You don’t usually get emails from me, but my name is Charlotte Greensit, and it’s my job to oversee editorial expenses for The Intercept — decisions that affect which stories and investigations can go forward and which ones can’t.
I always want to say “yes” when an editor wants to commission a freelancer for an exciting but expensive new investigation. I want our team to follow stories wherever they go, regardless of cost. But that’s not always possible.
In this time of crisis, there are so many urgent stories to tell, from corporate greed to government failure to the fate of the most vulnerable in our society. That’s why it’s so important to me that we meet our spring fundraising goal of $500,000 by midnight this Sunday, May 31.
When the pandemic hit, our website traffic skyrocketed and our reporters stepped up.
We’ve covered how big corporations are putting their employees and the public at greater risk by refusing to provide workers with the protection they need. We’ve blown the whistle on pandemic profiteering by private businesses and attempts by the government to use the pandemic as an excuse to curtail civil rights.
I couldn’t be prouder of the work our team is doing, but I know there are even more stories out there that we haven’t reported out. And that’s what keeps me awake at night: the corporate scandals we haven’t uncovered, or the government corruption that remains hidden and out of public view.
There are many factors that go into what stories we take on: What will be the real-world impact? Is this a story that will get covered if The Intercept doesn’t do it? But unfortunately, another factor that goes into those decisions is money.
The good news is that The Intercept isn’t dependent on the advertising revenue that dried up with the pandemic. As a result, we haven’t experienced the kinds of cutbacks that many for-profit news outlets have seen. In fact, thanks to your support this past year, we’ve invested in more freelance journalists to let us cover more ground and provided our core team of journalists with the technology and resources they need to keep breaking news, recording podcasts, and producing videos without missing a beat.
But right now it’s not enough to just maintain the level of journalism we’ve always done. We need to expand our coverage, dig deeper, investigate more, and uncover those stories that haven't yet been written.
