2023 "What's Update"
Published on December 22, 2023 by Alex Ip
Here's a preview of our 2023 Impact Report that satisfies our fiscal sponsorship agreement. We'll update and repost this as we complete the Impact Report:
- What did you accomplish during 2023? How did you use money?
We scaled back the number of stories published by half, focusing on the most underreported and impactful ones. Our views per story and newsletter subscribers increased by 80% and 50% year-over-year respectively!
We were selected as a finalist for the 3rd Annual Anthem Awards. Our work also got featured on the Nieman Lab's Predictions for Journalism, 2024, WABE, Saporta Report, and republished in Yale Climate Communications, Earth Island Journal, and Climatica.
Most of our funds were spent on salary for our first Newsroom Fellow Shreya Agrawal and honorarium for freelancers; the rest was spent on renting out a mailbox, software, work travel, and fees. - What challenges did you face during 2023? What did your Collective learn? How did you change or grow?
2023 was a year of transition for our team (Alex graduated from college and moved to Boston, while Shreya joined in September), and just a crappy environment for journalism overall. The mood can be stressful, lonely, and somber. That's why it's important to lean on one another and do the best journalism we can; we finally have a reporting team now, and we have formalized newsroom practices when it comes to contracts and fact-checking! - What are your plans for 2024? Anything exciting coming up?
For 2024, we hope to continue reporting about "the two Souths" -- global and stateside, while fleshing out our newsroom. Alex will be done with journalism school and we hope to transition Shreya into a permanent staff role! We have also secured funding to bring back our Newsroom Fellowship and hire a fundraising/ grants manager.