EDITORIAL: New Matilda has apparently stumbled onto the greatest business model ever conceived.
A few weeks ago, we started promoting our involvement in the Sparkke Brewing Company, a way to offset the paltry income of independent media.
It resulted in a few very angry readers sending a few angry letters… followed by a few very intemperate replies from my good self, which I published in our regular digest. In my defence, I always ‘get like this’ at the end of the year, mostly because I work seven days a week and don’t get holidays (cue the pity party music).
In any event, my abusive replies resulted in – as you might expect – a few cancelled subscriptions. But, and it’s a bit but, it also resulted in substantially more new subscriptions. Turns out a goodly proportion of New Matilda readers enjoy seeing other readers eviscerated in print.
So, with that in mind, all new subscribers to New Matilda not only get the usual goodies, but we’re also promising a free abusive email from the editor.
Just email me a complaint (try and make it sound credible – I have a finite amount of angry, creative energy) and I’ll reply with some sort of abusive smart arsery. You can then do with that email as you will (frame it, burn it, delete it or copy and paste it in an email to Malcolm Turnbull)… and then I’ll publish the correspondence in our regular digest (anonymity guaranteed, give or take).
And on the subject of Sparkke, some rather good news. The launch of Sparkke’s beer, cider, lemonade and ginger beer has gone a little better than we expected.
We managed to attract a couple of major investors, we’ve already got the product in kegs in one pub, and we’re singing agreements with two major universities to provide Sparkke on campus. Uni students like booze with a social conscience… go figure).
So we’ve restarted our Pozible campaign with a much more modest target – $100,00, and we’re almost there. You can kick in here. There’s a little under a week left to pre-order.
The investment means that the Sparkke cans (and there’s tens of thousands of the buggers) are being printed as we speak.
If you want the special New Matilda package, which includes a limited edition ‘C U Next Tuesday Mr Trump’ beer, don’t forget you need the New Matilda password ‘pussygrabsback’.
Which reminds me of a particularly angry letter of complaint we received about me being an ‘effing misogynist’. Needless to say, I’ll be in Adelaide soon to ‘mansplain’ to the Sparkke team (nine young women) all about feminism, and why their New Matilda password is so damn offensive.
Cheers, Chris Graham