The Counter-Currents 2024 Fundraiser
Read All About It

1,180 words

The London Evening Standard is a venerable newspaper now distributed free in the city of my birth. It launched in 1829 and became free of charge in 2009. George Orwell wrote The Moon Under Water for the paper, in which he described his ideal pub, in 1946, the same year he wrote Politics and the English Language. Hopefully, he wrote it in a pub. The Standard has always been very much a part of London life and tradition.

The last time I was in London and read a copy, however, I felt ripped off even though I paid nothing, the editor then being George Osborne, once a hopeless Robin to ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron’s equally ineffectual Batman. It is as much a leftist rag today as every other British newspaper. But when the Standard did have a cover price, one of its points of sale was interesting, and is worth comparing to online magazines today.

I am old enough to remember stalls selling the Standard outside train and underground stations. “Staaandard! Staaandard! Read all abaht it!”, a chap in a cloth cap would call as commuters passed in or out of the station. Coins would be exchanged and copies of the newspaper folded and handed over so commuters could read all about it on their journey to and from work. But on more suburban, out-of-the-way routes, there would be no one selling, just the stall. There were piles of the Standard for anyone to take. You simply took a newspaper and put your money in the slot, like a big money-box. That stopped long ago, as you can imagine, because England has gone from being a high-trust society to a low-trust one during my lifetime, but the number of people who took a copy and didn’t pay was extremely low when I was a child. My father used to take the newspaper and give me the money so I could put it in the slot and feel important. Then the newspapers started getting stolen and the stalls destroyed as opportunist thieves began breaking them open for the cash, and that was the end of another small and unwritten, unspoken social contract of the type that used to be common in England.

Now, I am not saying that the reader of C-C who reads for free is operating in the same underhand way as those chancers who took a Standard without paying, the shifty types who nicked their copy, and certainly not making an equivalence with those who broke open the cash-box. I myself read content which relies on donations and give nothing. But then, to quote once more from Blackadder, I am as poor as a church mouse who has just had a particularly large gas bill. But the idea of “free stuff” does not sit easily with the political right. “Stuff” ought to be paid for, at its market value, and writing is no different, it’s just a different – and unique – type of stuff. So, this is not to scold or “lay a guilt trip on you” (as the hippies used to say) if you read C-C regularly and don’t donate. But the existence of webzines on the political right is far more fragile than those of the left. A magazine such as this won’t be receiving any money from George Soros any time soon, although that may be just as well, given what happened to Vice Publishing. But a magazine such as this has, of necessity, a different business model to that which usually obtains in publishing.

It’s not necessary to own your own business to know what a business model is or what dictates that model. Is a company producing products or services? Which are fixed costs and which variable? Do you have to advertise or do advertisers come to you? Is your product or service seasonal? In the case of magazines, are you print (dead–wood publishing, as we used to call it) or online or both? If you are print, you will get revenue from the cover price, but it will be a fraction of your total income. Newspapers do not make money from their sales revenue, they make it from advertising. This is why the Standard can survive for free. If you are online, however, with no cover price because you have no print version, you will rely on one of, or a combination of, advertising, subscription, and donation for your revenue.

And that is the case with Counter-Currents, which sees very limited ad revenue and relies on donations. Advertisers are notoriously wary of outlets deemed to be “far right” or “white supremacist”, or whichever absurd and gormless term the left are using this month. This may change, however, as Trump’s return to the White House and the mood in Europe signal a resurgence of the right. As leftist online magazines hemorrhage readers, there will be defections to magazines such as C-C, and advertisers will approach warily, but they will approach. I am now seeing YouTubers who no advertiser would have touched with a long pole a year ago plugging coffee or VPNs or male-grooming kits halfway through their latest video.

If you are a reader here, and are financially able to make a contribution, it helps to keep C-C afloat, and your payment will repay itself – and you – many times over. I have quoted this phrase so many times I may as well have a tattoo done of it, but the late, great Jonathan Bowden described C-C as “an online university”, and that works for me. Not only is the content worth entrance money, but I have found so many new books and writers on this site it may as well offer itself up as a right-wing consultancy. Well, it is.

So, it may be Christmas, but one of the greatest gifts you can give, both to yourself and anyone whose attention you can grab and make a convert of them, is to make a donation to Counter-Currents. The times they are a’changing, politically speaking, and this magazine will be among those leading the charge. One advantage of having little or no ad revenue is that the advertisers can’t dictate your content, as I know from experience is the case in the British media. Is it an intellectual read? Absolutely. Is it in tune with culture high or low? Undoubtedly. This is the only magazine which will let a writer hold forth on Jacques Derrida or Jack Daniels, Joy Division or James Dean. So, take a copy, pop your money in the slot, and read all about it.

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Thank you again for your loyal readership and support.