All of us at De Correspondent shared a dream: building an English language journalism platform for unbreaking news with members all over the world.

Eliza, Imogen, Nabeelah, Carmen, Shaun, Sabrina, Lise, OluTimehin, Irene, Nesrine, Tanmoy and Eric and over 50,000 members from 140+ countries made that dream a reality.

I can’t thank you enough for that.

Unfortunately, that dream stops here, as of 1 January 2021. But as managing editor Eliza Anyangwe so beautifully said when she heard the news of The Correspondent closing down: “I would do it all over again.”  

I would too. 

From the amazing crowdfunding campaign in 2018, raising 2.7 million dollars from a record breaking 48,977 founding members, to launching the platform in 2019, with the most amazing correspondents from four continents, until the very last day of publishing insightful antidote-to-the-daily-news-grind journalism: I would not have missed any of it for the world.

Some might say The Correspondent has failed, since it cannot continue going into the new year. But I beg to differ.

Because something that taught us so many valuable lessons, brought to the forefront such a diverse range of voices, and resulted in such amazing friends for life cannot be a failure, really. 

It was a ride, albeit a bumpy one sometimes, but an amazing ride nevertheless. We get off at this stop, but the ride – of quality journalism trying to figure out how the world around us works, so we can change it for the better  – continues. We’ll share our most important lessons learned when the dust has settled.

In the meantime, let’s keep dreaming together.

Thank you all, for everything.

Rob Wijnberg
Founder