We are asking that YOU help us to help you

TRUSTED NEWS MATTERS… THE OLIVE PRESS – A BRAND YOU CAN TRUST

These are trying times for everyone in Spain. Workers are unsure of their next paycheck, business owners are laying-off their best and brightest, and retirees are getting fined for a dog walk.

We are all on survival mode as we do battle with COVID-19.

Inevitably, the coronavirus pandemic has hit the Olive Press economically, as both print and digital revenues sink by up to 80%.

Meanwhile, our media family of 20-plus writers and journalists (to just five sales people) continue to scour every corner of the country for the latest news and we continue to print and distribute to the 20 to 25% of drops that are still open.

But we have a wider family too: our two to three million-plus community of expats in Spain, who more than ever need quality news tailored to their needs. And those millions of foreigners out there in the UK, Ireland, Holland, Sweden, America, etc, who log on to our website for news of what’s happening here every week.

We are therefore asking that YOU help us to help you.

We want to stay as independent and as strong as possible as the world continues to see a collapse of traditional media in the face of social media platforms, giving rise to false news.

We want to be able to double and triple check every story that comes in… and to ask the tricky questions, to voice our opinions and set our own agenda. We don’t want to be in hoc to politicians and town halls, nor big business.

We want to continue taking on the corrupt and crooked in Spain as we have for 14 years… and speak up for those who don’t have a voice. We want to keep fighting for the underdog.

So anything you can contribute, however small, helps us to put our professionally-trained journalists (many NCTJ Gold Standard) to probe the dodgiest town hall decision, the local boiler room fraudster and the financial sharks, that shame Spain’s costas.

We also want to give you the latest updates from Pedro Sanchez, to plug you in to Spain’s top debates and to put it all into a language we understand.

We already do our best to keep our printed newspapers to a very maximum of 50% advertising.

What we need on our website (which gets four million plus visitors a month) is a format that will keep the news free at point-of-use but also keep our journalists glued to their TV screens and Twitter feeds, to update it. Rather than guard our content behind a paywall, which is being introduced by many global newspapers, we are asking for solidarity. We want all our content to be free and available to all, at all times.

Just €5 could mean one of our articles stops an unnecessary fine. Just €10 for a feature that could save you precious hours scouring through Spanish legal sites to navigate clunky bureaucracy. Or €20 for some advice that could save a life.

As much as you need news and information, we also need YOU.

Please give generously, as a one-off donation, or if you prefer monthly.

Yours

The Olive Press family