Photo composition for the 3.5 anniversary of Orinoco Tribune. Photo: Orinoco Tribune.
Caracas, May 11, 2022 (OrinocoTribune.com)—The last week of May marks the 3.5 anniversary of Orinoco Tribune and the beginning of our preparations for the 4th anniversary celebration.
Every May our team evaluates how the website is bench-marking in comparison with well-established leftist and anti-imperialist news outlets around the world, as well as with Venezuelan local news outlets and other more mainstream liberal outlets.
This year was not an exception and we again achieved amazing performance, especially taking into consideration that Orinoco Tribune is 100% people funded, and that we do not receive donations anywhere near those of news outlets from the global North. We would also highlight that our project is not supported by the Venezuelan government in any form or way. We are proud to call ourselves an independent news outlet for that reason, and also because any amount of donation money will not change our editorial line or challenge our independence.
In less than 3.5 years we can proudly say we are ranked among the best websites of our kind. 100% independent and people funded. We have an amazing team and an amazing readers base. Thank you! pic.twitter.com/IvWT8zIgHY
— Orinoco Tribune (@OrinocoTribune) May 1, 2022
Alexa.com, the most widely used website-ranking service (recently closed down), ranked us globally by April 27 at position 41,633, although from December 2021 to February 2022 our rank was between 35K and 39K. This put Orinoco Tribune at a higher spot than The GrayZone (73,231), MintPress News (104,380), recently launched Multipolarista (189,022), ConsortiumNews (61,235), Moon of Alabama (56,859), CounterPunch (53,785), Venezuelanalysis (589,440) and KawsachunNews (427,169).
Only mainstream liberal news outlets performed better than Orinoco Tribune, like The Intercept (22,785), Mother Jones (25,654), The Nation (28,591) and Jacobin Magazine (31,918)—all of them well-funded websites with a corporate structure, based in the US. We are proud to be ranked very close to them, despite the fact that our editorial line is not—and does not want to be—similar to theirs. We also compared ourselves with longstanding and public news outlets in Venezuela, only being outranked by Últimas Noticias (22,550) and La IguanaTV (11,224).
This miracle has been possible thanks to a hardworking team currently consisting of ten members, eight of them volunteers putting time and effort into our project. Although we live in different countries—Venezuela, Canada, United States, Mexico, India and Spain, we are all connected by a deep Chavista and anti-imperialist spirit that creates an amazing sense of community among ourselves. Thank a lot Yullma, Alba, Steve, Saheli, Elizabeth, Gabriel, Kahlil, Dana and Robert, for working 24 hours a day every day of the week in order to provide our readers with accurate and timely information about Venezuela, Latin America and beyond with a profound anti-imperialist and Chavista perspective.
We are proud of our strong reader base and our supporters. We owe you, dear readers, a lot of gratitude, for Orinoco Tribune would not exist without you. Orinoco Tribune needs your continued support. We understand the complexities of the global economic situation affecting us all, but it has affected more drastically those of us living in the global South, and especially Orinoco Tribune, being based in the fifth most sanctioned country in the world.
This month we are launching a campaign to renew our graphic identity via an online contest. Moreover, we are going to hold a livestream on Saturday, May 28 to answer all kinds of questions that our readers may send us via our social media accounts. On Tuesday, May 31 we will have our Editorial Dialogue #3 about Colombia, the presidential race, aggression against Venezuela, and internal war.
We have planned many projects but for all of them, financial resources are key. We are really grateful to everyone who has supported us over these 3.5 years. However, now we really need a substantial raise in funds to realise all the projects we envision. You can donate to us through different donation platforms, like PayPal, Patreon and Stripe. This year, our annual fundraising via Paypal/Stripe only reached 26% of a very austere year goal of $12,000. This limited financial support is a severe restraint on our capacity to improve and launch new projects. Our monthly Patreon support base at present is $617. For December 2021 our goal was to reach $800; it didn’t happen but we would love to finish May with a monthly commitment close to $800. These numbers can give our readers a sense of how low our finances are.
We have recently reached an agreement with the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) to become one of its fiscal sponsorship projects, which will allow us to receive tax-exempt donations. In the upcoming days we will provide more information about this new program that we expect will be mutually beneficial for Orinoco Tribune, for our supporters, and for AfGJ.
We hope you will continue supporting us financially, and also spread the word about the work we do. Please follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, Reddit and our recently created TikTok account. Sharing, resharing, liking, retweeting and interacting with our social media accounts is very important to expand our reach. Kindly subscribe to our Weekly Newsletter, and invite like-minded people to subscribe too. All this will help counter the changing search engine algorithms that everyday censor more strictly anything opposing mainstream media dictatorship.
We count on you!
Un abrazo fuerte from the Orinoco Tribune team!
Venceremos!
Featured image: Photo composition for the 3.5 anniversary of Orinoco Tribune. Photo: Orinoco Tribune.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
OT/JRE/EF/SC
