The decision to discontinue The Correspondent was made due to financial setbacks, making our English language newsroom financially unsustainable. We saw a surge in membership cancelations, with members often citing increased insecurity in their personal financial situation. The average membership fee of our choose-what-you-pay-model paid also lagged behind budgetary needs.
We sadly have to say goodbye to 10 amazing colleagues. You can see who is part of the team here. If you know of any job opportunities, do reach out to us via hello@thecorrespondent.com and we will gratefully pass them on.
We informed our staff on the morning of 10 December, in a group virtual meeting, and then had conversations with each individual about their severance package and future. Everyone has been given an opportunity to review the offer and reviewed both this letter and the FAQs.
The Correspondent’s full-time staff will be offered a severance package and transition fee in accordance with Dutch labour law. Several Dutch staff members who worked for The Correspondent will continue working for De Correspondent as of 1 January 2021.
Articles that were planned to go online before the end of the year will still be published and paid for in full. Copyrights to all non-published work fully belong to the author, who can publish it freely anywhere else. We will properly compensated authors for any work that has been commissioned but will not be published before 1 January.
Most importantly we will miss our The Correspondent colleagues, and the perspectives from all over the world that they brought us. There will be no lay-offs at De Correspondent related to the discontinuation of The Correspondent. Dutch staff members who worked for The Correspondent part time will continue working for De Correspondent as of January 1st, 2021.
We explored every alternative scenario we could think of to continue our English language platform, including continuing with a smaller team, proposing salary cuts and merging The Correspondent with its Dutch sister site, De Correspondent. Unfortunately, none of the scenarios turned out to be financially feasible.
Your membership ends on January 1, 2021. We will start refunding you and other members from the first week of 2021 onwards. This will happen automatically. You don’t have to take any action for this. Please don’t charge back your membership payment, since this will only incur extra costs for The Correspondent.
Two examples of how the refunds are calculated:
- When you have a yearly membership which renewed on September 30, 2020 your membership will be active up and including 31 December 2020. The remaining time (counted in days) being 1 January 2021 - 29 September 2021 will be automatically refunded to you.
- When you have a monthly membership which you started on December 7th 2020 your membership will be active up and including 31 December 2020. The remaining time (counted in days) being 1 January 2021 - 6 January 2021 will be automatically refunded to you.
That is very kind of you, thank you, but we will refund all our members. If you want to support independent journalism ventures like ours in the future, you can visit the Membership Puzzle Project, a New York University initiative that keeps track of all membership based journalism platforms around the world, for inspiration.
Thank you so much for your support.
Some of our members have been discussing ideas around organizing another crowdfunding campaign, or how you are willing to pay more, or are offering to waive your rights to a refund. I can’t express how much this means to us.However, a combination of scenarios means we couldn’t indeed make The Correspondent work. This included:
- The fact that only 27% of founding members renewed their memberships
- The average membership fee dropped
- There was an increase in membership cancellations for the members who joined after our launch in late September 2019
These, three individual worst-case scenarios came into play all at the same time.
Unfortunately, after weeks of exploring solutions and new strategies, we came to the conclusion that none of these were financially feasible. I hear you when you say we could have included you at this stage of the process, but that’s also why we couldn’t find an opportunity to involve you, our members.
This is because the combination of factors would have led to such a large financial gap in our budget for 2021. We wouldn’t have been able to make ends meet, even if every current member doubled their membership fee.
Thank you all so much for your support in that time, and for your support now. It means a lot to us all here at The Correspondent (and there never would have been The Correspondent in the first place if it weren’t for members).
The pandemic does play a significant role, yes. With Covid-19 dominating the headlines non-stop for the past year, it proved very difficult to offer "unbreaking news" to members in over 140 countries. People want to know from their media source: "Is my kid’s school going to be closed tomorrow and when will I be eligible for a vaccination?" While essential, this is not the kind of journalism we were set up to do. We were focused instead on transnational issues.
During the crowdfunding campaign that made it possible to launch The Correspondent, members from over 130 countries joined our unbreaking news community. So, yes, we definitely think that there’s a market and a need for this type of journalism. Sadly, we were not able to make it work in this climate, but we applaud our journalism friends all over the world who do. Please visit the Membership Puzzle Project, a New York University initiative, for an overview of all membership-based journalism platforms around the world.
