Thank You – a New Milestone

The Steady community

photo by Stewart Volland, background by Peter Pencil

Together, this community just hit a big round number. 

Economists know that it is far easier for people to grasp round numbers than odd ones. They are 100 percent sure of this. So much so that we regulate our behavior to achieve round numbers as well as celebrate them.

It is also true that life really doesn’t work that way. We accrue time moment by moment, day by day. Important events can happen anytime. We also like to talk about round numbers when it comes to groups of people, whether voters in an election or the population of a city. Once again, this approach distorts reality. These are groupings of people, each one of whom matters as an individual. 

And yet, round numbers can give us an excuse to celebrate a milestone. And this is what I want to do today. 

Something remarkable happened over the weekend in our Steady community. And it can be illustrated in a series of screenshots captured from the data section of our publication.

There you have it. We passed 300,000 subscribers! As of this writing, we have left the 300K number in the dust and now have 306,509 members of the Steady community! We will never know which one of you got us over the 300,000 subscriber threshold. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. 

Because this is about all of you, the ones who have been here from the beginning and the ones who have just joined. This is about becoming a dynamic place of conversation and hopefully reflection. This is about building something that endures because of your participation. 

To say this far surpasses anything we could have hoped for when we started this endeavor is an understatement. 300,000 is a very big number in our book. But what’s even more impressive is how much we hear from you in the comments. Please keep them coming. I cannot think of a more intelligent, more empathetic, more curious group anywhere online. Of course, I may be a bit biased. But so be it. 

One of the main reasons I wanted to start this newsletter was to reach people directly, without having to cater to the algorithms of social media. Your enthusiasm and encouragement remind us daily that we made the right decision. Our other motivation was that we saw a need. Many years of experience have taught me that to learn what’s going on, what’s really going on, you need to go beyond the headlines. With every post, that is our goal: to give you a better understanding of our complicated world, especially now.

And here, if you will excuse me, comes a gentle sales pitch. If you are a paid subscriber, please consider renewing. If you are a free subscriber who values what we’re doing here, and can afford a paid subscription, please consider doing so. But if you love what we’re doing and money is tight, please stick with the free membership. Thanks to our paid subscribers, we will continue to keep most of our content free and open. This is a new model for journalism, and I hope our example can prove it works for others. 

With that out of the way, please let me know: what are you enjoying so far? What would you like us to focus more on? Please spread the word to others. We would like to keep growing the Steady community. Not to be greedy, but 500,000 subscribers seems like a nice round number, too, don’t you think?

Note: If you support independent journalism bringing you critical information when the corporate media fails us, please consider joining as a supporting member. It allows me to keep critical pieces like this free for those who cannot afford it, in an election season where we need everyone to see it. Thank you. 

No matter the level to which you’ve subscribed, I thank you for reading.