Appeal

Dear Readers, 

Thank you. Thank you for following us, thank you for reading, and thank you for helping us make Insite what it is today.

Every month, we print 3000 copies of our magazine The Insiter, all of which are distributed free of charge to students all over the island, while our website www.insiteronline.com, reaches thousands more readers every month.

We’ve come a long way since Insite began its journey ten years ago. Through our media, we feel justified in saying that we have firmly established ourselves as the number source for news, features and reviews covering all aspects of University and student life.

If it’s on or about our University, no other media organisation is there faster, and no other media organisation is more thorough.

And it’s all thanks to you.

More than any other student organisation, our success or failure depends on students who are not members of our organisation. It depends on you. We could cover every big story, review every event, provide the most insightful analysis; we could do all that and it would be worthless if nobody read what we had to say.

So thank you. We couldn’t ask for more.

Except that now, we have to.

Since splitting from the commercial newspaper The Voice in 2000, Insite has never received a penny in funding from any external organisation. We are fiercely independent, and that is what allows us to deliver the unbiased, quality service that we pride ourselves on.

But 3000 magazines a month cost money. Printing costs have been escalating for years, and with the financial crisis and the state of printed media worldwide, advertisers have become less and less willing to put money into our publication.

Meanwhile, to deal with the vast amounts of traffic Insiter Online is receiving, we’ve recently carried out an extensive upgrade of our servers. This means that you will be able to enjoy our website faster and more reliably, even when our biggest stories hit. But it also means, inevitably, more money.

As I write this, Insite is facing the very real possibility of having to shut down operations.

We are, ultimately, a small student organisation. Nobody makes money for their work: for spending the night outside an election hall to give you live updates, or for incurring the wrath of the authorities by asking the inconvenient questions that you deserve answers to.

Our writers, photographers, designers, sales team, all of them work tirelessly, and yet, through no fault of our own, our financial situation can no longer support the level of growth that we have achieved, and that you deserve.

Insite is doing what it can to keep itself afloat. Over the next few weeks and months we are going to be doing more, doubling and tripling our efforts to ensure that we can keep offering you the service we always have, and improving on it as we always have.

Here’s what we won’t do. No matter how dire our situation becomes, we will never sacrifice our reputation and our independence, we will never compromise on quality, and what’s more, you will never have to pay for our products. That is our pledge to you, as fellow students.

But we need your help.

We have recently installed a PayPal button on our website. By clicking on it you can donate a small amount of money to help keep your student media alive.

If you have ever read our magazine or our website, if you feel that the service we provide is something that you would like to see continue, then it’s just a few clicks.

We’re not asking for much. We’re students too. We know how quickly books, notes, and a few well-earned beers seem to sap what little money we receive from stipends and part-time jobs.

Every little helps.

And if you can afford more than a little, well, every more than a little helps even more.

If everyone who read this gave us just €5 or €10, we’d be in a position where we can once again turn our attentions fully onto our media.

This is not about us, it never has been. This is about the service that we hope to provide. We hope that you are pleased with that service, and that you would like to see it continue, as we would like to see it continue.

And we hope that some of you would like to contribute to making sure that happens.

Insite – your University, your Media.

Thank you,

The Insite Team