Why The Week is asking online readers to subscribe

You may have noticed that The Week has started to ask readers to pay for more of its journalism.

While the magazine has always been for subscribers only, until recently our website, podcast and email newsletters were free. They were funded partly by advertising, and partly by those digital readers who kindly went on to subscribe to the magazine.

In recent years, however, it has become increasingly difficult to fund high-quality journalism with advertising alone. This is particularly true at The Week, where our goal is not to shout the loudest or stoke up partisan divisions to pull in the vast number of clicks which that approach now requires.

Instead, we have spent the past year developing a new approach to covering the news. We hope that the result will be more valuable and more rewarding for readers, and more sustainable for The Week. Our editors and writers will still spend their time sniffing out the most compelling stories, the sharpest analysis and the most entertaining commentary, but the way we present it will be different. 

Instead of an endless stream of articles, we are offering you two concise daily news digests, Morning Report (view samples: UK and US) and Evening Review (view samples: UK and US). Each one will take a step back from the unending torrent of information and seek to make sense of the day's events – and raise the occasional smile as well.

Just like The Week magazine, our new digital digests cover a diverse range of topics, from politics and world news to science, technology and culture. The stories and reviews within them weave together dozens of the world's most trusted news sources, illuminating complex topics from different angles. In little more than 15 minutes a day, they will let you know what's happening, what matters and who's saying what about it.

We believe that represents excellent value, and we will be asking those who agree with us to make a contribution towards the products they receive. Those who do become subscribers can choose to read the new daily editions in their inbox, here on TheWeek.com or in the app, where they will also be able to enjoy the weekly magazine. Existing Print + Digital and Digital-only subscribers already have access to the new daily digests: just log in, or create an account, using the email you used to subscriber (you can find more help here). Print-only subscribers can activate a three-month free trial.

Our new approach will mean that we can focus on delivering what we know readers expect from The Week. At the bottom of each daily digest you will find the names of the people who worked to research, write, edit and illustrate the stories. By becoming a subscriber you will be supporting their work for The Week – and, more broadly, the kind of open-minded journalism that you and we all value.

Click here to find out more about The Week's print and digital subscriptions