A new quality online “newspaper” due to launch in Amsterdam in September has raised more than €1 million in just eight days from subscribers willing to pay in advance for what it describes as “slow journalism” – in-depth news analysis, entirely free of advertising.
As newspapers all over the world struggle to
cut costs, increase advertising revenue and generate income using
website paywalls, the backers of
De Correspondent
are using an entirely new model – appealing over the heads of
advertisers directly to readers who value quality journalism above all.
By midday yesterday, the new news “platform”
had exceeded its start-up target of €1 million through a campaign of
so-called “crowd funding”, raising the cash directly from 15,754
individual subscribers so far, each of whom has paid an annual
subscription of €60 in advance.
That extraordinary response means the
publication has already raised more than 105 per cent of its launch
costs, and with 21 days of the period allocated for fundraising still to
go, now confidently expects to be significantly over-subscribed.
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