In 2015, following months of pro-democracy protests, Tom Grundy founded Hong Kong Free Press, which bills itself as the city’s “only independent English-language news source.” Since then, Hong Kong has slipped further down the World Press Freedom Index. Free Press journalists navigate “one of the most complicated press-freedom situations in the world,” says Grundy, the site’s editor-in-chief. “The last thing I have the capacity for and am able to worry about is the technology side.”
A few years later, as worrying new security laws took effect, Grundy turned to Automattic’s Newspack for help. The seven journalists at Free Press provide steady, on-the-ground coverage, but they’re not website developers. A bespoke content management system required constant maintenance, and conversations with developers faltered. He worried about site stability and donor engagement, but felt “underprepared and unqualified” for technical conversations. “I needed to speak to tech people who were also aware and understanding of journalistic terminology, and where we come from,” he says.
That year, Grundy began working with Newspack to migrate multiple donation management tools and the Free Press’s content management system to a single platform. “Newspack very patiently worked with me for over a year to get it right,” he says. Through Newspack’s Audience Management tools, the Free Press has developed a greater variety of member benefits, from feature previews and exclusive columns to ad-free browsing, and increased donations by 33 percent.
The security of Free Press’s reporting is a top concern for Grundy, who has seen other newsrooms raided and prominent publications closed. Newspack—which is built on WordPress and hosted by WP Cloud, both Automattic products—has helped “keep the website safe if the worst happens in Hong Kong,” he says. “We have had no downtime.” Last year, when the Free Press was selected for a potentially costly tax inspection, Grundy reached out to Newspack for help putting a targeted fundraising plan in motion. “Within a month, they’d rolled it out to everybody,” he says.
Facing an unstable media landscape, Grundy credits Newspack with keeping Hong Kong Free Press nimble. “I can speak to someone directly who speaks my language, in terms of journalism, and gets things sorted,” he says. “That has liberated me and our news outlet to focus on navigating the red lines and getting the news out.”
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