The BFD is 95% powered by member dollars and the remaining 5% comes from ad revenue.
The Spinoff doesn’t have genuine subscriptions because all their content is free to read.
Take a look at the true source of their funding. Hint, it is not their readership.
Last year The Spinoff scored $172,556 of taxpayer funding for subscriptions.
They don’t have genuine subscriptions but despite that inconvenient little fact, the government has helpfully purchased so-called ‘subscriptions nonetheless’.
People aren’t putting their hands into their own pockets to read their content as the content is free. It is free because the government is putting its hands into YOUR pocket in order to fund content that most taxpayers will never read.
This is why the The Spinoff doesn’t carry any advertising. They don’t need ad revenue because they are powered by corporate sponsors and the NZ Government.
Despite this funding difference between The Spinoff and The BFD our audience numbers are the same. Where we differ is that The Spinoff writes to please its corporate sponsors and the NZ Government whereas The BFD is completely independent.
Our members’ financial support is what gives us that valuable independence.
The Spinoff was not the only media organisation to plunder the public purse for so-called ‘subscriptions’:
The first tranche of the package was $1.3m to purchase subscriptions to paywalled media sites for Government employees. This fund burst its budget slightly, coming in at $1.5m
The biggest winner here was Fourth Estate Holdings, owners of the NBR, who received $271,120.
Trans Tasman is a little read, phoenix publication that previously went broke owing thousands to IRD. But somehow they’ve propped up what was left of the publication with $158,233 of your dollars.
Richard Harman’s CCP shill site Politik.co.nz is a one-man band that employs no one, nor does it have advertising, yet it managed to trouser $109,750.
The much vaunted Newsroom also pocketed $217,641 for a site with less traffic than The BFD.
Scoop, a press release site with no advertising and a freemium subscription model picked the taxpayers pocket for $168,509. Scoop also dipped into the advertising fund to the tune of $1406.
This is what The BFD is up against. Massive state funding and subsidies of largely left-wing media. The BFD has not availed itself of government largesse from this prodigious media trough because it all comes with strings attached.
This is a rather lopsided battle. We don’t have hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to fight the good fight. We have member dollars. If you aren’t prepared to become a member then please don’t complain when we don’t have the bandwidth to cover everything.
Our volunteers and writers are going toe to toe with well funded and government subsidised competitors.
It is an unfair fight, but we have a core philosophy of not dipping into taxpayer funds to keep the lights on.
We are funded by our community, and we would like to keep it that way. But we can only succeed if our readers become members.
We are essentially a lone voice in a sea of left-wing voices. Do you want us to disappear or would you rather we powered up our voice?
We perform well against major media organisations. The NZ Herald, Stuff, TVNZ and Newshub outperform us, but they have millions of dollars in revenues. The NZ Herald has recently been boasting of having 110,000 subscribers. We are even stevens with left-wing shill site The Spinoff, and are consistently well ahead of Newsroom.
Overall, it is safe to say that The BFD is the fifth most popular news site in New Zealand.
When we look at similar sites we are again leading the pack:
Only The Spinoff and interest.co.nz compete with us. The Standard doesn’t even rate and Kiwiblog is fast slipping away. Martyn Bradbury’s anti-Semitic ‘hate-speech’ blog is far below us.
We need to stand up to cancel culture and the advances of cultural marxism. But we can’t do that without your help.
We need your support and we need your memberships. Will you join our community and help contribute to fighting cancel culture and standing up for conservative values?
We can fight, you all know that. Help us fight harder for what you believe in. Join us now!