I know we’ve been sending you a lot of emails this month, so I wanted to take a few moments to explain why The Intercept’s membership campaign matters to me.
Throughout my life, I’ve reported from war and conflict zones around the world and on the front lines of social justice struggles in the United States. And I’ve usually done it with very scant resources. As a young reporter, I slept on my share of floors in war zones and begged well-funded journalists to use their phones and internet connections to file my reports from the field.
But at The Intercept, we’ve always been fortunate to have the means to do truly ambitious journalism. And not journalism that meets some bullshit standard of “objectivity,” but journalism that genuinely afflicts the comfortable and gives voice to the voiceless.
In the beginning, our funding came from a single generous individual. But as The Intercept has attracted a growing audience, a grassroots membership has emerged — not so much deep pockets as everyday readers and listeners willing to chip in $5 or $10 a month to publish stories that would otherwise go untold.
By the time President Donald Trump left office, more than 70,000 people had donated to become members of The Intercept. But since then, across the media and progressive politics, donations and reader interest have declined sharply.
We set an ambitious $400,000 goal for this month’s membership campaign because no one in our newsroom believes that journalism should be less ambitious under a Biden presidency. And we’ve already raised more than $290,000 towards that goal.
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The Intercept also exists to create a home for a younger generation of journalists — a place where they can cut their teeth, get mentorship from seasoned reporters and editors, and hone their craft.
For example, my new colleague Ken Klippenstein is one of the best young journalists in the country. He regularly breaks big stories based on leaked documents, including on Amazon’s horrid treatment of its workers and on Navy training documents that portray socialists as terror threats. Famed whistleblower Chelsea Manning recently said that if Ken was a reporter in 2010, she would have leaked classified documents on U.S. war crimes and dirty deeds across the world to him.
Every dollar you invest in The Intercept supports truth-telling reporting today. And it nurtures a coterie of brilliant young journalists who will keep the flame of journalism burning in the darkest of times.
They’re bringing big dreams for new journalistic endeavors. Some of these projects will break through, precipitating new political debates and shifting the ground underneath corrupt and entrenched officials. Others will inspire movements, inform organizers, offer citizens a rallying cry, and pave the way to futures we can’t yet imagine. These are the veteran journalists of tomorrow, and they will accept nothing less than the full truth.
Without a home like The Intercept, some of these brilliant reporters would be forced to waste their talents writing clickbait headlines for celebrity tabloids, all to line the pockets of some of the richest moguls in the history of the planet. And we’d all be oblivious when those same moguls try to buy our democracy, bomb their way to greater wealth, and pillage our planet and our people.
Thank you,
