Membership · 2025
Media68 is reader-funded and has been since we opened the newsroom in Berlin in 2017. The thirty days that follow this sentence are yours, with every story, every briefing, every translated edition unlocked. On day thirty-one, we ask for five dollars a month. Or you walk away with thirty days of independent reporting and no invoice.
No card required for the trial. Cancel from your account in two clicks. 41,200 members across 132 countries already read this way.
The public ledger
We publish this breakdown every quarter. The figures below are the audited average per paid member for 2024, verified by the Membership Puzzle Project. Nothing here is round-numbered for marketing. This is where the money actually goes.
The largest share. Media68 works with 140+ contracted stringers across 68 countries — paid per filed piece, with a kill fee, and reimbursed for visas, fixers, and translation on the ground. This is the line that disappears if a newsroom chases scale.
Twenty-two editors on salary in Berlin and Mexico City. Two layers of fact-check on every reported piece, including a primary-source dossier that ships with each long-form story and is downloadable as a PDF.
Weekly editions in English, Spanish, Arabic, and French — translated by named, paid translators (not machine-output, not uncredited). The Arabic and Spanish desks together account for roughly a third of our weekly readership.
Servers, CDN, the cyber-insurance policy every independent newsroom now needs, libel counsel on retainer, and the bookkeeping required to publish a real ledger instead of a fundraising deck. The unglamorous line. The line that keeps the lights on.
The remaining cents go into a reserve that has, twice in our history, kept stringers paid when a regional bank corridor froze. Independent newsrooms do not get bailed out. This is the bailout we built ourselves.
Totals: $5.00 per member per month. Audited annually by the Membership Puzzle Project. Full ledger PDF available on request to [email protected].
The No-Ad covenant
We do not run paid placements. We have not run them since the newsroom was founded, and we have published this as a written revenue policy — not a marketing slogan — since day one. No sponsored content. No native advertising. No "partner" stories. No advertiser review of copy before publication. The membership is what makes this enforceable: when the only entity writing the cheques is the reader, the editor's only constituency is the reader.
The single decision
One trial. One button. No card to start, no retention team if you decide to leave. The trial exists so you can decide on the work, not on the pitch.
Gift memberships are delivered by email on a date you choose. We don't wrap them. We don't add a bow. We send a note and a link.
Before you click
On day thirty-one, your trial converts to a paid membership at $5/month unless you cancel before that date. We email a reminder seven days, three days, and one day before the conversion. If you do nothing, the card on file is charged; if there is no card on file, your account reverts to the free tier and your reading history stays intact.
From your account page, in two clicks. There is no retention flow, no "are you sure," no offer to downgrade. Cancellation is immediate and the membership remains active until the end of the period you've already paid for. We log every cancellation in our quarterly public report — including the reasons members give, when they choose to share them.
Yes. Gift memberships are available in 3-month, 12-month, and lifetime (one-time, $300) terms. We send the recipient an email with a single redemption link on the date you choose. Gift memberships are a meaningful portion of how new readers find us — roughly one in seven paid memberships in 2024 began as a gift.
Yes. Students with a verified .edu email (or international equivalent) pay $2/month. We also offer a sponsored low-income rate at the same price, available without documentation through a short form — we do not ask for proof, by design. Both rates are subsidized by the standard $5 membership. Roughly 11% of members are on a reduced rate.
All four: English, Spanish, Arabic, and French. Weekly editions publish in each language on the same calendar week. Members can switch the default edition in their account at any time, and can read any edition regardless of their default — translation is not a paywall.
The full archive (4,180+ reported pieces since 2017), the weekly translated editions, the primary-source dossier PDFs attached to long-form pieces, the briefings newsletter, and — most importantly — the ability to comment and to submit story tips that reach the editorial board directly. Free readers see the current week's reporting and a selection of archive pieces.
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