This is Annie Chabel, The Intercept’s CEO. I want to tell you something I’ve never been able to say before.

For the first time in The Intercept’s history, whether we survive is entirely up to you, our readers.

When The Intercept was founded, we had the backing of a philanthropist who believed — urgently and without reservation — that the world needed a different kind of journalism. Fearless. Adversarial. Willing to go where the mainstream media wouldn’t.

We broke stories that sent shockwaves through capitals and corporate boardrooms around the world. Stories that other outlets wouldn’t touch. Stories that needed to be told.

Now we’re trying something new. Something harder. Something that, honestly, The Intercept has never had to do before: survive on reader funding alone.

No billionaire backstop. No safety net. Just you.

If you’ve ever believed in what we do, this is the moment we need you most. Will you chip in whatever you can — even $5 a month — to help keep The Intercept alive?

I won’t pretend the timing isn’t terrifying. You’ve seen what’s happening to the American media. CBS News, now under the ownership of pro-Trump billionaires Larry and David Ellison, has produced Iran war coverage so one-sided that CBS’s own staffers are calling it propaganda.

The Ellisons are now on the verge of taking control of CNN and roughly two dozen other cable channels. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Rupert Murdoch, Nexstar, Sinclair — Trump-aligned billionaires and corporations are rapidly gobbling up virtually every major outlet they can get their hands on.

This isn’t media consolidation. It’s the step-by-step authoritarian takeover of everything Americans see, hear, and read.

And against that backdrop, The Intercept is attempting something radical: independent journalism funded by nobody but the people who read it.

This week, we’re launching our spring fundraising drive. We need to add 4,000 new monthly donors by March 31. If we fall short, we’ll have to cut our budget, which will genuinely diminish the journalism we can do — at the moment when that journalism matters most.

So I’m asking you directly: Will you donate $5 a month to keep The Intercept going?

STAND WITH THE INTERCEPT →

If independent journalism fails here — if we can’t prove that readers will fund the kind of reporting that powerful people desperately don’t want published — who will be left to tell the truth?

This is the moment. And for the first time, the answer is entirely in your hands.

Thank you for being part of this.