Recorder

Recorder is a digital platform founded in 2017 by four journalists: Cristian Delcea, Mihai Voinea, Răzvan Ionescu, and Andrei Crăciun. From the beginning, the founders aimed to expand the newsroom only if 100% transparent sources could support it. Through its trajectory, its information has convinced thousands of people to donate to journalism, restoring faith in the profession's strength and importance.

The team comprises 14 people, and its primary funding source is readers' donations. The newsroom publishes detailed reports on its sources of revenue and how the money is invested in the project.

In the beginning, the organisation had a hybrid model. The founders created a publication owned by an LLC (Harfa Online Publishing) that would finance itself from advertising contracts. In July 2017, they launched the project, self-funding the start-up. In addition to advertising contracts, Recorder also asked for financial support from the public, announcing that it would accept donations from readers. For that purpose, the team set up a non-profit organisation, the Recorder Community Association.

The organisation started developing journalistic public interest projects financed by public contributions in partnership with Harfa Online Publishing SRL.

The newsroom reports and writes investigations and produces interviews, documentaries and video investigations, which significantly impact the number of donors. While at the beginning of the project, the balance of revenue supporting the newsroom was 80% advertising and 20% reader donations, this ratio slowly began to reverse.

At the end of 2020, the team decided to go for a funding model based primarily on its readers’ support, so the team transferred all operations to the Recorder Community Association. The Recorder Community Association, the sole entity now managing Recorder, is a non-profit organisation governed by a three-member Board of Directors: Cristian Delcea, Mihai Voinea, and Răzvan Ionescu.