Journalistic start-up in Düsseldorf seeks backers

Four journalists have launched a crowdfunding campaign to build their own start-up. Their goal: to compete with the established media in the state capital.

Can journalism also work as a start-up? With VierNull , the four journalists Hans Onkelbach, Christian Herrendorf, Andreas Endermann and Boris Bartels are currently trying to build up a competing product in Düsseldorf to the established media in the state capital. They have launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Startnext platform to raise at least 40,000 euros by May 10.

The media offering in Düsseldorf has shrunk noticeably in the past, they write on their website, and it needs more information and impetus for opinion-forming. Once the funding is in place, there will always be a newsletter at six o'clock, in which the journalists will present their articles of the day and give tips for the greater Düsseldorf area. Each weekday, there will also be at least one text on the website on one of the four topics: politics, environment & traffic, business and entertainment. In the evening, a quick news overview consisting of four to five reports will follow.

VierNull is not the first journalistic project that wants to bring more diversity to local reporting. In Münster, for example, the social enterprise RUMS was created in 2020. The project is currently financed by its seed capital collected in March 2020 and, since September 2020, by a subscription model. Should it ever generate profits, 90 percent of them would be put into expanding the editorial team, RUMS writes on its website. The magazine Katapult is also currently setting up a local editorial office in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and is collecting donations for this purpose. As a reason, the initiators stated that they had missed sensible reporting.