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Remember @TheCorrespondent? $2.6M raised from U.S. donors to launch an office in the U.S. that never happened? It's shutting down https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/12/the-correspondent-de-correspondents-english-language-site-is-shutting-down/
Couple things: The Correspondent had around 50,000 members at launch. It lost more than half of them. People just didn't renew. By Oct. 2020 down to about 20,000 paying members, some paying as little as $1
De Correspondent cofounder Rob Wijnberg projected that The Correspondent would bring in $555K from members its first year (source: https://medium.com/de-correspondent/a-peek-into-the-budget-how-we-plan-to-invest-our-members-contributions-b8b780280c7b)...
It actually made $139,000 (source: https://thecorrespondent.com/697/heres-how-we-invested-your-membership-contributions-at-the-correspondent/7376091019-698bd550)
U.S. funders' enthusiasm remains baffling to me. Omidyar Group's Luminate contributed $900,000 the first time around and another $900,000 grant (along with a Dutch company) in August 2020
From today's memo to staff, which is included in full in our story.
MEANWHILE! Let's take a look at what the Dutch site has been publishing https://twitter.com/Kishakishi/status/1334412863503470592
