De Correspondent

Sometimes it publishes English versions of its articles. The concept and initial success of De Correspondent has inspired other projects elsewhere. A German website Krautreporter was founded in 2014 and adopted the same concept. An English-language news site, titled The Correspondent, launched on September 30, 2019. The site raised 2.6 million through a crowdfunding campaign in late 2018, boosted by prominent backers including Jay Rosen and Trevor Noah. However, it endured substantial criticism after it was announced that it would not open an office in the United States, as many backers had anticipated. On 10 December 2020, NiemanLab broke the news that The Correspondent would be closing down on 31 December 2020.

• Commercial — Yes • Launch Date — 2013 09 30 • Language — Dutch, English (partly) • Registration — Required • Owner — De Correspondent B.V. • Editor — Rob Wijnberg • Num Users — 60,000 • Current Status — Online • Name — De Correspondent

The project was co-founded by Dutch journalist Rob Wijnberg, creative director Harald Dunnink, CTO Sebastian Kersten, and publisher Ernst-Jan Pfauth. Wijnberg, former editor-in-chief of the Dutch newspaper NRC Next, proposed the crowdfunding idea for an ad-free news media platform on national television in March 2013. Eight days later, he and his team reached their goal of 15,000 subscribers all paying €60 for a one-year membership. Wijnberg worked with digital creative agency Momkai and its owners, Harald Dunnink and Sebastian Kersten, served as creative director and CTO respectively. Ernst-Jan Pfauth, who had been the founding editor of The Next Web and head of digital at Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, joined as a publisher. The website went live in September 2013. By January 2015 the website had more than 45,000 paying subscribers. In January 2016 the number of paying subscribers on the website was reported to be 50,000. In 2014, De Correspondent concluded a deal with Medium’s magazine Matter, for the magazine to translate stories from De Correspondent that they believe are relevant for an international audience. The first article in the partnership concerned the hazards of using public Wi-Fi. In 2015, De Correspondent started translating stories from Dutch to English. In December 2018, an English-language newsroom, The Correspondent, reached its crowdfunding goal of 2.5 million. The crowdfunding was enabled by a US$1.8 million "runway funding" by grants and loans from the Omidyar Network, the Dutch Democracy and Media Foundation, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies. Its first news stories were published in September 2019. On 31 December 2020, The Correspondent was shut down. Pfauth and Wijnberg noted that the platform was no longer financially viable due to two primary reasons: poor conversion and retention of members, especially with only 27% of founding members renewed for the 2021 fiscal year, as well as readers' demand for more immediate news in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that ran contrary to the outlet's concept of "unbreaking news". In February 2026, the entire editorial board, consisting of the editor-in-chief and the two deputy editors, announced that they would be stepping down in order to have more time to write articles.

The website aims to move away from the daily news cycle by focusing on context, rather than what happened in the past 24 hours. Individual correspondents lead as "guides" — deciding the news agenda and making their choices explicit. De Correspondent intends its authors to report on under-reported themes including energy, privacy, technology, and future economic trends.

De Correspondent runs on a content management system (CMS) called Respondens. In several blog posts, the founders said that they might make Respondens available for other publishers in the future.

The canonical record carries the following identifying particulars. Institutional cataloguing adds that de Correspondent is associated with Netherlands. The record continues: de Correspondent is recorded from 2013.