We have informed our ambassadors via email or phone call about this sad news. We can’t speak on their behalf and we remain very grateful for their support.
Yes, The Democracy and Media Foundation and Luminate. We are immensely grateful for the support they have given us, in good times and bad. We applaud their mission to support independent media all over the world and we’re proud to have been part of their impressive network of journalism organisations.
The Dutch union for journalists was informed on Wednesday 9 December 2020 about the discontinuation of the newsroom. In The Netherlands, the union is the ‘Nederlandse Vereniging voor Journalisten’. We have shared with the union that The Correspondent is stopping for financial reasons.
Yes, all of the remaining cash will be used to pay our creditors. There is no money going back to the founders of The Correspondent.
As of the new year, we will stop publishing new articles. All articles and audio stories published during the existence of The Correspondent will remain publicly accessible. Other than that, the website will remain online for archival reasons.
Members can still download the audio app until we cease publishing. We will remove it from the Apple and Android app stores on January 1, 2020. The audio journalism will remain accessible on the website.
While all articles and audio stories will remain publicly accessible, member comments will not. Member comments were made in the context of a community and have been visible to members only. Since memberships will end on January 1, 2021, these comments will not be accessible any longer.
We have no plans nor any intentions of relaunching The Correspondent. We gave it our all, and we didn’t succeed. We have launched several other projects in the past that didn’t succeed and we have also launched new endeavours successfully. Experimenting with new things is part of our DNA and we’ll keep doing so in the future.
We are now completely focused on winding The Correspondent down in a responsible way. It’s too early for us to properly reflect on the past few years of setting up and running The Correspondent. We will, however, do so in the near future and share our lessons learned
The Correspondent is an online platform for unbreaking news. We launched on 30 September 2019. You can join us as a member anytime.
By ‘unbreaking news’, we mean: we want to radically change what news is about, how it’s made, and how it’s funded. Instead of feeding you sensational headlines about the latest hype or scare, we provide you with smart coverage of structural, long-term developments that shape the world around us.
Instead of describing problems and stopping there, we want to look for solutions with you. And instead of luring you in with clickbait so we can sell your attention to advertisers, we don’t take advertising money of any kind. We only represent your interests — the members who fund us.
We launched The Correspondent with five full-time correspondents who will publish articles and develop their beats together with you, our members. Our correspondents are deeply passionate, knowledgeable, and curious journalists who will dig deep into the important developments and issues of our time. They’ll write in English and are currently based in the US, Nigeria, India, the UK, and between Italy and Argentina. They won’t report on a specific country, but will cover the fundamental forces and developments that shape our world.
To learn more, you can read our correspondents’ mission statements here. You can subscribe to their personal newsletters without being a member.
Each month we also work together with a variety of freelance correspondents.
You can read more on how the freelance correspondents will fulfill their roles here. If you're interested in joining The Correspondent team, please visit our work with us page.
Our correspondents are based all over the world: we currently have correspondents working from the US, Nigeria, India, the UK, and between Italy and Argentina. The Correspondent’s staff - editor-in-chief, managing editor, engagement editor, conversation editor, copy editors, image editors, developers and the membership team - are based out of our HQ in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
We love a lot of the work our colleagues at other media organisations do, but like great art, we think there can never be enough great journalism!
There are lots of little things that we do differently, but here are three big ones:
- We have a different idea of what news is;
- We have a different way of creating journalism;
- We have a different business model to pay for it.
So what does that mean exactly?
Firstly, we won’t breathlessly follow the news cycle, but cover the underlying forces that shape our world. Reading The Correspondent will help you trace the deeper relationships between events around the world and offer solutions for what we can do about our societal problems.
Secondly, we’ll do this by collaborating with you, our members. You can talk and work together with our journalists, asking them questions, and sharing your knowledge and experience. They will listen, respond, and make use of your expertise because they realise that you — our members — collectively know more than we do.
Last but not least: we’ll do this on a site that is completely ad-free. No annoying banners, and no sponsored content either. We only represent your civic interests, not those of powerful businesses.
