Support Us

Why Should You Support Us?

We are developing a business model with the purpose of preserving our loyalty to the public, not to elites or market interests. We welcome funding from donor organizations that support our values, and we have devised communication, content, and business strategies to generate income that will sustain our public service journalism. But at the end of the day, we depend on your support. As the first member-focused media outlet in Indonesia, we believe that our readers play a key role in ensuring our sustainability and simultaneously keeping our reports relevant to a publicly minded community. We know we are competing for attention in an already crowded space. A legion of news outlets crams your social media feeds, and many also claim to be fighting for the public interest.

Here are five reasons:

1. You will play an important role in our journalism
   We define public journalism as an idea, a movement, and a set of journalistic practices. We believe it is a precondition for a strong democracy and a catalyst for productive public deliberation. For such journalism to succeed, it requires robust public participation, which is the basis of our membership program. That is why we seek to ensure that we:
   • Listen to ideas and stories from you and carefully consider them in our editorial decisions.
   • Consistently seek and test alternative points of view when reporting on important civic issues.
   • Provide work that can stimulate discussion and help members of the public make sense of the world they live in.
   • Are transparent at every stage of our journalistic process and open to constructive criticism, which is key to producing credible, high-quality journalism.
   • Periodically evaluate how we communicate with our readers and the communities we help give a voice to.
2. You will be an integral part of our journalism movement
   Supporting Project Multatuli means taking part in our journalism movement. We aim for concrete social changes, not just clicks or pageviews. That being said, we do seek to expand our audience, as greater public participation is an essential part of our project. So it is our hope that you, as our supporter, will go beyond passive readership to actively take part in what we do.
3. You can help us improve public media literacy
   We consider media literacy critical to our sustainability. Cyberspace, once lauded as “liberation technology”, has devolved into a hotbed of misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, hate speech and other social media ills that have undermined its democratic potential. So in addition to producing quality journalism, we are committed to helping improve public media literacy by regularly holding discussions and workshops on the issue. You can be part of these programs in any capacity.
4. We do our best to work in full transparency
   We try to be fully transparent about who we are: our personal and professional backgrounds, as well as the biases and worldviews that could influence our editorial decisions. Project Multatuli was cofounded by four senior journalists with vast experience at three national media groups: Kompas, Tirto.id and The Jakarta Post. It was then developed further by young journalists with a passion for public journalism.We also try to be transparent about how we do our jobs and how we manage the institution, unless a certain level of confidentiality is required to minimize harm and uphold the duty of care.
5. We are inclusive. We have no higher loyalty than to the facts and the public
   Project Multatuli strongly opposes sectarianism and elitism. We do not see social, political or religious backgrounds as barriers that divide us from others. We believe that collaboration across civil organizations, among media groups and between the media and readers can help the press regain its position as a pillar of democracy. Project Multatuli is bound only to journalistic principles and our loyalty to the public.