A European news publisher is aiming to become self-funding through reader donations after securing a €2.1m grant from the European Commission in June.
The European Correspondent (TEC) is a newsletter-first publisher based in Belgium and Switzerland, writing in English for a continent-wide audience.
Three years after launching its first edition in November 2022, it now has three newsletters: a daily edition about Europe, a weekly edition on the European institutions, and a weekly selection of its best stories. It also has a website, which is mainly used to promote the email newsletters.
Its reporting is a mix of original and aggregated content, with the publisher moving “more into original reporting” in the past year.
TEC is also aiming to reach more readers with an expanded team and new product funded by the EC grant, which TEC insists will not impact its “absolute editorial independence”. The grant agreement states that beneficiaries are “independent of any instruction, pressure or request from any EU institution”.
“The agreement protects us from institutional influence,” said editor-in-chief Julius Fintelmann, with its website explaining the money is to expand (it is aiming for one million newsletter subscribers by the end of 2027) and become multilingual. In November, TEC will launch a German edition and in 2026, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Ukrainian versions.
[Read more: Email-based publisher The Flyover has 25 full-time staff two years after launch]
What is The European Correspondent?
TEC began with an aim to deliver stories “different to national papers” while bridging a gap “by focusing on the needs of the readers”.
It reports European news in English and covers politics, diplomacy, security, economics, business and social issues. Overall, almost 70,000 people are subscribed to its free newsletters.
One third of its readers are above 60, and “no country stands out in terms of readership”, but it is countries with a “high English literacy rate”, with most of readers from Italy, Greece and Romania.
“There’s plenty of European media outlets that focus on the EU, but they are mainly targeting a policy audience and a professional audience, whereas we are targeting normal citizens, and we’re doing it on a bigger scale than other projects that have existed,” said Fintelmann. “We assess the expectations of the readers through reader analysis.”
Reader analysis is picked up from surveys sent out by TEC every ten days, with between 1,000 to 3,000 responses typically received.
Funding staff with grant
Part of TEC’s grant is going towards hiring a full-time newsroom and pay salaries. Previously, writers were volunteers.
“We’ve come from a background of no funding, so this is a big jump to being fully financed,” said Fintelmann. “Now we’re able to pay everyone.”
As of August 2025, the title had 11.3 full-time equivalent staff.
“The grant meant we could pay our contributors and subs, which means the standards we have for submissions is higher,” said Fintelmann. “We [also] have resources to build our own CMS and a new design. It looks cleaner.”
‘Exploring’ new product launch
The grant has also meant TEC can now create a product “where readers intuitively understand they have to pay for it”.
The title is still exploring what this will look like, but considering a reader-funded product, such as a print magazine or subscriber-only digital edition, launching at the beginning of next year.
In 2024, TEC produced its first print book, containing 33 data visualisation stories, costing €18 per copy. It brought in €13,376 in total and sold out in two weeks.
“We’ve seen interest in a physical product, and think something on a monthly basis could work as a result but this could be a monthly magazine,” said Fintelmann, adding that he is “not sure” readers would pay to access email newsletters, “so we need to find a product where readers understand [they] have to pay for it”.
“It might mean longer, slower journalism – in general we don’t do breaking news anyway, but focus on context analysis,” he said.
The grant is also to be used to expand TEC’s site and fund a monthly video podcast talk show, which will be launched at the beginning of October.
“We’re not sure if we’ll work with advertisers on that yet – we need to create a listener base first,” said Fintelmann, adding TEC doesn’t have experience with audiovisual formats streamed on third-party platforms yet, but will explore how to “raise listener donations” through this too.
This may be done by “placing donation asks in the [audiovisual] format” (getting people to voice donation requests on the video podcast) and “in the communication around it” – with podcast ads.
“We know that building the relationship with readers takes up to six months for 4.48% of the readership to become recurring donors, so we would need to experiment with how this differs for this format/channel,” Fintelmann shared. “At a later stage, we are open to exploring commercial partnerships – sponsorship, ad placements – if it makes sense for the product.”
Five per cent of readers donate
While the EC grant is currently funding 90% of TEC’s operations, the remaining 10% is being funded by a mixture of advertising and reader contributions.
Since launch, the publisher has received more than €102,650 in donations, with the average contribution at €10.63.
“We send a donation email every two weeks,” Fintelmann said. “If you donate to us, you don’t receive the donation request emails.”
Some 5% of TEC’s readers donate to the publisher, and Fintelmann said “asking for money” through donation request emails “works better” than other strategies.
“On average, we now gain €5,000 from donations per month,” he added, whereas “advertising income has not shown such a clear trend”.
€100k advertising ‘goal’ in 2025
TEC has worked with more than 20 clients since launching three years ago, generating €38,000 in advertising revenue.
“The big goal is to get to €100,000 by the end of the year and have a continuous income from commercial partnerships between €10,000-20,000 per month,” said Fintelmann.
While most of its advertising is offered on newsletters as visual or text-based ads, TEC also offers partnered content including: promoted content such as opinion pieces, engagement campaigns, vertical videos, data visualisation and live conversation (chosen topic with editor-in-chief streamed to +45,000 Instagram followers for 15-20 minutes).
TEC mainly uses paid-for advertising to grow its newsletter subscribers, with the cost of acquisition running at around €1 for every two subscribers.
“It has made us jump further, and it is faster than organic growth – which we have, but isn’t sufficient enough for us to reach one million [readers]. Per sign up, we’ve currently spend about 50 cents [to obtain readers through advertising]. We were at 30 cents, and sometimes its €1. It fluctuates a lot.”
“The end goal is to become mainly reader financed,” said Fintelmann, but it’s a “hard and long” process.
“We try to hook readers through engagement campaigns, asking people to leave their thoughts with us, then they’re more likely to donate at the end of that survey when we ask.”
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