We think a society can only thrive with a free and lively press. While we’re critical of different aspects of the news industry, we are unequivocally not jumping on the “blame the media” bandwagon. We’re concerned about the growing hostility towards journalists the world over. When we point out the shortcomings of news, we don’t mean “all journalism”.
We do, however, think that the hostility, distrust, and cynicism towards the media is a good reason for more fundamental introspection and constructive debate within journalism circles: why are we distrustful, and what can we do about it? We want to help restore trust in journalism.
For the longer answer to what we think about ‘clickbait’, click here. But basically, we don’t like it. That’s why we’re funded by members instead of adverts. We don’t want to grab your attention by luring you in with headlines that don’t make good on their promises and only want to sell your ‘click’ to advertisers.
Having said that, we still really want you to click here. Seriously. We need you to click here now. There are 18 unbelievable reasons to click here (and the 14th will shock you). Please click here to help us stop doing this.
Our founder, Rob Wijnberg, has written 2,000 words on this subject, but here’s the short version: with regards to being left wing or right wing, we don’t think these labels are very helpful, because, nowadays, they’re mostly used to disregard people you disagree with. We believe you can’t do justice to human beings with a simplistic partitioning like left or right, liberal or conservative, for or against any specific leader. We think the same is true of media. World views — including those of journalists — are too complex for that.
But our correspondents do have a worldview, just like everyone else . So we’re not going to pretend to be “neutral” or “unbiased.” Instead, our correspondents will tell you where they're coming from, in the belief that transparency about a point of view is better than claiming to have none.
If you really want to label us as an organisation, here’s one we’re comfortable with: The Correspondent is grounded in progressive realism. This means that we believe in the possibility of a better world, based on facts. And we will change our minds if the facts tell us to.
A fundamental part of our journalistic stance is the conviction that, collectively, our members know more than one editor or one correspondent. Our journalism is shaped by the beats each correspondent covers. Unlike much of traditional media, that beat at The Correspondent is centered around a theme rather than a region.
From a global vantage point and with input from our readership, our correspondents develop their chosen topic to progressively uncover the systems and unfolding developments that influence the world we live in. That's why we'll want to tap into our members' knowledge as much as possible. We rely on members to share with us what they already know about the topics and countries they care most about.
Our managing editor is at the core of our editorial process, working both with correspondents and the wider team on every step of the workflow: from idea generation through to publication and dissemination.
Our conversation editor’s role is to make sure that the continuous conversation between our knowledgeable members and our correspondents is as fruitful as possible. This is partly done by inviting experts onto our platform, by setting up Q&As, and by highlighting member contributions that enrich our journalism on a daily basis.
If the conversation editor focuses on our members, the role of the engagement editor is to reach non-members with our journalism. They recognise that community is built in different ways on different social media platforms and are responsible for creating comprehensive newsletters, interesting Twitter threads and Instagram stories, and timely journalistic campaigns for greater societal impact.
If you’re not paying for journalism, then in most cases advertisers are. Ultimately, this means that your attention is the product that is being sold. That’s why we see a lot of clickbait around. Publishers need to get your attention so that they can sell more ads. The Correspondent is ad-free, because we only want to have our members’ interests at heart. No clickbait, no attention-grabbing articles for attention’s sake. You’ll get insightful stories that you helped make, because you decided to pay for them. And when you’re a paying member, you can share as many articles as you like with your non-member friends!
The movement for unbreaking news depends on journalistic independence. This means our journalists should always have the final say about what makes it into a story and what doesn’t. That said, we believe that trust in journalism can increase through transparency and that our stories can be enriched by collaborating with members who have relevant experience or expertise.
This is why our correspondents share their story ideas with members and keep a public notebook of their research. We want you to know what we’re working on. We want you to share your knowledge and personal experience about a topic with us. We believe that type of collaboration with members at different stages of their research helps correspondents gain as wide a perspective as possible in which to embed their globally-minded journalism.
When we say we don’t believe in objectivity, what we’re emphatically not saying is “facts don’t exist”. We’re not saying “facts don’t matter” either. Facts exist, and they’re important. We also believe in being independent and fair — which are both different from being “objective”. When we say we don’t believe in “objectivity”, what we mean is that there’s no way for a human being to describe the world without having a point of view. Facts are human assessments of reality. They’re how we try to make sense of the world. So instead of pretending to be “neutral” or “unbiased,” we believe it’s better to be transparent about our point of view than to claim we have none.
