Good journalism is good for business. 

It’s that simple. But not yet that clear. 

Daily Maverick has shut down for 24 hours to highlight the crisis in journalism. Newsrooms are retrenching and facing closure at an alarming rate and we need the support of the business sector. 

For our economy to grow, we need a democracy that works for the people, not for a select few. The paralysing impact of State Capture continues to stunt our economic recovery today. 

We can only fix our broken economy and shattered society if public interest journalism is sustainable in the long term. Imagine where we would be with a Zuma-led administration, a Tom Moyane-run SARS, a Malusi Gigaba finance ministry, and Ace Magashule vying for the presidency of the ANC. That scary thought experiment isn’t our reality, thanks to journalism’s impact. 

If democracy works, we all benefit. Less journalism means fewer resources to fight corruption and report on key institutions and fewer chances to wedge a gap open for the economy to grow again, benefitting all businesses and creating more jobs.

On multiple occasions, journalism has helped save the country from the clutches of a corrupt system that steals economic opportunity from every South African, rich or poor. 

As a reader, you may think we are in every corner of the country. 
We are not. But we need to be. 

Service delivery failure in our cities and the crisis in journalism move in lockstep. The worsening state of journalism enables corruption and malfeasance to eat away at our society and economy.  

To put this into perspective: 

There are 371,748 government employees in the Eastern Cape. 
There is 1 Daily Maverick journalist in the Eastern Cape. 

Your support can help sustain this biggest accountability lever we can pull outside of a broken system that will help our economy recover. 

Here’s how your business can help.

Daily Maverick: Special Projects & General Support

• City-based journalism has collapsed alongside our failing cities. Roads explode, buildings burn, and water gets cut with zero accountability. Any restoration of service delivery must include the revitalisation of local journalism.
  
  We have a vision and a plan, and the people are ready to take on this task. We need corporate sponsors to help us cover the eight biggest cities that house more than half our population. Contact us here.
  
  
• Despite the biggest portion of our national budget and over half of all corporate CSI for the last 20 years, our education system remains in tatters. With a dedicated editorial team focusing on covering the education sector, we can finally bring some focus and accountability journalism to this critical sector.
  
  There is an information vacuum about where and how to help the education crisis. This focus will help ensure that the well-intentioned CSI spend goes where it is needed most. Contact us here
  
  
• Operational support for our current efforts can be made through annual sponsorships, grants and tax-deductible donations. Contact us here.

Journalism in general

• Less than 3% of advertising budgets go to local news publishers. The tech platforms, which receive the majority of advertising budgets, will not fight for our democracy; their tools are often used to hijack democracies.
  
  
• You can propose to executive committees and boards of directors that a minimum of 10% of the budget be allocated to Press Council news publishers. Once you’ve done so, you can publicly challenge other businesses in your sector to do the same.
  
  
• CSI budgets help fund worthwhile projects and causes. While these are important initiatives, few can have the same wide-ranging impact at the system level as journalism. Consider raising this with your board and CSI leaders.  
  
  
• Social impact investments and development finance do not consider news media investments in their mandates. News media has fallen between the cracks of the finance industry. Yet, no other sector can create as much social impact as public interest journalism can. You can raise this with investment committee chairs if your business works in or alongside these funds.  

We don’t take shutting down Daily Maverick for 24 hours lightly. It’s not something we have ever wanted to do, and we hope we will never have to do it again. 

Journalism is in crisis, and we need your help.