Every subscription cancellation is a sad occasion here at TFS HQ. In fact, I probably ought to concoct some kind of grief ritual to mark each lost reader, such as moving a single lima bean from one jar to another.
But the saddest cancellations are the ones accompanied by a message like the one which arrived last month: “Hi! I’ve enjoyed TFS for several years now, but my schedule doesn’t give me as much free time to read and enjoy it anymore.”
That kind of feedback is depressing because there isn’t anything I can do to remedy the situation, short of calling the reader’s boss. Improving the publication won’t make a difference to someone who’s too busy to look at it.
At least, that’s what I always thought. But then it occurred to me that it’s possible the problem isn’t readers’ schedules, but ours.
We put out a newsletter every weekday at 8 a.m. and could probably publish many more if we had the financial resources. There are still countless Southern food stories in need of telling, and many talented journalists eager to tell them. But for a subscriber just trying to keep up with her inbox, a daily newsletter can start to feel like work. When The Food Section’s morning dispatch is sandwiched between emails about a tech outage at the office and reminders of missed Slack messages, what was once enjoyable becomes another task to complete.
Imagine, though, if TFS was instead an app on your phone’s home screen. You could call up stories when you were in the mood to enjoy them and easily browse what’s on offer this week.
To be sure, you can already do something like that on our website. But when’s the last time you typed uber.com into your browser? We’ll all in the app habit now—as a longtime TFS supporter reminded me when proposing the above setup.
While this generous subscriber prefers to remain anonymous, she has offered to foot $2,000 of the app’s $6,295 annual cost, provided other readers contribute the balance. In other words, for each $1 you put toward the TFS app, she’ll chip in 50 cents. That’s a gift we’d hate to refuse.
You may recall from our ABC project that we rarely spend more than 40 bucks on anything other than freelance writing. Consequently, a four-figure price tag is daunting. But the fee is in fact reasonable, in part because the provider works exclusively with independent media outlets like ours, so has a template that works for journalism. If you want to get a glimpse of the potential future, check out the apps for Cardinal News, Planet Detroit, or Honolulu Civil Beat.
Also, that big number’s not so daunting if we tackle it together. I hope you’ll consider making a tax-deductible donation to the effort today. As our donor says, it’s time.
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