Our first safeguard against editorial bias - and this may sound contradictory - is to acknowledge that we actually have one. As stated in our founding principles, we do not adhere to the false pretense of “objectivity”, common in many (traditional) media organisations.
This doesn’t mean we don’t believe in facts, or that we think all ideas are equally good. We do, however, think that journalism is a deeply human endeavour, and as such, is always rooted in the worldviews of the individuals who produce journalism.
So at The Correspondent, the best way to safeguard against editorial bias is to be open and transparent about the worldviews that inform our journalistic choices. Put another way, correspondents will tell you where they’re coming from by keeping a public notebook where they share their research questions, assumptions, sources and conclusions. Most importantly, they will tell you when the evidence results in them changing their minds.
Our final safeguard against editorial bias is you, our members. We believe that our members collectively know more than we do. By making your expertise, experience and views an integral part of our journalism, we can ensure that our stories are informed by more than what we believe or think. Your expertise broadens our worldview just as much as we hope to broaden yours.
Our correspondents don’t chase the latest breaking news, but instead ask their audience: “What do you encounter every day at work or in your life that rarely makes the front page, but really should?” They don’t just write one-off stories, they share their learning curve and solicit input from members and others outside our community. Meaning they keep a public notebook and share their questions, assumptions, data, sources, inspirations, and doubts with you as well.
This kind of transparency helps you understand where we’re coming from and gives you the opportunity to share your knowledge and experience along the way. A correspondent’s published piece won’t be the end of the reporting process, but the starting point for a more in-depth conversation. We see correspondents as ‘conversation leaders’ on their chosen beat. They will make cross-border connections, enabling us all to see the issues we face from a new, refreshing and empowering perspective.
Finished stories are only half of what you’ll get as a member of The Correspondent. Our correspondents shed light on the underlying forces that shape our world in a way that won’t leave you cynical and depressed, but informed and empowered. You can read more about how we practice the journalism we preach here.
We always invite you to share your thoughts, ideas and insights with our correspondents and this can be done in a variety of ways: The contribution section below an article is the first way you can share thoughts and questions, not just with the correspondent but also with other members. Our journalists and conversation editor read, and participate in the discussions in the contribution section, and will regularly highlight especially valuable and interesting contributions to a piece.
In addition, full-time correspondents will each start a newsletter which you are invited to follow and can write responses to. Finally, look out for what social media platforms our correspondents use actively and what in real life events they will be participating in so you might have other opportunities to communicate with them. You can always get in touch with our conversation editor Nabeelah Shabbir at nabeelah@thecorrespondent.com or contact us at hello@thecorrespondent.com.
Alongside our correspondents, we have two types of relationships with freelancers: the first is more traditional, where a journalist will pitch us, and be commissioned to do a story. The second is far more involved where the freelancer is working on a series for us, over a period of months, and is paid a monthly wage, rather than a fee per piece. In both cases, the expectation is that, as with our full-time correspondents, freelancers focus on connecting the dots; on making the unseen visible, rather than reporting on disparate events. They are also expected to engage in the contributions section with the conversations their work sparks.
As we seek to add great depth and diversity to our journalism, we will regularly publish call-outs, for pitches from journalists working in different formats, parts of the world and on transnational themes not currently being covered on the site. If you’re interested in writing for The Correspondent, keep an eye on our work with us page. If you have an idea, you can also proactively pitch us at any time.
We’re delighted that you’re thinking of renewing your membership to support independent, transnational journalism. All you need to do is go to Stay a member and hit the ‘Continue’ button. Then you’re all set!
You can adjust your payment frequency and preferred amount anytime. Please note that if you choose iDEAL or PayPal as a payment method you will be charged for the renewal straight away. For any questions about this, email Carmen at hello@thecorrespondent.com.
You’re among the 20,000 members who’ve so far joined our mission to unbreak the news.
We think that news to uncover the underlying forces that shape our world are needed more than ever. Here are just a few examples of our stories that push past the sensational to inform you about topics that matter - critically and constructively:
Alternatives to traditional media absolutely need to thrive. Reimagining journalism and developing a community around this vision requires collaboration and long term commitment. If you share that conviction with us, make sure you Stay a member so we can continue to uncover stories about the most important developments of our time.
