Our Reporting Is Now Free for Everyone

We’re dropping our paywall and making it free to read our news—but we’re still counting on your support.

September 3, 2024

When Civil Eats launched in 2009, no major media outlets focused on the relationship between food and other significant social and political issues. For the past 15 years, we have led the charge in creating robust conversations around food and farming, and worked to make complicated, underreported stories more accessible to a mainstream audience.

In that time, our stories have had significant impact and reach, thanks in part to support from our readers and donors. We raised an unprecedented $100,000 via Kickstarter in 2013; we were named Publication of the Year in 2014 by the prestigious James Beard Foundation; we were inducted into the Library of Congress in 2019; we won a 2022 IACP Award for best newsletter for our members-only monthly column, The Deep Dish, which also won best newsletter from the Online News Association in 2024; we were awarded a James Beard Foundation Media Award for our 2022 investigative series on animal agriculture workers, Injured and Invisible; and we were nominated for best micro newsroom by the Online News Association twice, in 2023 and 2024. Here is a list of our many other awards and recognitions.

In order to make it all work, in 2015, we put up a paywall—like many independent nonprofit news organizations have done. Readers could access a small number of articles for free, and they could pay to become a Civil Eats member and get full access to our reporting. Our members care about independent food systems news, and the membership program has been critical in supporting our work as a small, nonprofit newsroom.

We’ve always wanted to remove our paywall in order to make our journalism free and accessible to everyone. And in our surveys, we heard that sentiment from members, too. Because the membership program provided a significant amount of our budget, removing the paywall has been a constant concern. Until now.

We are thrilled to announce that, in honor of our 15th anniversary, two generous funders, the 11th Hour Project, a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation, and GRACE Communications Foundation, have provided us funding to help us remove our paywall for one year. Our reporting will now be free to everyone, everywhere.

But we will still need your support! In order to keep our paywall down, we’re launching a membership drive to keep the site free, open, and accessible to all beyond this first year.

Without you, Civil Eats’ stories don’t just go unread—they go untold. Become a member today by making a contribution to ensure our vital reporting continues and thrives.

Membership Has Its Benefits.

Join the thousands of members who are driving systemic change in the food and farming landscape and receive benefits like:

The Weekly Newsletter: a rundown of all of our recent reporting;
The Deep Dish: our award-winning, members-only newsletter, featuring an in-depth look at a different topic each month;
Civil Eats Salons: an interactive platform for educational sessions, Q&A discussions, and community-building; and
Slack Community: a vibrant community of food system changemakers, policymakers, and practitioners.

Have questions about the paywall and/or its removal? Check out our FAQ.

You’d be a great Civil Eats member…

Civil Eats is a reader-supported, nonprofit newsroom, and we count on our members to keep producing our award-winning work.

Readers like you are the reason why we’re able to keep digging deep into stories you won’t find anywhere else. When you become a member, your support directly funds our journalism—from paying our reporters to keeping the internet on in our remote offices across the United States.

Your membership will also come with great benefits, including our award-winning newsletter, The Deep Dish, which is full of relevant and timely reporting, access to our members’ Slack community, and online salons as a way to engage with reporters, food and agriculture experts, and each other.

Civil Eats Supporting Membership $60/year $6/month

Give One, Get One Membership $100/year

Learn more about our membership program

Since 2009, the Civil Eats editorial team has published award-winning and groundbreaking news and commentary about the American food system, and worked to make complicated, underreported stories—on climate change, the environment, social justice, animal welfare, policy, health, nutrition, and the farm bill— more accessible to a mainstream audience. Read more >