{"id":93309,"date":"2016-10-21T10:00:37","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T10:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=93309"},"modified":"2016-12-22T17:28:08","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T17:28:08","slug":"the-canary-proves-online-journalism-pays-if-you-give-your-readers-what-they-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/the-canary-proves-online-journalism-pays-if-you-give-your-readers-what-they-want\/","title":{"rendered":"The Canary Proves Online Journalism Pays (If You Give Your Readers What They Want)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The left leaning news website set up a just over 12 months ago on an initial investment of just \u00a3500 is proving that online journalism can pay if you give you readers what they want.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Canary turned over \u00a3250,000 in its first year of operation, has grown to become a top 100 UK news site and now employs an editorial team of 25 (mainly) part-time workers.<\/p>\n<p>The site is funded, like many other online publications, through a combination of advertising, sponsorship and subscriptions.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike many other publications, The Canary doesn\u2019t feel it needs to offer readers any other incentive to support the title other than their content.<\/p>\n<p>The Canary\u2019s editor-in-chief Kerry-Anne Mendoza <u>told journalists<\/u> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pressgazette.co.uk\/the-canary-from-500-start-up-to-top-100-uk-news-website-in-the-space-of-a-year\/\">http:\/\/www.pressgazette.co.uk\/the-canary-from-500-start-up-to-top-100-uk-news-website-in-the-space-of-a-year\/<\/a>): \u201cPaying subscribers for this whole first year don\u2019t get anything. They don\u2019t get a mug, they don\u2019t get a t-shirt, they don\u2019t even get an email from us saying welcome.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are paying for content that they could get for free purely because they want our writers to earn more money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Highlighting the success of the operation Mendoza said: \u201cWhat people seem to like us for is breaking open legislation that\u2019s coming through and actually explaining it in a way people understand and can see what the risks are and then take action.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Canary operates a unique business model which it explains on its website:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>First, we pay tax. We are based in the UK and are happy to contribute our share to develop a wonderful country, not without its problems of course.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Then we pay costs which we keep below 5% of our gross revenue.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>What is left is our net profit. We split this simply:<\/em>\n<ul>\n<li><em>50% to our writers<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>10% to our section editors<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>20%\u00a0to our leadership team<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>20% goes back into the company for marketing and new projects<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Each writer and editor is paid in two ways. Firstly, each article receives a flat rate equal payment from our monthly income from supporters. So with each new supporter the pay per article goes up every month. Secondly, each article receives a top-up payment based directly on the percentage of web traffic, and therefore advertising income, that articles generate during a given calendar month. It\u2019s as simple as that.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>While The Canary\u2019s politics might not be everyone\u2019s cup of tea (including many left-wing supporters), their approach to business should be of interest to any writer or publisher that wants to invest in the future of journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The left leaning news website set up a just over 12 months ago on an initial investment of just \u00a3500 is proving that online journalism can pay if you give you readers what they want. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":93310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3729],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93309"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98149,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93309\/revisions\/98149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}