The Correspondent is based on a Choose What You Pay model. This means our members set for themselves the amount they are prepared to pay for our journalism.
We’ve chosen this model because we believe in a pricing model based on trust, inclusivity, and solidarity: we trust you to choose a fair price that’s appropriate to your financial situation. We feel journalism should be inclusive — it should be affordable for everybody. And we believe in the power of solidarity: those who can afford a little more can help keep our journalism accessible to those on a tighter budget. You can read more about it here.
Your membership - if you supported us during crowdfunding - started on 30 September 2019, and lasts for one year. If you enjoy our journalism and want to commit to another year, we invite you to stay a member straight away! You can choose between a monthly or a yearly membership and either remain on the same amount or change the sum. If you opted for a recurring membership, this will automatically renew on 30 September 2020. Our intention is to continue this model in subsequent years.
By becoming a member of The Correspondent you are helping us to create independent, ad-free, collaborative journalism. Thanks to our paying members, we can publish stories, hire correspondents to bring you more ‘unbreaking news’, and develop our platform and our app. Members gain access to all of our published work and are able to use all of the available functionality of both the website and the app. For example: members can contribute underneath each story, which we hope will lead to an ever-more stimulating contribution section full of thought-provoking conversations and ample opportunities to find and share knowledge.
Our correspondents and our conversation editor regularly invite members to share their experiences and expertise. Correspondents use this input as part of their research and writing. As a member you’re an essential part of our journalism!
Members can save articles, get reminders to read later, share pieces via social media, and follow and email their favourite correspondents. Members always have access to our full story archive. People who are not yet members are only able to read articles that have been shared with them by an existing member.
Still not sure? Subscribe to our sneak peek and get a free article sent to your inbox each week. Or sign up to our correspondents’ personal newsletters to get to know them and their work better and be kept up to date throughout the writing process.
The Correspondent is based on a Choose What You Pay model. This means our members set the amount they are prepared to pay for our journalism for themselves.
Starting from 1 USD you gain full access to The Correspondent. The reason we keep the threshold so low is because we want our journalism to be read by as many people as possible. We hope that those who can afford a little more can help keep our journalism accessible to those on a tighter budget.
You can choose between having a monthly membership, or a yearly membership. You can become a member here. You can review and make changes to your membership in your settings.
We spend your membership contribution on making great in-depth journalism about the fundamental issues of our time. To do that, we’ve hired and will continue to hire talented and knowledgeable correspondents based around the world, as well as supporting staff based in our Amsterdam office. We’ll invest in the development of our platform, making sure that you have a smooth, privacy-friendly, and secure user experience. Have a look at our latest budget update that summarises how we intend to invest your membership contributions post-launch.
In return for your one-time membership payment during the crowdfunding campaign, you received a one-year membership that started on the day we launched The Correspondent platform - 30 September 2019. After your first year, you can choose between a monthly recurring membership or a yearly recurring membership. If you enjoy our journalism we’d love for you to stay a member and help us uncover more unbreaking news that don’t make headlines but should.
You can become a member here. You can choose the amount you’d like to pay and choose between a monthly membership, or a yearly membership. If you supported us during the crowdfunding campaign, your membership starts on the day we launched - 30 September 2019 - and lasts for one year. If you enjoy our journalism and would like to renew your commitment to independent, ad-free journalism you can choose to stay a member and to contribute yearly or monthly. Thank you!
We accept payment with Paypal, major credit cards like Visa, Maestro, American Express and JCB, and iDEAL (for EUR only). You can choose from the following currencies: USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, CAD. If your currency is not listed, current conversion rates will apply.
To request a complete or a partial refund of your membership contribution, please email hello@thecorrespondent.com. It would be helpful if you could also let us know why you prefer not to support us any longer. We think that your feedback will help us create better journalism for our members. If you want to adjust your membership or delete your account you can do so from your membership settings.
The Correspondent will keep its Choose What You Pay model, so you can decide your own membership fee then as well. You can already renew your membership for the year ahead! By staying a member you help us create independent, transnational journalism that pushes past the sensational to report on the foundational developments of our time.
