Ernst-Jan Pfauth (1986) is cofounder and CEO of De Correspondent, a Dutch journalism platform with 60,000 members – who pay 60 euros per year – and a full-time staff of 47. It launched in 2013, after raising 1.7 million dollars with a world-record breaking crowdfunding campaign.
In November 2017, he moved from Amsterdam to New York with his family, to set up the global version of De Correspondent, called The Correspondent. As a first step, De Correspondent partnered with professor Jay Rosen (NYU) and launched a joint research project called The Membership Puzzle.
De Correspondent has been praised by media such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Fortune and Die Zeit for how it enables readers to share their knowledge with journalists.
At the Dutch news organization De Correspondent, journalists share story ideas with subscribers before they write them, so they can harvest community knowledge.
The New York Times
Read more about Ernst-Jans ideas for journalism in these three articles he wrote:
- Publishing less to give readers more – Harvard’s Nieman Lab
- Earn trust by working for (and with) readers – Harvard’s Nieman Lab
- Why Subscriptions are the Future of Journalism – Editor & Publisher.
Career
Ernst-Jan is obsessed by innovation in media. He is the former Head of Digital at NRC Handelsblad, as well as an acclaimed bestselling author and columnist who has written two books on blogging and one about the burn-out society. In 2008 and 2009, he served as editor in chief of The Next Web Blog, which is now among the ten most-visited blogs of the world.
In his latest book, the Dutch bestseller ‘Dankboek‘ (The Book of Thanks), he makes a case for beating the burn-out society together. He shares some conclusions from his book in his TEDx Talk ‘How we can beat the burnout society‘.
Ernst-Jan gave talks at South by Southwest (SxSW), The Next Web Conference, The International Journalism Festival, The Columbia Journalism School and the World Publishers Forum and guest lectures at Harvard’s journalism institute and New York University.
Recognition
In 2016, the American magazine Forbes featured Ernst-Jan in their 30 under 30 list for Europe, and the Council for the United States and Italy (founded by David Rockefeller) invited him for their prestigious Young Leaders Conference. He has also won multiple blogging awards in The Netherlands. The Royal Dutch Library archived his personal blog, pfauth.com, because of its cultural and societal significance.
Arts & Culture
Another love of Ernst-Jan is arts and literature. He often hosts literary talkshows, and welcomed writers like Donna Tartt, Jonathan Safran Foer, Ben Lerner, Chad Harbach, and David Sedaris as guests. He hosted talkshows for Frans Hals Museum and The Dutch National Opera & Ballet – interviewing Dutch legends like artist Joep van Lieshout, dancer Igoné de Jongh and choreographer Hans van Manen.
Contact Ernst-Jan
You can reach him through this contact form.