Were they right?
| Hey, | We're off today for the holiday (I wrote this yesterday and scheduled it to go out), but before I logged off, I saw something I wanted to share. | The Liberal Patriot, a publication that launched a little before I started Upward News, announced it is shutting down. It was founded by serious D.C. veterans. They had more traction than we did at many points. And they couldn't make it work… | It got me thinking about something I don't talk about much. | When I left my full-time job as a software engineer to build a news company, which frankly I had no business building, I talked to a lot of people. Journalists, media veterans, pundits, people who'd been in the news industry for decades. I was networking, asking for advice, trying to learn from anyone who'd listen. | Most people told me I shouldn't do it. At least not this way. | I was told to build a publication for the "elite" — lobbyists, politicians, donors — not ordinary people who just want to be informed. They told me to find a billionaire whose agenda I could stomach. That I needed a revenue model that doesn't depend on readers voluntarily paying for something they can get for free. | Nobody was being cruel. They were being honest. That's how the news industry works. That's how it's always worked. | I didn't listen to those early ideas. If I found it impossible to feel informed without being overwhelmed — to find a single news source I could actually trust — I knew I wasn't the only one. | I still think about those early conversations a lot. Because they were half right. | By every traditional measure, Upward News shouldn't still be functioning, because I've said no more times than I can count… | We've had companies approach us wanting to pay us to post things on our social media — without disclosing it. We've had advertisers pitch us products we thought were bad for our readers. We've had people offer to fund us the way they fund political movements — with strings attached. We've had offers that would've made the financial pressure disappear. Nope. Nope. Nope. | So here's the honest version of where we are: | Upward News exists because a group of readers decided it should. Not a board. Not investors. Not advertisers. Readers. Our paid readers prove all those people wrong — they chose to support something they believe in, and that's the only reason we're still here. | I'm emailing you because you're a reader who values our work, but hasn't decided to support us yet. | I'm not going to pretend we've figured out some genius business model. The model is you. It always has been. Every subscription is us being able to say no the next time someone asks us to compromise what we send you every morning. |
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| If you've been reading and it matters to you, this is what supporting it looks like: | | For about $6/month (15% off right now — $75.65/year), members get full access to paywalled sections in the daily brief, the day's article, editor insights, and our special weekend edition. Plus the knowledge that you're directly funding a newsroom that answers to no one but you. | | Thank you for being here, | — Ariel |
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