As a member of The Correspondent you have access to all of our English language stories published on this website. If you’d like to read our Dutch journalism as well, you can join De Correspondent here.
We consult our members on important decisions as we’re developing this newsroom, like beats to cover and talents to reach out to.
First off: thank you for considering donating to us! The Correspondent has a Choose What You Pay model, so you can decide yourself how much you want to pay for your membership. But if you want to make a sizeable, tax-deductible donation, we might be able to accept that through a fiscal sponsor.
Please email Carmen Schaack about this: hello@thecorrespondent.com. To be sure: our editorial independence is of the utmost importance, so we cannot and will not accept donations tied to any favours in return — editorial or otherwise.
Do you have a new email address? You can update this in your settings. Here you can also indicate if you’d like to receive our regular updates: you have the choice between either a daily email or a weekly email, with a curated selection of our best journalism made in collaboration with members.
It’s not possible to update your bank details and payment method just yet. For questions about this, email Carmen at hello@thecorrespondent.com.
You can reset your password here.
We’re still working on making invoices for members easily downloadable from our website. Unfortunately, we’re unable to provide invoices while we’re still speaking with various tax authorities globally to work out the correct VAT rates for each county. If you need a payment receipt acknowledgement for your own records or to claim an expense, we are happy to provide this. Just email Carmen at hello@thecorrespondent.com.
This may be caused by your Safari browser running in private mode. You can switch this functionality off by following these steps: here. If the issue persists, please go ahead and email us at hello@thecorrespondent.com - we’ll look into it!
The Correspondent is currently only available as a website. It can only be accessed with a working internet connection. As our membership grows, we want to expand our web app so that you can also read The Correspondent offline. Here’s a tip for the time being: Pocket is an app that enables you to read articles without an internet connection. You can also download our articles as a PDF document and print. To do this, click the ‘share’ arrow on the top right and select ‘PDF’, then hit the print icon.
We have an audio app available for members-only! On the app you’ll find read-aloud versions of our best journalism, as well as our latest podcasts. You can install the app on your iPhone or Android device. You can find out more about the app on this page. This app is audio-only right now, but we’ll be expanding it in the future.
We want to tell stories in many different ways — in words, photography, illustrations, graphics, audio, and video. You can expect much more from us than just text.
Contrary to the trend in media organisations all over the world, we minimise the data we collect about you as much as possible.
Firstly, this is because we don’t want to collect data about you that we don’t really need. We see privacy as a fundamental human right – and think breaching that privacy by collecting sensitive data is wrong.
Secondly, because we don’t need to collect all that data. We are fiercely ad-free, so we don’t have demographics to cater to or eyeballs to sell. We can afford to be very privacy-friendly, because our members are the ones paying us. That’s why we only collect the data we are required by law to collect, or that is necessary for our platform to function correctly (such as login names, passwords, and correspondents that you follow). We do not sell this information to third parties.
Our reasons for collecting data must be explained clearly. And wherever possible, members must have control over the data collected. Protecting your privacy is also one of our ten founding principles.
Yes, that's us! We launched De Correspondent in The Netherlands in 2013, with a promise to be “an antidote to the daily news grind.” This promise resonated so widely that we raised $1.7 million from 18,933 backers — a world record, broken in a country of only 17 million people. In five years, our Dutch platform has grown into one of the largest ad-free, member-funded journalism platforms in Europe, currently supported by more than 70,000 paying members. We now have 52 full-time members of staff, including 21 correspondents.
The Correspondent publishes in English. Its sister site, De Correspondent, publishes in Dutch. The Correspondent’s focus will be global but shares its journalistic principles with De Correspondent: covering the most important developments and underlying forces that shape our world, rather than speculating about the latest hype or scare.
Since its launch in 2013, De Correspondent has published many articles that add to the global conversation around many topics including climate change, wealth inequality, migration, and more. We will translate the most relevant stories to English and make them available to our English-speaking readers on The Correspondent. A number of Dutch authors’ work will also be translated consistently once The Correspondent launches. Next to this, The Correspondent will have its own English-speaking Correspondents, based all over the world, with a team of editors and support staff based in our Amsterdam office.
