Colta.ru needs your help

Dear friends and readers of our site!

It seems to be recently, the same in the fall, the future colleagues and I sat and discussed the still nameless project of the site about culture. It was scary to say, in 2007. Six months later, in May 2008, the site has started and has been continuing to work since then, despite the hitch, stops, difficulties and numerous changes-which even affected the name of the site. OpenSpace . ru has turned into colta.ru, but the editors (almost in full force) and the ideology of the site remained the same, and you, our readers, are also with us.

We began to work as a classic investor media, but after a few years the first in Russia began to exist in a new quality - like Public Media , which lives with the help of its audience, depends only on it, answers only to it. And it was a sure step that we have never regretted.

Since then, Kolt has experienced many transformations, participated in many important projects (or even put the beginning to them) - educational cycles, lectures, showing and reading. We held the festivals "Island of the 90s" and " Now " , organized a school of civil journalism -not to list everything.

But the main thing is that we continued to work. We wrote, write and hope to write about the main thing that is happening in culture, which, as we insist, is inseparable from the era. We published thousands of materials, knowing in advance that some of them would be collected by hundreds of thousands of readers, some-much less, but both were necessary for the story of the time to be complete.

Over the years, the media sex has changed irreversibly. Many (or even most) publications with which we were lucky to coexist, compete, polemicize, the magazines that we read, sites that we entered daily are no more. The fact that Kolt continues to be with you periodically surprises us - in truth, this is a miracle. We still do without a state, we still have no owners, there is no one who would jeopardize editorial decisions. No need to explain for a long time what value it has right now.

Of course, over the years we received invaluable help from our trustees , partners, funds, organizations. But today, as years ago, our fate depends only on you.

Recently, when independent journalism has become an endangered profession, many publications need the support of readers - and each of us has to make a decision: to whom to transfer money, who needs help here and now. Sometimes it seems that the publication is all right: if the site works, then everything is fine.

We work, but not everything is fine with us. And for a long time. We will not devote you to everything, but believe me: we are talking about an extreme situation.

We postponed the moment for a long time when we will have to contact you with a persistent request for help. But now he has come - and for the first time in many years we ask you to make Colt can continue. When we say that we can’t cope without you, this is not a figure of speech: we need reader support now.

But what do we mean when talking about subscription? What will our subscribers get and how do they differ from the rest of the readers of the colts? Maybe we will have closed materials available only to our donors?

No, I would like to do without it. All these years, we fundamentally refused to close our materials. We believed and continue to believe that access to the conversation cannot be determined by the solvency of those who are interested in. All site publications were always open. So, every donation will give someone the opportunity to read colta.ru without paywolls and restrictions.

In the meantime, we, on the contrary, launch a weekly newsletter. It will be personal, biased. Every week, one of our editors will introduce you to the most important publications on the site for him. In addition, in every issue you will be aware of a surprise that is not related to the Colte - the recommendation of a book or film, a clip, a text selected by one of our editors. Subscribe to the newsletter here - we promise: it will be interesting.

And yet. Over the years, while we are working, we have changed (and more than once) and we ourselves, and the reality around. What remained in our memory from the plots that we discussed, the events that we described, the reputations that seemed unshakable? Who can be considered the main people of the decade, ours and in common, which is about to end?

To answer these questions, we launch the project “more than ten” . In it, we offer you, the former all these years with us, choose the heroes of this decade. And we summarize the results of the 2010s in the form of a chronicle and a dictionary . Our vote makes it possible to recall everything that happened to us and around in these stormy ten years, to choose people who formed this difficult time.

Read us, choose, vote.

Your Colt