The Correspondent’s whole “reader trust” thing is...not looking great

Lotttttta questionable things going on with the Netherlands-based The Correspondent and their decision to — after raising $2.6 million to expand to the U.S. — not actually open a U.S. newsroom. <— This Nieman Lab piece centers on the perspective of The Correspondent’s first U.S. hire, Zainab Shah (who, full disclaimer: used to work on the same team @ BuzzFeed as ya girl), revealing how she felt blindsided by the company’s decision and that “we had raised funds on false pretense.”

Interestingly, there’s also plenty of quotes from the De Correspondent (the original Dutch site) founders, who insist that they had basically tried **really hard** to not be misleading and that plus, like, it was “80%” the fault of journalists who covered their fundraising campaign and mischaracterized their goal………….which, okay, sorry, but we just do not buy that as an excuse when you’re a journalistic outlet yourself — especially one billing itself as a “what a news organization built on reader trust looks like.”  My dudes...let us just say that this ain’t it!!