I joined The Correspondent in April 2019 as member support manager, with the bittersweet task of reading, documenting and replying to thousands of messages sent by you, our members, falling to me. By the end of my time here, with a degree in English and my passion for our journalism, I was also working with both our written and audio stories.

I became so well acquainted with both poles of the politeness spectrum – with exuberant joy at one end and at the other, an email telling us to “rot in hell” – that I thought not much more could faze me. But this past week, since the closure of The Correspondent was announced, I’ve been proved wrong. Reading your farewell messages has been much more emotionally challenging than I anticipated.

Your stunned expressions of sadness; your earnest pleas to let you help through extra donations or ad-hoc crowdfunding campaigns; your overflowing praise for the inspiring and hope-giving corner you told us we’d carved out, where some of you said you finally felt at home – all of it seamlessly reflects how we ourselves have been handling the news of our closure.

The Correspondent meant something, to you and to us. What more could a searching millennial wish for?

So, what next for me? I’ll be staying in the Netherlands and I’m looking for new opportunities. If you have any ideas, I’d welcome a conversation. Don’t hesitate to drop me a line here.

Here are four stories that have left a lasting impression on me. I hope you’ll enjoy them too.

I wish you all a merry, Covid-free Christmas!

Carmen Schaack
General editor/member support manager

WHEN OPTIMISM GETS IN THE WAY OF PROGRESS
NESRINE MALIK

Producing audio stories created more opportunities for us to enter the daily rhythm of our members and as audio editor, my role was to select stories to be read; assign them to our voice artists based on three continents, manage the upload process and liaise with the newsroom.

Among my favourites is Better Politics correspondent Nesrine Malik’s “Why the world can get worse by constantly saying it’s getting better”, read out loud by Emi Paternostro. I found this story to be a particularly great fit for audio in that it leaves ample room for the voice artist to breathe life into the storytelling, infusing it with a bit of humour where appropriate, in a tone of voice that alternates between playful and serious. It’s a combination that perfectly suits the insight that this story lays bare: that a “jarring positivity” can actually hinder real forward movement.

Why the world can get worse by constantly saying it’s getting better
Column: 10 – 14 minutes | Also available in audio!

JUST WHAT ARE FEMINISTS FIGHTING FOR?
OLUTIMEHIN ADEGBEYE, IRENE CASELLI, NESRINE MALIK & VALENTIJN DE HINGH

I still remember the day when this story was hatched in our real-life newsroom … so many angles, so many strands to weave together, so many feminisms; struggles that had already been overcome in one part of the world that still needed to be fought elsewhere.

The questions the writers were grappling with were – and still are – big: what do we mean by “woman” anyway and what does a woman want? There could be no one answer so we ran with four! The result is a sharp dissection of ideas such as empowerment, equality, transphobia as well as the challenges of trying to raise a feminist.

Should women even want equality? And three other pressing questions for feminists today
Analysis: 9 – 12 minutes

HOW TO BUILD A WORLD WE ACTUALLY WANT TO LIVE IN
ERIC HOLTHAUS

Here’s one possible sketch of what a world could look like in which we’ve started taking concerted, global action to stop runaway climate change – and build a kick-ass society in the process. Climate correspondent Eric Holthaus wrote in January that “our story of the 2020s is yet to be written, but we can decide today whether or not it will be revolutionary”.

Among the flood of cynical voices proclaiming our collective inability to avert climate change, this piece shows how a different narrative around catastrophe could change how we perceive the issue and help us increase our sense of agency, which is vital if we want to get enough people to step up.

In 2030, we ended the climate emergency. Here’s how
Essay: 10 – 13 minutes

HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE?
OLUTIMEHIN ADEGBEYE

Quit waiting around for “the one” and recognise that you’re already in a love relationship with yourself, others, and the world at large, because, as Othering correspondent OluTimehin Adegbeye writes, “there are millions of different ways to be human, but when we think of love as a practice, a world of new possibilities opens up to us”.

Doesn’t that just sound immensely liberating?

To counteract the effect of consuming too many narrowly scripted Hollywood romances during lockdown, read this piece as a reminder of what love really entails, and learn about all the little ways in which you’re likely already practising it without knowing.

Forget romantic love. Let’s celebrate (and practise) a different kind of love instead
Essay: 7 – 9 minutes