Krautreporter

I've signed up to support Krautreporter. It's a reader-funded, daily online magazine run by German journalists, absolutely free from advertising and thus free from click-bait journalism. Or it will be, if they can get 15,000 supporters by the end of today. It will cost €5 a month and they're fairly close to their target.

I've signed up despite the fact that only six out of their 28-strong editorial staff are women. I've done so because they say that we, the readers, are the only people to whom they'll have to answer. And I would have hoped that a genuinely innovative approach to quality journalism would also want to shake up gender relations in German newspapers, where women tend to write about society and pets and men tend to write about the economy and science. But of course they can only shake things up if we're prepared to pay for their work. So this is me pledging €5 a month in the hope that other readers will see things the same way and they'll commission writing by women on subjects other than society and pets.

For strong writing by women online at a German newspaper, go to the FAZ's Ich. Heute. 10 vor 8. blog. It's quite astounding that one of the country's most small-c conservative media outlets would host it, but perhaps that shows that things are moving, gradually.

I'll update this piece to let you know whether they get off the ground.

And they did, eleven hours before the target deadline. The online editions of the major newspapers seem a little disgruntled.