Is it possible to NOT have a paywall?

You know I’m a big fan of paywalls. It’s hard to run a reader-funded media operation (that’s your actual job) without one.

But The 51st is doing it.

And it’s not just one person getting paid to work there. It’s six co-founders, some freelancers and now—with their latest fundraising campaign—two new full time hires.

Less than one year into their endeavor, it is VERY IMPRESSIVE that The 51st is running a reader-funded, worker-owned newsroom without a paywall.

I wanted to know all their secrets so I reached out to Co-founder and Director of Development, Maddie Poore to understand the mechanics behind the money.

In today’s issue: how exactly The 51st brings in enough money without a paywall.

–Lex

**CORRECTION 8/30/25: The initial publishing stated that 5.2% of The 51st’s paid members also contributed to the July fundraiser. It’s actually 18.2% of paying members who contributed. Corrected below.** 

Why The 51st doesn't have a paywall

Like all good journalists, the team behind The 51st wants their reporting to be available to whoever needs it. There’s two things that actually made that possible.

The 51st was born out of the shutdown of DCist in February 2024. DCist was part of WAMU, the local NPR member station in Washington D.C., so The 51st’s co-founders already knew the member-backed, no-paywall model inside and out. 

Even better, before their launch, they ran one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in worker-owned news history, raising over $276k from over 3.4k contributors before going live. 

For comparison, Block Club Chicago raised $183k in 2018, which was the highest grossing Kickstarter for local news at the time. There have been a few campaigns that have surpassed these levels since, but none that I’ve seen from worker-owned news startups. $276k before a single story is published is VERY GOOD SIGNAL that your audience wants what you’re serving up and—critically—that they are willing to pay for it.

These two experiences, raising so much before launch and knowing how the member model works, gave the founding team the confidence to go paywall free.

This newsletter is produced in partnership with Outpost 🪐 

The 51st uses Outpost to market their membership.

From sending automated welcome emails to recovering failed payments to providing weekly reports on how the membership is doing, Outpost is a Ghost publisher’s best friend for growth and monetization.

You can set up Outpost to automate a lot of the member communication you need to run with or without a paywall. It pays for itself because it turns free readers into paid members and it can remarket to them if they cancel or if their credit card declines.

Try Outpost for free today and join us live next month to learn more about how it can help you grow your own membership.

How The 51st brings in money

The 51st has four main revenue streams: 

• Membership

• One time donations

• Major grants 

• Advertising

Until now, membership and one time donations have been the most reliable for them, though advertising is becoming a bigger slice of the pie. And they recently got their nonprofit status, so they’re starting to pursue large dollar donations from funders.

The team is (mostly) on track for their quarterly member targets, something they set at the end of last year according to how much revenue they need to run. But last month, they realized they were going to lose beloved local journalist Martin Austermuhle, who had recently moved back to D.C. and had been freelancing for them, to a full time job elsewhere. They also had just hired Executive Editor Christina Sturdivant Sani, but with only enough funding for one year of her position.

Hiring more people wasn’t in the budget. So, where would the team get this spare cash?

At first, they thought they could put their nonprofit status to good use finding a philanthropic funder for these positions, but unfortunately, major funders move way too slowly for their timeline. It was time to do another reader raise!

The 51st set up a fresh campaign on their chosen crowdfunding platform, Givebutter, and in about a month, they raised nearly $130k for Martin and Christina’s positions from 1.5k supporters. Holy cow. How do they do it?

I asked Maddie about the breakdown of these donations and she said a few were sizable (one for $10k, two for $5k) and that the average donation was $90, which was higher than the average on their launch campaign (which was $50.) The $10k donation was from an organization, but most of the rest were just from people, including several of their existing members. 

I want to drill into that last point because it’s important to realize recurring members and one time donors will have overlap and are not totally separate parts of your audience. Co-founder Eric Falquero pulled the exact data: 18.2% of The 51st’s paid members ALSO contributed to the July fundraiser to hire Martin and Christina. Good thing they included paying members in these asks too because that’s a hefty chunk of change they pitched in.

