Longreads is celebrating its 11th anniversary this year. Nine years ago, we launched an optional membership—first for readers to support the service, and later to support our story fund for original reporting, essays, and podcasts.
Now, here we are in 2020—we’ve published stories from thousands of writers, and we’ve raised over $1 million from readers. Last month, Longreads earned its fourth National Magazine Award nomination, for the second season of Bundyville, Leah Sottile’s groundbreaking podcast in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting. The stories you read on Longreads eventually became books, like Michele Filgate’s outstanding collection What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, and Jeff Sharlet’s This Brilliant Darkness.
Last year I shared a short Twitter thread about the early days of Longreads and its membership. Twitter has certainly changed a lot since the early days of the hashtag, but our mission has never changed, which is to support and celebrate great stories on the web, and organize this community of readers to fund new work.
Longreads is pushing to achieve long-term sustainability, and reader support is more critical than ever to ensure that we can keep publishing the stories and voices that challenge us and expand our understanding of the world. Our goal for this drive is $50,000. And your support means we can keep publishing this work with no paywalls—free for everyone to enjoy and share.
We have more exciting projects coming soon—starting with today’s launch of HIVE, a new series about women and the music that influenced them. Then in March we’ll debut a new podcast from the producers behind Bundyville, and an important new collaboration with The Marshall Project.
We can’t do any of this without you. You can become a monthly or yearly subscriber, or you can make a one-time payment. Just go to Longreads.com/join.
Thank you, as always, for your continued support.
If you or your organization would like to make a contribution of $1,000 or more to sponsor our newsletter, or a specific topic, or a series, reach out to us at partners@longreads.com.
—Mark Armstrong, founder, Longreads