Four and a half years later, The Objective is still here. What’s next?

With your help, we raised over $16,600 during our end-of-year fundraiser. What are we going to do with your support? 

What’s the Objective’s budget and where does it go? 

We’re a small non-profit publication focusing on media criticism and reporting — specifically accounting for race, gender, class, disability, and sexuality. From 2020-2024, our leadership team was volunteer, and only writers were paid per story.  

Our budget is around $100,000 (meaning we raised about a sixth of that). That’s a big jump from 2020, when our budget was $0. We also raise money from grants, individual donations, and some print advertising. We have a public list of the organizations and donors who have supported us, along with donations over $5,000 in a year on our about page.

Looking at 2025

Fundraisers like this are critical because they get us a step closer to doing this work full-time and having a dedicated capacity for editing, editing, and everything else it takes to make sure our stories are done well. 

In 2025, we’re aiming to publish more of the work we’ve published already: stories about lopsided media narratives in American media about trans people, Black Americans, Palestinians, disabled people, and anyone else who’s historically been marginalized by traditional journalism.

So back to our fundraiser. What does $16,000 cover? 

• 27 pieces of media reporting and criticism — at $0.50 a word for 1,200-word stories.

• 8 in-depth investigations — at $0.50 a word for 3,500 – 4,000 word stories. 

• 6 years of media liability insurance — ensure we’re protected when we publish investigations.

Help sustain our work

To our donors: we appreciate your commitment to reimagining journalism and holding institutions accountable!

If you want to support our work, there’s always time and we can use the help. You can: 

• Donate. You can make a one-time contribution or become a monthly member (which comes with a three-pack of stickers!).
• Sign up for our weekly newsletter. We recently launched a new newsletter-exclusive segment written by Democracy Day coordinator Beatrice Forman about journalism uplifting democracy, appearing twice-monthly.
• Share our work. And tag us — we’re on Bluesky, Instagram, X, Facebook, and Linkedin.
• Pitch us! We pay $0.50/word for commentary and news, and $200 for Q&As.