Is there an audience for a center-right news publication focused on original reporting and analysis? Thats the proposition that The Dispatch set out to test when it launched last October, and the early results are promising.
The startup says its now approaching 10,000 paying subscribers, adding up to more than $1 million in annualized revenue.Editor and CEO Stephen Hayes (former editor in chief of the now-defunct Weekly Standard) told me that his vision for The Dispatch was to slow down the news cycle.
That doesnt mean ignoring the days headlines.
But rather than just recycling the same stories about, say, Bernie Sanders or the COVID-19 pandemic, The Dispatch aims to take a breath and try to approach important news in a fresh way.In order to do that, Hayes said that building a subscription business with newsletter-focused digital media platform Substack (the Substack team also handles all of The Dispatchs technical and product needs) was key.Were not trying to monetize eyeballs, he said.
What Substack was doing fit pretty much exactly with what we wanted to build a company with an editorial-first philosophy.As part of that strategy, The Dispatch has gradually been rolling out its membership program and paywall.
At launch, it offered a lifetime membership ($1,500), then added an annual membership ($100) when it launched its full site in January, and finally introduced a paywall and a monthly membership ($10) less than a month ago.Hayes said its been largely an ad hoc process of figuring what should and shouldnt go behind the paywall.
Apparently, one piece of advice that has been helpful is, Dont hide your good stuff behind the paywall.
You need to be serving some of your best, most substantive work in front of the paywall, so that you get people into the top of the funnel.On top of its paying subscribers, Hayes said The Dispatch is reaching about 60,000 people with its newsletters.
And its partnering with podcast company Sounder, with plans to participate in Googles Play Me The News program for Google Home, where it will offer short-form audio news stories.The startup has also raised $6 million in funding from individual investors (none of it comes from venture capital firms).Hayes acknowledged that one of the constant questions he had to answer during the fundraising process was whether he was aiming for too narrow an audience namely, the #NeverTrump slice of the political right.It might look that way on the traditional political spectrum, but in Hayes view, its more accurate to see the spectrum as a hardcore 15 percent on the left and another 15 percent on the right thats more partisan than ideological and will root for their party no more what.
And while The Dispatch is unapologetically center-right, hes hoping to appeal to the remaining 70 percent, who are looking for a publication that can help you make sense of all this stuff that doesnt make sense, regardless of political leanings.The Dispatch is in many ways the flagship among full-fledged news organizations built on Substack, but the list of publications now includes Asia Sentinel, Lets Go Warriors and Write for California.
The startup is also announcing that its now reaching more than 100,000 paying subscribers across its platform.Substack CEO Chris Best said that The Dispatchs success so far shows that theres ahunger out there.He added, Are readers willing to pay for something that helps them make sense of the world and adds value to their lives? I think the answer is unequivocally yes.