De Correspondent Successful

In little more than a week, De Correspondent has reached its target number of 15,000 members. “A milestone in the field of crowdfunding,” writes De Correspondent on its website.

The journalism project of the former nrc.next editor Rob Wijnberg needed 15,000 paying members to be able to start the project. The necessary start-up capital of 900,000 euro was exceeded to more than a million.

Members have to pay an annual 60 euro but last week larger amounts were deposited by members. Wijnberg actually gave himself 22 days more to reach the target, so it can be perceived as a big success that the target was reached only in one week.

On Monday last week, Wijnberg announced his project publicly. De Correspondent – previously named the Fifth Power – must become a platform with a site where everyday articles will be posted by prominent Dutch people like Femke Halsema, Jelle Brandt Corstius, Henk Hofland, Ewald Engelen, Alexander Klöpping and Arnon Grunberg. The articles will not be regular news flashes but must go deeper into a subject.

The goal of the project is to blow new life into journalism. One of the current problems of journalism is that entertainment and reality are more and more intertwined, resulting in confusion of the reader about what is real. By having no advertisements but only paying readers, De Correspondent thinks that the confusion can be brought to a halt.