps’ Bad Year

2024 ended up one of the worst-ever years for dating apps

• Two companies – Match Group and Bumble – dominate the dating app space. Match Group owns dozens of platforms, including Tinder, Hinge, and Match.com; Bumble’s platforms including Bumble and Badoo, one of the most popular dating platforms outside the US

• Despite early promises by both companies about how they could use AI to improve their matchmaking and boost their outlooks, both Match and Bumble are ending 2024 down – Match by 8%; Bumble by 45%. The companies’ stock prices have declined 80%+ since 2021, and surveys indicate people are increasingly tired of using dating apps

Dig Deeper

• Last month, Tinder, Match's leading app, reported 54.1M monthly active users, down from 64.3M last year and 73.3M in 2020. Tinder has now reported a declining userbase for eight consecutive quarters

• Bumble, meanwhile, has experienced slow user growth and declining revenue numbers, prompting the company to modify its apps – including by dropping its signature “women chat first” feature – and wage marketing campaigns geared at getting women to date again. One campaign said, “A vow of celibacy is not the answer”

KEY STORY

CEOs Rush to the Exit

A record number of CEOs quit their jobs in 2024

• Last week, employment and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas released an annual report detailing trends in the departures of US CEOs, including of public and private companies and in government/nonprofits

• It found that more CEOs left their jobs that in an year since the company started tracking the data in 2002, punctuating a year in which the CEOs of some of the world’s most prominent companies – including Nike, Starbucks, Intel, and Boeing – have resigned

• The trend comes amid a period of high stock prices and economic and political uncertainty, which is giving executives both an opportunity to cash out handsomely and concerns about their jobs’ future viability

Dig Deeper 

• Through November of 2024, 327 CEOs left publicly-traded companies, up from a record 300 last year and an average of 252 since 2010

• The government/non-profit sector saw the most turnover, followed by healthcare and tech, which both reported 33%+ increases in chief executive turnover

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KEY STORY

Curb Your Detentions

China’s government is looking to curb long-distance executive detentions amid economic concerns

• The abduction of a corporate executive by authorities based far from a business’ headquarters is known as “long-range fishing.” Senior officials from more than 80 public Chinese companies were captured for shakedowns in 2024, per the FT

• The spike in long-range fishing has scared both Chinese entrepreneurs and investors, with many transferring their funds overseas

• China’s Premier – the Communist Party’s second-ranking official – has now promised a national crackdown on corporate oversight authorities, an effort to alleviate concerns about detentions and shakedowns

Dig Deeper

• A leaked internal report from China’s Guangdong Province stated that “10,000 enterprises in the city of Guangzhou faced [some level of] law enforcement from other areas” since 2023

• Some authorities have been enacting efforts to protect local business leaders from out-of-town forces, while Premier Li said enforcement in certain areas has been “abusive… [and] unfair” and that the national government must address “the pressing issues raised by citizens and businesses”

KEY STORY

Cost of a Single Cig

A single cigarette takes about 20 minutes off a person’s life, per new findings from researchers at University College London (UCL)

• The UCL researchers' findings suggest graver consequences for smoking than previous estimates, which suggested that each cigarette shortens a smoker’s life by 11 minutes

• The new findings are based on more up-to-date figures from long-term studies tracking the health of the UK population

• They suggest that women lose 22 minutes and men 17 minutes for every cigarette they smoke

Dig Deeper

• There were some positive findings in their research, too

• “The sooner a person stops smoking, the longer they live. Quitting at any age substantially improves health and the benefits start almost immediately,” Dr Sarah Jackson, a UCL researcher, said

• According to the research, quitting smoking at any age can make a difference in your lifespan. For example, giving up a 10-smokes-a-day habit this New Year’s Day means that by January 8, you can prevent losing a whole day of your life

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🧱 Poland’s prime minister pledged to complete a wall between his country and neighboring Belarus

🏙️ A Wall Street Journal report claimed that Neom – a futuristic city being built in Saudi Arabia and the world’s largest construction site – is a “dystopia” where “employees have reported incidents of gang rape, suicide, and attempted murder”

🇰🇷 South Korea’s acting president ordered emergency safety checks on all of the country’s Boeing 737-800 jets

🇺🇸 President-elect Donald Trump endorsed Mike Johnson (R-LA) to remain the House speaker

⚖️ A federal appeals court upheld a decision that found Trump liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s. The ruling affirms the $5M Trump owes her in damages

COMMUNITY
What does Roca Nation think?

