Nearly every week, I see newspapers and magazines that seemed fine suddenly going out of business. Or a private equity fund buying up a chain of newspapers that had been serving communities for decades and stripping them for parts. And now, the thing that’s making all publishers wring their hands is AI – publishers are seeing massive drops to their web visits as AI scrapes their content and delivers it up to people in chatbots, with the journalists who did the original work not even credited with the work.
Despite this, I have hope for journalism because of what’s happening at The Tyee.
Years ago, we made a strategic bet that support from our readers was going to drive our whole future. And thankfully, that is working for us.
Over the past decade, we’ve more than doubled our journalism team and are publishing more work than ever. More people read The Tyee now than at any point in our 23-year history.
This is only possible because we regularly ask our readers to sign up as paying Tyee Builder members. Roughly half of our entire budget is made up of contributions from over 10,000 readers.
We’ve been doing more as our resources have grown. A weekend culture section filled with original essays. Hard-hitting investigative journalism in Alberta. A brand new biodiversity beat. A reporting project called Reality Check, focusing on misinformation and online radicalization. A flagship podcast.
Our model is simple: if more of our readers sign up to support The Tyee, we can keep up with rising costs and keep adding more talented journalists to our roster and set them loose on uncovering truths that would otherwise not see the light of day.
That’s why we’re launching a spring member drive to sign up 650 new or upgraded recurring Tyee Builder members (that’s monthly or annual) by midnight on Monday, June 15.
The Tyee is a Registered Journalism Organization, so contributions over $5 get tax receipts.
And back by popular demand! Until our campaign deadline of June 15, sign up to contribute $15 per month or $180 per year and get a piece of custom Tyee headgear.
— Jeanette Ageson, Publisher
Join The Tyee as a Builder today.
