My name is Kate Myers, and I’m in charge of revenue and operations for The Intercept. My work managing our budget is usually behind the scenes, but I’m writing to you today personally because this is important.
You see, I don’t want to warn the editors in our newsroom that they might have to scale back some of their most ambitious plans for next year. I want our reporters to follow stories wherever they lead, regardless of cost.
As we approach a critical year-end deadline, our fundraising results are making me nervous. December is always The Intercept’s biggest fundraising month, and this year we set an especially aggressive goal.
But with less than two days left in 2020, we’ve fallen significantly behind.
I’ve been staring at spreadsheets for hours, and the bottom line is this: To get back on track today, we need at least 1,000 people to step up with a donation of at least $15 immediately.
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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 reader 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 do the job right.
But right now — in a time of global crisis — 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.
And currently, our numbers aren’t looking good. If we don’t make up our shortfall soon, it could mean our editors are forced to greenlight fewer investigative stories next year.
That terrifies me. Just imagine the corporate scandals that would go uncovered and the government corruption that would remain hidden and out of public view.
I know that the pandemic and the economic collapse it brought mean that many of our readers who would usually give around this time of the year aren’t able to. But if you are in a position to give, please consider making a donation today.
Thank you,
