2023 has been one of the worst years that we’ve ever seen for news media job losses, with more than 17,000 eliminated since the start of the year.
Then, last week, nonprofit news outlets like The Intercept got even more bad news. A major annual survey found that charitable giving declined by the largest amount ever recorded between 2021 and 2022 — and 2023 is projected to be similarly difficult for fundraising.
Our reader-supported model has helped protect us from some of the pressures faced by for-profit news outlets. But with both digital news and the nonprofit sector facing serious economic headwinds, we’re looking at some very dire conditions now and in the years to come.
Despite these challenges, we remain optimistic about the future of The Intercept thanks to the incredible generosity of readers like you who chip in to support our mission.
But right now, we’re behind the fundraising goals we need to meet in order to take on challenging stories and investigations that could take months or years to pay off.
If you’ve saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
Over the past decade and a half, a generation of digital media outlets — including BuzzFeed News, Vox, Gawker, Vice, and Insider — all emerged with ambitious goals to harness the power of the internet to reinvent journalism.
Today, BuzzFeed News and Gawker are gone. Vice filed for bankruptcy. Others have made deep staffing cuts.
Some are calling it the “end of an era” for digital journalism.
Fortunately, The Intercept’s nonprofit newsroom doesn’t depend on the whims of advertisers and megacorporations. But we’re still not immune to a broader decline in news readership that is affecting the entire industry — especially since inflation is also squeezing the nonprofit giving that outlets like us depend on.
To make it to the other side, we need to continue to grow our membership program: the more than 100,000 Intercept readers who have shown their support for independent investigative journalism by donating some of their hard-earned money to power our work.
That’s the base of support we depend on to plan challenging investigations and know that we can follow the truth no matter where it leads us. But right now we’re behind the ambitious fundraising goals we need to meet to stay on track for 2023.