🧠 Yesterday’s question: What was the best event — concert, sporting event, or otherwise — you attended in 2024?

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🐭 Of Mice and Metaverse: Cornell University researchers developed "MouseGoggles," a miniature VR system for lab mice that uses repurposed smartwatch parts to create a more immersive virtual experience

🇧🇷 Bubble Boy Rescued: A young boy was rescued on Christmas Eve after drifting out to sea in a large plastic bubble off Lazaro Beach in Brazil

🐐 GOAT Cheerleader Battle: A 17-year-old Texas cheerleader and FFA (agricultural organization) president faces felony charges for allegedly poisoning a rival's show goat, named Willy, with pesticide

🇺🇸 Keeanu Once, Shame On You…: A San Diego-area woman fell victim to a Keanu Reeves impersonator scam after previously identifying and warning others about the exact same type of scam. The second scammer contacted her pretending to be Keanu Reeves and asked for some money, to which she agreed

🍬 Jawbreakers Don’t Cap: A 19-year-old Toronto business student ended up with a broken jaw in two places after attempting to bite through a three-inch diameter Jawbreaker candy

ROCA WRAP

What We’re Proudest Of This Year

2024 has been a spectacular year of growth for RocaNews — both in terms of our audience and business — but what we're proudest of this year has nothing to do with revenue and everything to do with you all.

Earlier this year, when Hurricane Helene ripped through the southeast and devastated western North Carolina, one of our readers, a nurse named Katie, sent us an email asking us to help. She and friends had been running food and water to Appalachian towns that the storm had rendered unreachable by car. With the weather getting colder, she asked for our community to send blankets and coats for the mountain folk, especially the kids, who would soon be freezing. In the days that followed, the Roca community sent hundreds upon hundreds of packages to her home. On the first day of the gift blitz, her Amazon deliveryman was perplexed, she told us. Then the boxes kept arriving – and Katie continued to run the goods to the mountain towns.

Katie – whose own generosity blew us away – regularly expresses her gratitude for the Roca community’s display of generosity. “I wish I could hug each of y’all and your readers,” she texted us after the final run.

This amazed us, but little did we realize what would come just a few months later.

Two weeks ago, we launched a GoFundMe for an inspiring community-funded restaurant in Wellsville, OH, called The Gathering Place.

Wellsville is a small town on the Ohio River that at first sight looks bleak. It's lost two-thirds of its population since its peak and been ravaged by the opioid crisis, but its residents are fighting back to save it. They started a gathering place (fittingly called "The Gathering Place") that serves free food, hosts movie nights, and convenes for church events. They've rehabilitated numerous opioid addicts simply through their love and community. The Gathering Place is supported only by donations, and Wellsville is a poor town with a median household income that is less than half of the national average. One of its founders, Brenda, told us, “$200 goes a LONG way.” Given how deeply the Gathering Place moved us, we decided to share their story with you all and start a GoFundMe with a goal of raising a couple thousand dollars.

The Roca community ended up raising $29,000.

You all have blown us away with your generosity and compassion. As these displays and your daily emails have shown, you all recognize that there are decent people everywhere, regardless of if the media treats them as backwards and hopeless. You all genuinely want to help them. After this year, we can say: You all have helped them.

We have never been prouder as founders. Thank you for an amazing year!

ROCA VIDEO
Top 4 Media Lies of 2024

Both sides of the partisan media lied with criminal levels of shamelessness this year. They built false narratives to score political points and told you to deny your own eyes and ears. We highlight the biggest lies from this year, ranging from the hysteria over the Springfield, OH, pet-eating narrative to the coverup of Biden's mental decline. Let us know what we missed in the comments.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

Happy New Year, Roca Nation! Max F is currently enjoying a sangria in Spain while Max T is squeezing a stress ball in a dark corner of his basement awaiting Notre Dame-Georgia tomorrow. But what we both feel is this: Immense gratitude. Thank you for reading Roca and supporting our mission. It is incredible to reflect on our progress since August 2020, and we are giddy just thinking about what the next few years may have in store. Have a wonderful day.

–Max and Max