When this community shows up, powerful people loseThe BBC’s editor picked a fight with the wrong newsroom. He is betting that a reader-funded outlet like Drop Site will eventually run out of money and fold.We have some very good news to share. A week ago, we told you about the legal fight we’ve been waging in UK courts to defend our journalism. Today, we want to tell you what happened next and what it means for the future of Drop Site. In a ruling handed down by the UK High Court, Raffi Berg—the BBC editor who sued Owen Jones over an investigation we published into the BBC’s biased Gaza coverage—was dealt a devastating procedural blow. The case isn’t technically over, but our lawyers tell us that most plaintiffs in Berg’s position would walk away rather than risk having to pay back our legal bills. The BBC’s editor picked a fight with the wrong newsroom. He is betting that a reader-funded outlet like Drop Site will eventually run out of money and fold. We need to prove him wrong. Every investigation we publish, every correspondent we put on the ground, every story that a corporate outlet would kill takes sustained support. Not one-time surges, but a growing base of readers who are invested in this permanently. Every paid subscription to Drop Site is proof of concept. Proof that readers, not billionaires, not corporate owners, can sustain the kind of journalism that mainstream institutions are afraid to publish. The bigger this base grows, the more undeniable that proof becomes. Right now, we’re offering 20% off an annual subscription for the next 48 hours. We built Drop Site to be fearless. To publish Owen Jones’s investigation knowing a lawsuit was coming. To have reporters on the ground in Gaza, in Iran, and across the globe. To refuse paywalls, refuse corporate backing, and refuse to back down when powerful people come after us. But fearlessness without resources is just bravado. What makes Drop Site different is you. When we launched the legal defense fund, the average contribution was $59. That floored us. But what would change the game—what would make Drop Site genuinely untouchable—is if thousands more of you converted from free readers to paying subscribers. Here’s the math: a paid subscription costs less than $0.25 a day. That’s significantly less than a single cup of black coffee. But multiplied across our community, it’s the difference between an outlet that survives and one that thrives. Every new paid subscriber makes it harder for the next Raffi Berg to bet against us. Every new paid subscriber means another correspondent, another investigation, another story that no one else will touch. This lawsuit proved something important: when this community shows up, we are genuinely powerful. Now we’re asking you to make that power permanent. Can you support our work by becoming a paid subscriber today? We want to be direct with you: Drop Site is growing faster than we ever expected. But growth without sustained support is just a moment. We want to build something permanent. We have no corporate safety net. No billionaire overlords. No hedge fund owner who can absorb losses. What we have is a community of readers who believe that independent, rigorous, confrontational journalism is worth paying for. If you’ve been reading Drop Site for free this is the moment to step up. Not because we’re desperate. Because we’re winning. And the bigger this community gets, the more we can do. Berg thought he could outlast us. He can’t. The White House called our reporting “abhorrent.” We plan to put it on a t-shirt. The corporate media ignores the stories that matter most. We chase them. This is what reader-funded journalism looks like. Help us show what it can become. Upgrade to a paid subscription today — 20% off for the next 48 hours. With gratitude and momentum, Ryan Grim P.S. If you genuinely can’t afford a subscription right now, we understand. Drop Site will never be paywalled, and we’ll never make you feel bad for reading for free. But if you can, now is the time.
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