Five reasons you’re not a Daily Maverick Insider

Tuesday, 7 November 2023

Five reasons you’re not a Daily Maverick member… yet

You’re unemployed. You’re on a state pension. You’re a student. 
We get it, we really get it. That’s why we don’t have a paywall and why we don’t force you to pay to read an article. It’s BECAUSE of you that we ask those who can afford to contribute to do so. We’ve got your back and one day, when things get better, we know you’ll have ours. 
 

Hmmm… on the surface this is a tough one… but: What do you value in life? Even if you don’t read Daily Maverick every day, what is it worth to know that the most experienced newsroom in the country is out there, fighting for South Africa’s democracy, exposing the corrupt, hunting down the criminal and shining a light on the better path? Or maybe an even better question is: What if Daily Maverick had to close, like so many newsrooms all over the country already have?
 

Good. That means we’re doing our jobs properly. Not for the sake of being contrary but to inform the public of the truth. A newspaper should never be an echo chamber, where you search for confirmation of your personal beliefs and thoughts. It should be a trusted source of information. Confirmation bias could be a terrible thing and if sometimes you read what you don’t like, remember we have a diverse newsroom and we also welcome diverse opinions on our platform. Independence means we’re never aligned to any political force; without it, journalism quickly becomes propaganda.
 

That’s understandable. This warp-speed world is robbing us all of time. But… signing up to Maverick Insider, our membership community, will take four minutes. And just think of all the time you’ll save not having to read these appeals from us every week! ;-)
 

Once upon a time, newsrooms were funded by advertising alone. Then Facebook and Google came along and gobbled it all up. In a panic for survival, many newsrooms decided to force people to pay for their journalism by putting up paywalls. 

Daily Maverick (being maverick) took the road less travelled and decided that we shouldn’t force people to pay, but we could ask them to. To survive, we couldn’t do it alone. We needed the help of our readers who, we hoped, would help us because, well, they were reading us. And so we created the Maverick Insider Membership Community, with a host of benefits and one core purpose: To help journalism in South Africa survive.

We also decided that since this was a voluntary contribution, the reader should decide how much, because when a little is multiplied by a lot of people, it becomes substantial. The majority of our members contribute the cost of a cup of coffee a week to us. Every penny goes towards paying our journalists’ salaries. With 27,000 members, that still only covers a third of our costs.

There are now more than 10 million of you reading us every month, and 9,973,000 are reading for free. Can you help us? Will you help us?

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