The Correspondent is a for-profit company with a dividend cap. That way we combine the best of two worlds: the discipline that comes with being a sustainable company that provides journalism people are willing to pay for, but without the harmful pressures of chasing profit maximisation. In our founding principles, the dividend cap limits shareholder return to 5 percent of revenue. This means that the founders can never extract more than 5 percent of the revenue as dividends.
This and our nine other founding principles are safeguarded by a ‘public service veto’, enacted by the Dutch Foundation for Democracy and Media (Stichting Democratie en Media). This foundation, created during World War II to protect the then-illegal resistance newspaper Het Parool, is a priority shareholder with a veto over all decisions that would alter The Correspondent’s fundamental purpose or endanger its founding principles. SDM safeguards our dividend cap as well, to make sure our journalism will never take a backseat to profit maximisation. You can read more about it in this article by New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen.
In the six years our Dutch counterpart De Correspondent has been up and running, every penny of revenue has gone back into the journalism. We intend to do the same at The Correspondent as well.
While we don’t treat our relationship with members as transactional, their contributions are legally classified as a sales transaction; as such we must pay sales tax in the 130+ countries where our members are based. Based on the locations of our current membership base (of which the US and The Netherlands are the two biggest groups), our fiscal advisors have provided us with an estimate of the sales tax we’ll have to pay in different countries, and we’ve set aside the money for this in our budget. The exact figure continues to change as new members join The Correspondent every day.
We take our impact on the environment very seriously. At De Correspondent in The Netherlands, we’ve been mapping out our carbon footprint and have bought fully verified carbon offsets for all our historical emissions. As of January 2018, we have compensated our known emissions ten-fold. In doing so, we have effectively introduced an internal price on carbon of over $100 per ton. This works as a push to further reduce emissions in the near future.
We’re also developing a broader sustainable practice, using our leverage with suppliers, service providers, and our pension fund to push for more sustainable practices. We consider this a part of our core mission — and we report on it as such, hoping to inspire other organisations to follow suit. The Correspondent will adopt all of these practices as well, as soon as it’s successfully launched. You can help us by joining as a member here.
We publish a financial report every year. In it we explain how we invested into our journalism with your membership fee.
However, to keep everyone in the loop on how we’re going to spend our members’ contributions, we shared this financial update with our founding members on 27 June 2019. From 30 September 2020, we will send you an update on actual spending over the previous 12 months, as we’ve done at De Correspondent, our Dutch sister site, for the last six years.
The success of a platform like ours - where members are collaborators, not just consumers - is dependent on one-to-one recommendations, not one-to-many advertising campaigns. The experience of our Dutch sister site, De Correspondent, is evidence of this. It is the journalism itself that should bring in the newest members. That’s why there are no limits on how many stories our members can share. By spreading the word, members not only help to greatly increase the impact of our journalism, but you also inspire non-members to join our movement for unbreaking news.
That doesn’t mean we’re against media interest in our project. After all, we have to acknowledge the role that the media buzz around our crowdfunding campaign played in helping us surpass our goal in just 29 days! We just don’t believe that paying for attention is more valuable than investing in our journalism and our members. Turning curious crowdfunding supporters into satisfied members, who are ambassadors for us in the wider world, is how we grow membership.
While member satisfaction is key to our sustainability, we’ll keep a close eye on other measures of success, particularly around member collaboration and bringing in new members. We’d like to be in a position where we can invest more into our journalism so we can gradually increase the variety of global, unbreaking news we offer.
For now, we’re focused on building our English language platform. We might consider expanding to other languages in the future.
No one organisation can be ‘the fix’ for what’s wrong with journalism. Similarly, we appreciate that being more transparent opens you up to greater scrutiny. In our founding principles we state: “We believe in transparency and continued self-improvement”. To do the latter well, we have to be open to constructive criticism. That’s why we’d really like to hear from you, our members. The easiest way to reach us with questions, feedback and concerns is at hello@thecorrespondent.com. Advice and encouragement are always welcome! As is constructive criticism, of course. If you’re interested in writing for The Correspondent, keep an eye on our work with us page.
Drop us a line on press@thecorrespondent.com and we’ll be in touch!
First of all, thank you for your interest in working for The Correspondent! You can find all our open vacancies listed on our work with us page. We carefully consider all applications that are submitted.
