The Charlotte Ledger: a new approach to journalism in a growing city

Join the thousands of Charlotte residents who have discovered The Charlotte Ledger, a digital publication with original information about Charlotte that you won’t find anywhere else.

The Ledger delivers smart and essential news and insights you need to understand our community, delivered by experienced local journalists whose writing has appeared in The Charlotte Observer, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Charlotte magazine named us “best email to land inside your inbox” and called us an “operation [that] continues to scoop all of us.”
Queen City Nerve called us Charlotte’s “best newsletter” for “delivering solid facts on news that Charlotteans find interesting.”
Our work has been cited in the New York Times, the Economist and Rolling Stone, and Axios called us an “outstanding read” and praised our “experienced (and entertaining) voice.”

Readers depend on us to cut through the noise and give them important and interesting local insights that are relevant to their lives. [Intrigued? Browse our recent work on this website]

5 local newsletters: We are a locally owned media company that distributes original information about Charlotte in 4 newsletters. We make about half of our material available to everyone at no charge, while the other half is only for paying members (🔒). Our newsletters are:

Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter (free/🔒): Our flagship newsletter, started in 2019, comes out 4 mornings a week and breaks news and tells you about trends in Charlotte that you will find interesting, in areas including business, education and community news. It also includes a roundup of news from other sources. The Saturday “weekend edition” regularly has a softer focus, with local human interest and lifestyle stories, and summarizes the most important local news of the week from multiple local and statewide sources.
Transit Time (free): A weekly newsletter, distributed on Thursdays, that covers transit and transportation in Charlotte — from cars to light rail to buses to scooters. We take you inside local and national trends and offer unparalleled and unbiased coverage of the city’s transit plan — one of the top local civic issues. This newsletter is produced in collaboration with our friends at WFAE.
Ways of Life (🔒): A weekly newsletter, distributed on Tuesdays, that is devoted to telling the inspiring, thought-provoking and often-heartwarming stories of people who have died recently in our community. It highlights the lives of people who perhaps didn’t make headlines, but made an impact on Charlotte in ways big and small.
Fútbol Friday (free): A weekly newsletter, distributed on Fridays during the February-to-October pro soccer season, that gets you up to speed on Charlotte FC, Charlotte’s Major League Soccer team. Whether you’re a casual fan, a diehard supporter or know nothing about soccer, we’ll make you better informed about the players and the dynamics.
Mountain Updates (free): On Oct. 1, 2024, we added a “pop-up” daily newsletter on the crisis and recovery in the N.C. mountains from the damage caused by Hurricane Helene. (This is a temporary newsletter.)

🎧 We also produce a popular local podcast — The Charlotte Ledger Podcast — in which we talk with local leaders about important Charlotte-area issues to make you smarter about our community and introduce you to people who are shaping our city. It is available on major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

➡️ We were founded in 2019 on the belief that Charlotte needs higher-quality sources of information. We’re a locally owned small business run by a pair of former Charlotte Observer reporters who understand this city because we have lived here and have written about Charlotte for 20+ years.

Here’s how The Ledger works: We are primarily an e-newsletter that is also published to a website. About half of what we publish is free to all: our Monday and Saturday newsletters and the Transit Time newsletter on Thursdays. The other half are only for paying members: our full Wednesday and Friday newsletters and the Ways of Life newsletter on Tuesdays.

Membership costs $9/month, or $99/year. Members receive access to everything we produce, and they help support a new model of journalism for Charlotte. There’s also a Premium tier, at $379/year, aimed at companies and individuals who want to support our work at a higher level. [More details] Unlike other media, our primary customers are our readers, which ensures that we’re delivering value to you. We work for our readers here in Charlotte — not for legions of advertisers or for faraway corporate bosses.

Sign up for our free version and check us out. You’ll get 2 full editions of The Ledger Business Newsletter a week, plus 2 partial versions, plus Transit Time and Fútbol Friday — all delivered straight to your inbox. If you find us worth your time and want complete access to everything we produce, become a member. It’s that simple.

You are free to cancel at any time — though we of course want you to stick with us. Since you are our customer, we will work to make sure what you receive is worthy of your investment.

You can find the details of how it all works and the idea behind it here.

Our mission

The mission of The Charlotte Ledger is to deliver smart and essential news to Charlotte, one email at a time.

Our values

Our focus is on publishing timely, informative and interesting business-y news that affects people in the Charlotte region.
We strive for fairness and accuracy and will correct all known errors.
The content reflects the independent editorial judgment of The Charlotte Ledger.
Any advertising, paid marketing or sponsored content will be clearly marked.

The Charlotte Ledger is accredited by the Better Business Bureau of Southern Piedmont and Western NC with an A+ rating.

Who we are

The Charlotte Ledger was founded by Tony Mecia, an award-winning former Charlotte Observer business writer and editor. He lives in Cotswold with his wife and three children.
The Ledger’s managing editor is Cristina Bolling, who joined the publication in April 2020 after a 20-year career at The Charlotte Observer, where she won numerous awards from the N.C. Press Association and the Society for Features Journalism. She lives in Ballantyne with her husband and three children.
The Ledger’s staff writer, Lindsey Banks, writes about local communities, nonprofits, small businesses and many other topics. She also produces The Charlotte Ledger Podcast. She is a recent graduate of UNC Chapel Hill and lives in NoDa with her puppy, Winston.

Samples of our best work

Some of our most popular original articles included:

An in-depth look into financial troubles facing the Aldersgate retirement community, which state regulators stepped in to oversee after determining that it was in dire financial circumstances. Through public records requests, our coverage painted a picture of what was happening behind the scenes among staff, board members and residents.
A look at the hot issue of triplex homes going up in south Charlotte, after they became allowed under the city’s new Unified Development Ordinance. Triplexes are controversial in many neighborhoods, where some residents worry that denser housing could harm the character of established neighborhoods and do little to improve housing affordability.
A special report on South End’s booming skyline, with a 3D visual representation of 17 projects underway and a host of others in the works.
The poignant story of a grieving mom who fought back after the man who killed her son in a DWI crash was sentenced to just 30 days in jail. “They picked the wrong mother,” said Britta Marshall, whose son, DJ, died on Pineville-Matthews Road in 2023.
An examination of the gridlock troubles posed by Charlotte-area Chick-fil-A drive-thrus — with ideas of how to solve the persistent and frequently grumbled about traffic issue.
Updates on efforts by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to draw new school boundaries in south Charlotte, which will affect school lines for more than 10,000 students and their families. A new high school is scheduled to open in Ballantyne in 2024 — and parents have desperately sought information on the new lines, which we have provided like no other media outlet.
A look at how a group of parents at Charlotte Latin School were at odds with school administrators over how the school handled sensitive topics of race, politics and sexual identity. The conflict led to an ongoing lawsuit.
A touching story, as the war in Ukraine unfolded, of a Waxhaw family worried about the biological family of their Ukranian-born son, Zeke, and friends they made while adopting Zeke from a Ukranian orphanage for children with disabilities in 2011.
The revelation, which for some reason received zero attention from other media, that a 12-year-old girl fell from a zipline and was critically injured at the YMCA’s Camp Thunderbird, which is one of the region’s most popular summer camps.
An in-depth article examining the frustrations of local residents with Airbnb “party houses” in their neighborhoods — with examples (including video) of wild parties that keep neighbors up at night and a look at solutions from other cities.