The Correspondent: Raising the Bar for the Future of News
Whether it’s because of the rise in new technology, or the recent focus on “fake news” that has placed the industry under intense scrutiny, news media is being examined, developed, and reformed like never before. Old players in the field are struggling to adapt to these fast-changing conditions, while new players are emerging to pick up the slack. One of these newcomers is The Correspondent, an online news platform that was created with the goal of redefining journalism. Unfortunately, The Correspondent’s services will be short lived, as they have recently announced the discontinuation of their publishing as of January 1, 2021. However, their bold attempt at changing news for the better is still worth a closer look.
The Correspondent, founded by Ernst-Jan Pfauth and Rob Wijnberg, serves as the U.S. sister site to the Dutch news website De Correspondent, which was launched in 2013. De Correspondent’s success led to the eventual creation, through crowdfunding, of the U.S. branch, which was officially launched on September 30, 2019. Since then, the site reports having gained 20,000 new members and taking on 21 different correspondents from around the world. The Correspondent brands itself around having an innovative and collaborative approach to journalism. They aim to do this in a number of different ways, many of which they outline in their original introductory promotional video:
According to The Correspondent’s mission statement:
“News as we know it leaves us cynical, divided, and less informed. With your help, we want to change that.”
Like this statement, much of their website is designed around providing a more personal, almost blog-like, news experience. Unlike the ad and clickbait-cluttered homepages of news websites like CBS News or USA Today, The Correspondent and De Correspondent keep it clean and simple, with muted colors and minimal illustrations that bring focus to the article content and nothing else. Similarly, unlike reading a mainstream news article, which is clogged with ads, email sign up buttons, and loads of other clickbait articles, an article on The Correspondent is made up of only the article’s text and photos along with sidebar links to sources mentioned in the article. If they do encourage you to read more or purchase anything, those promotions are at the bottom of the article and kept to a minimum.
This plain design leaves nothing but the reader and the article, making for a much more focused and personal experience. In addition, The Correspondent tends to use second person language to address the reader directly, and make their text feel more like a conversation, which helps to express one of their main goals: collaboration.
The Correspondent strives to make journalism a collaborative effort that includes not only the journalists and editors but also the knowledge of the readers themselves. According to their website they “rely on members to share with us what they already know about the topics and countries they care most about.” Members are given the opportunity to give input on stories and story ideas. Most of this is facilitated through the services “conversation editor”, which helps facilitate this feedback. Their individual correspondents also keep public notebooks of their story progress for members to look at and comment on. This helps to keep the journalists accountable and make readers feel like they can have an impact on their news.
The Correspondent’s other main draw is their business model, which takes a vastly different approach than traditional online news. The news service prides itself on being “ad-free”. They are entirely membership based, operating on a “choose what you pay” model that leaves readers with the freedom to pay as little as one dollar a month or as much as they feel the service is worth. This fee also allows members to send free links to non-members as much as they want. This process feels much more natural than the traditional ad-ridden newspapers that often nag readers to subscribe. Readers feel as though they have a choice with how they pay and share articles, free from the bombardment of ads.
All of The Correspondent’s characteristics provide a new and different take on what online journalism has been since the creation of online news. In the last decade or so, the news industry has had to adapt to less physical printing and more online content, which has been challenging. At the core of this struggle to adapt is the industry’s typical business model. The journalism industry has undergone extreme financial changes, some of which are outlined in Ted Rosenstiel’s speech on “The Future of Journalism” below:
Since print sales began to decline, newspapers have had to look for other sources of revenue. Many papers, such as the New York Times, have instituted a paywall for regular viewing of their content, but subscription fee or not, most fall back on advertisements as their main form of income. Unfortunately, this has caused newspapers to become reliant on site traffic in order to stay afloat; leading to the clickbait articles and sensational headlines that they must showcase in order to keep readers clicking.
Among other factors this shift has led to an overall distrust of the news media. As Jay Rosen puts it in the article “This is what a news organization built on reader trust looks like”:
“You cannot trust them to be wholly on the side of their publics because they have another class of customers to worry about: the advertisers”
The extreme reliance on advertisers, in combination with rising concerns related to media bias, have caused readers to question whether these traditional news sources are upholding their core democratic purpose. Newspapers have had to make certain compromises in order to survive and in doing so have left people feeling like they don’t know what sources to trust, if any at all.
These concerns are exactly what The Correspondent was aiming to respond to. Their membership-based financial model is meant to do away with the need for advertisements or clickbait. In fact, The Correspondent’s goal was to break away all together from the sensational, “breaking” news that most mainstream newspapers chase after. Instead, they wanted to provide articles that highlight long-term global patterns rather than simply the latest updates. They’ve also made a point to directly address the topic of media bias on their website, in order to ease some of those concerns in their audience:
“So we’re not going to pretend to be “neutral” or “unbiased.” Instead, our correspondents will tell you where they’re coming from, in the belief that transparency about a point of view is better than claiming to have none.”
The Correspondent’s solutions seem incredibly promising, and have been successful within their Dutch site. Still, the service was ultimately not able to remain financially stable enough to continue their innovative approach for more than two years. So what does this mean for journalism? According to The Correspondent’s website, their discontinuation is partially due to the Coronavirus pandemic, which led to a drop in their membership renewals in 2020. In addition, They also feel it has to do with the current global climate, where so much is going on that people need the breaking news that The Correspondent was designed to avoid. It’s possible that The Correspondent simply introduced the right ideas at the wrong time, meaning they could still have a lasting impact. After all, they introduced solutions to just about every issue that the industry is facing, and found a way to express all the desires of many readers into one online model.
The bottom line is that the journalism industry stands at a crossroads, and must evolve in order to continue to survive. As more services like The Correspondent begin to rise in popularity, readers will soon gravitate toward the sources that take their values and priorities into consideration, which means traditional news outlets will need to adopt these practices or risk losing more business. Like The Correspondent, traditional news outlets may change their business model to be more membership-based, though this would be a challenging transition, since they are not starting from scratch but changing a previous model. Even if a new business model wouldn’t match The Correspondent’s exactly, it would still likely include some of the same effects, such as less clickbait, sensational headlines, and meaningless “fluff” articles.
This may also include the simplification of their websites, as once readers begin having reading experiences like that with The Correspondent, they are not as likely to continue to tolerate the traditional news website. With regard to media bias, newspapers may have to become more receptive and open to criticism in order to gain back trust and allow people to feel like they’re on the public’s side again.
These issues are things people have been questioning the media about since long before the launch of The Correspondent and, even if their publishing will not continue, The Correspondent has given the industry and the public a model that proposes well thought-out solutions. Other start-ups may even continue this trend. Either way, The Correspondent has set the stage for what modern journalism could be, and the news industry has no choice but to go forward.
Additional Resources:
Richard Campbell et al. “Media and Culture: mass communication in a digital age.” 10th edition.
Jay Rosen’s “This is what a news organization built on reader trust looks like”
