Explainer: How Bristolians are keeping proper journalism alive

If all our members gave £2 more a month, we’d smash our campaign target overnight.

Cable Community News 25th September, 2023

The Bristol Cable

Whether you’re completely new to the Cable, or a die-hard member since our launch in 2014, we’re excited to tell you that today, the Cable is launching our biggest membership campaign yet.

It’s clear: people are tired of corporate news that thrives on profit, peddling sensationalism and compromised integrity. That’s why readers come to us for journalism on the issues that matter, and why our readers become members.

The Bristol Cable has pioneered the membership model for local news internationally. But we need to do better at getting the word out across Bristol: you can keep proper journalism alive.

As a city with a history of activism, rebellion and standing up to injustice, we want as many people as possible to #BackTheCable to get results for Bristol, and show that people-powered journalism works.

This is just some of what we’ve achieved in less than ten years:

The truth is, pretty much all of local media is at a juncture, but ours is this: we currently have more grant income than member income, and we want to flip this on its head, because members = sustainability.

Let us tell you why the Cable’s member-owner model is so important, with a bit of ✨radical transparency✨ about the model, our finances and our plans for the Cable’s next decade.

Total campaign goal: £60k (a 50% rise in membership income)

• Milestone 1: £30k by end of 2023
• Milestone 2: £30k by Oct 2024

Want to know how you can participate in the campaign? Scroll to the bottom of the page.

What’s so special about membership?

When members buy in, the Cable can never sell out. Because members become co-owners who can have a say in steering the paper, membership keeps us accountable. Membership income is also sustainable income, because the load is distributed, and it allows us to focus on getting on with journalism, because it’s core funding that isn’t tied to a project.

1. Accountability

Cable members become part of the Bristol Cable media co-op: they own the paper, and can have a say in how it is run.

Consider what Cable co-founder Adam Cantwell-Corn said about how the Cable’s “democratic mandate” allows our investigations to succeed, after winning the 2019 British Journalism Award for our investigation into a modern-day slavery case in Bristol:

There were definitely moments where we considered just packing it in and leaving it there. As the police investigation went on for quite a long time… It was quite frustrating because we didn’t know if it was ever going to materialise to anything… We’re not based around advertising so we don’t have the same need to continuously publish stuff in order to generate advertising.

The Cable is currently 36% funded by members, and 61% funded by grants (3% other: print ads, training fees etc). We want to flip that ratio, because membership income is sustainable income.

2. Core funding (membership) vs project funding (grants)

We’re incredibly grateful for the grant funding we’ve won. But it’s usually for specific, not always journalistic, projects and accessing it is competitive and time consuming.

This has become an even harder task in 2023: due to inflation, Brexit and the cost of living crisis, many philanthropic organisations are tightening their belts and, in some cases, pulling out of grantmaking in the UK completely.

Membership income is the core money keeping the lights on, paying for us to just do journalism.

When we have won grants, we’ve invested in new people and journalism projects. But, of course, when those grants run out they leave a big funding cliff, so we have to find new grants.

We’ve increased our membership from 100 people to 2,500 over the last nine years, but we need to do better. More members means not only increased sustainability, but a healthier democracy for our media co-op.

3. Paying journalists (well) to do journalism

We made the decision long ago to pay our staff a living wage. Our hard working journalists get a higher salary than the majority of other local journalists at multi-million pound corporations –  though, we’re still only able to pay a maximum of £28,000 a year.

We currently have what’s considered an incredibly lean annual budget: around £375,000. But for a tiny team, that’s a lot of money to find.

In short, we’ve done a great job on a very tight budget and to become sustainable, we need to raise our membership income. We believe we can do it; here’s the plan.

What does the campaign involve?

We’re at the forefront of a growing independent media movement across the world, internationally renowned in the industry for our model and our work. However, there are still a lot of people in Bristol who have never heard of us! 

So firstly, we want everyone in Bristol to know we exist, to get to know the results we’ve achieved for Bristol already, and #BackTheCable to help keep proper journalism alive and help us to achieve more! So we’re running a new ad campaign to spread the word.

Secondly, we have a lot of readers who have heard of us and know our work is important, but aren’t yet members. We know from talking to you that you want to keep proper journalism alive, and we are hoping to convince you once and for all to back us. This is people power: if everyone on our mailing list became a member @£5/month, we’d raise £250,000 and the campaign would succeed overnight.

Thirdly, we want to increase our average contribution from existing members. 81% of respondents to our August member consultation said they’d be willing to pay £5/month or more, and one third said they’d be willing to pay £10+. To encourage this, we are relaunching our member offer, giving members new benefits if they pay more: a new newsletter, greater event discounts, the print paper delivered to your door quarterly, and more.

Finally, for those who can really afford to pay more, we’ve created a Patron membership option, which encourages those who can afford to give more to do so to subsidise those in the city who can’t afford to pay.

Those who pay significantly more have no special access or influence, simply the ability to give back to their city, having a bigger impact on the sustainability of local journalism. The Cable will always be one member, one vote.

Responding to one of our above asks will help us smash our first campaign goal of raising membership income by £30,000 before 2024, a goal that will keep our investigative reporting alive. With your support, we can continue to shine a light on what’s really going on in the city — and make tangible change.

What’s next? (Spoiler: It’s accountability!)

Just as we hold power to account, we are accountable too. All members are invited to our AGM on October 26th to discuss the campaign, and the future of the Cable, with the staff team.

We have plenty more updates to give – and, as ever, samosas will be provided to fuel the democracy.

How can I be a part of the campaign?

• Come to our events! Our campaign events series is launched by Moya Lothian-McLean with a talk on The Future of Campaigning Journalism. We also have events coming up with Shon Faye, Hamza Syed, Gary Younge, Peter Apps and more TBC
• If you love the Cable’s work but you’re not yet a member, now’s the time to back the Cable.
• If you’re currently paying less than £5/month (£60/year), consider our new £5 member offer and help us smash our campaign target.
• If you’re able to give us one hour’s wages a month, your contribution will help us faster down the path to sustainability, and you can get great benefits such as even higher discounts and early podcast access.
• If you’re able to give £1,000/year or more, become a Patron member and maximise your impact on the sustainability of local journalism, and achieving change in Bristol, while receiving all our benefits, plus a handful of extras you can opt-in to such as an annual impact report.
• Contact us to request a digital toolkit you can use to share the campaign with your friends, family, colleagues and contacts.
• Talk about the Cable! Discuss the importance of impactful, investigative journalism with your friends, family and colleagues via emails, newsletters, social media, word of mouth… 

It’s time to #BackTheCable.