[RELATED: Spokane-based RANGE turned a funder fallout into their second highest revenue month ever, thanks to a last minute member drive.]

What's special about how The 51st promotes

This team makes it look easy but they are promoting the hell out of their membership and their fundraising campaigns. They’re very transparent about their goals and how near or far they are from them. They are also repeatedly in our inbox and in our feed with genuinely INTERESTING appeals.

With general membership growth, Maddie says their secret is enlisting their audience to help them reach their goals each quarter. She keeps a close watch on their Ghost dashboard metrics (which shows free reader and paid member growth) and on Outpost daily reports (which shows cancellations).

Any time they are close to a milestone, Maddie, Eric or another team member will take to Bluesky or Instagram every so often and announce that they only need 10 new members or 50 new subscribers or whatever that small gap is. One post is usually enough to hit their target.

With this latest one off fundraiser, it was more about having a clear reason they needed the money and (literally) putting names and faces to the fundraising. Their readers were familiar with Martin and Christina’s work so tying a financial goal to keeping them at The 51st was super motivating for their fans.  

The 51st also sends dedicated promotions, meaning an email newsletter with a singular call to action, focused on membership or donations. I’ve noticed this technique is HIGHLY UNDERUTILIZED by indie media, worker-owned news and creator journalists.  

To write these, they employ a nonprofit fundraising technique called “casemaking” (meaning aligning your potential donor’s worldview and motivations with your cause) and they often tie the ask directly to national events like [insert whatever Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump or Elon Musk just did.]

Two things I’d take note of as you follow The 51st: frequency and messaging of their promotions.

They hit a near perfect cadence of editorial and fundraising asks. And they don’t shortchange the fundraising emails—they make sure those messages are just as worth opening, worth reading and worth sharing as any other story is.

What factors make it possible to not have a paywall

Is the team behind The 51st just geniuses? Or is it easier than I’ve made it sound to not have a paywall?

Neither!

Actually, I do think this team is ESPECIALLY TALENTED, but there’s a few important factors working to make this more possible for this newsroom than others.

Here’s what Maddie believes sets them up for success with no paywall:

• They are in a major metro area with not many other independent options (and a shrinking local news scene)

• Their local market is more prone to pay for news and does not need much educating on why news matters/why paying for news matters

• The Washington Post killed off their Metro section so there’s no longer a physical version of the local news as part of their paper, reducing their utility for locals in the process

• Bad moves by the federal government or by Jeff Bezos (shockingly frequent these days) make for conditions where people increasingly rely on The 51st for vital information and truth telling

Having spent time with a lot of worker-owned and local newsrooms, I would add a few things to this list:

• The D.C. area has a higher percentage of people whose jobs intertwine with politics, making subscribing to news/knowing the news a professional necessity

• The 51st’s staff being former DCist/WAMU employees (and their quick turnaround to launch out of that shutdown) allowed them to bring some of that audience over, who were already used to paying into a membership model

• They have at least 2 teammates who spend a big chunk of their time focused on growth and revenue (Maddie and Eric)

I also want to mention an important piece here that, while most of the team is full time, some of The 51st co-founders are taking minimum salaries (meaning not their normal rate of pay.) This is a common practice with early stage worker-owned ventures, both Aftermath and Hell Gate have spoken about this too, but The 51st still considers itself more or less sustainable for the next year ahead.

Is “no paywall” right for you?

PROBABLY NOT. I stand by my recommendation for you to have a paywall if you want to be reader-funded, but if you can’t be persuaded to join my gated community, then I would start paying close attention to The 51st, RANGE and other local newsmakers who shine on like diamonds in the darkness. On the solo side, you can follow people like Matt Kiser and Judd Legum who run paywall free (they both have 100k+ readership and national audiences).

I will add that even though The 51st doesn’t want to paywall news, they are starting to paywall perks like giving away tickets for local festival, District Fringe. This is another route to consider if you have the bandwidth to execute additional perks. Heavy on the “if you have the bandwidth!”

All those warnings said, I admire how The 51st is operating and growing and I am cheering for their paywall free lifestyle because the more who pave that path, the more possible it becomes for everyone.

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