After what feels like quite a long time, we’ve given the Daily Sceptic a facelift. We’re flagging up our latest articles on the home page in thumbnail form and instead of archiving the most important articles on the right-hand side of the home page under various headings we’ve created a separate ‘Archive’ page that will be easier to navigate. In place of that old right-hand menu we’ve created an easy way for readers to select our ‘Most Read’ articles, ‘Most Commented’ on, and ‘Editors Picks’.
We continue to be grateful for all of your donations, particularly those of you who donate regularly, and we encourage those who haven’t donated before, or who haven’t done so recently, to please do so via our secure donation page.
But, alas, the Daily Sceptic cannot survive on donations alone. The company now has four employees, as well as legal bills, accountancy bills and other costs, so if we’re going to make it sustainable over the long term we need to find additional sources of revenue.
One change you’ll soon notice, therefore, is that the Daily Sceptic has advertising. We’ve worked with our designer and sales agent to make sure the ads are as unobtrusive as possible and we hope they won’t affect your reading experience. But given the amount of monthly page views the site gets – more than 1.3 million last month – we should be able to generate enough money to cover the cost of at least one employee via programmatic advertising.
In addition, we’ve decided to ask for a small donation from people who want to comment on articles below the line or post in our Forums. Henceforth, if you’d like to contribute to the Daily Sceptic in this way you’ll need to donate at least £5 via our secure donation page, at which point you’ll be able to comment or post as often as you like for the next 31 days. If you’ve already donated at least £5 in the last 31 days there’ll be no need to give any more – the system will recognise you as an authorised contributor when you log in provided you use the same email address when donating as you did when you created a log in – and if you haven’t created a log in yet, but have donated more than £5 in the last 31 days, you’ll automatically become an authorised contributor as soon as you do create one. Incidentally, if you’re someone who wants to comment or post regularly, the best way to avoid being prompted to donate again after 31 days is to set up a recurring donation for at least £5 a month.
Alternatively, if you donate at least £50 you’ll be able to comment or post for 12 months. If you’ve already donated something in the last 12 months, but less than £50, just top-up your donation to at least £50 and you’ll be able to comment until the amount you’ve donated in the past year drops below £50, at which point you’ll have to top it up again. If you’re unsure how much you’ve donated in the past year, just search for “Donorbox” in your email inbox.
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We hope these two minor changes won’t annoy you. The alternative way of raising additional revenue would be to put our articles behind a paywall, but that would be self-defeating. Sceptical points of view on issues like lockdowns, vaccines and climate change are so rare we don’t want to limit people’s exposure to them by charging for our content. The entire reason for creating the site in the first place was to provide a platform for scientifically-literate, evidence-based views that are usually suppressed in the mainstream media so it’s important that all our content remains free to access.
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If you find anything isn’t working properly, or can think of ways to improve the new site, please email us on thedailysceptic@gmail.com. That’s also the address to use if you spot anything you think we should dig into further or include in the daily round-up – or if you’d like to submit articles, reply to those we’ve published or correct any mistakes. We’re grateful to our readers for their continuing support, whether it’s a monthly donation, a link to an interesting article or simple words of appreciation, and we hope the redesign will make the site easier to read and navigate.
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First to comment? Righto
Well I was first to comment when the change to the Daily Sceptic from Lockdown Sceptics was announced too, and gave it my unqualified support.
As I said then, this site remains vital and relevant and thus requires financial support. However, it is easy for people to forget about this part, especially when money is tight. For many people, the best part of this site is the btl comments. However, it is also a part that may attract trolls. Well, if people want to barrack us now, at least they will have to make a contribution. And for the rest of us, it is a reasonable price to pay for a feature that has been of so much value to so many of us during these two horrendous years, both in terms of information and moral support, and, who knows, may have been the difference between surviving this horrible situation and not doing so. I for one am more than happy to give my support to these changes.
(P.S. can we still edit as before?).
Here is a link to the relevant page ( (LS name change, 19 July 2021 which sadly wasn’t exactly an end to “three weeks to flatten the curve”). I stand by and reiterate the comment I made at the time (1st comment) and thank admin again for editing my comment after I made a mess of it at first (when I for once had something important to say).
The Daily Sceptic – The Daily Sceptic
All sounds good to me. (Sorry – just testing really to see if I can comment!)
i was worried yesterday that the new DS may have been out of my reach so imagine my relief to have contact resumed ! Good morning to Toby & DS staff including all you fellow sceptics
I have to admit I’m a little concerned by this development. I totally understand that there must be regular, predictable, revenue, but I’m a little surprised that this step has been triggered without warning and seemingly without trying other avenues (e.g first step being an impossible-to-miss genuine plea for regular donations – maybe I’ve missed something??). The problem with this model, of course, is that it is likely to become corrupted by the money it relies upon by the sponsors (advertisers) and what those sponsor’s want to see. It’ll likely start off with small, hard to notice, suppression before becoming more obviously mainstream compliant. There are also concerns, and this may be paranoia admittedly, about tracking – particularly when using Big Tech payment solutions like Google Pay.
Anyway, I hope I’m wrong and I’m more than willing to give DS the benefit of the doubt as this has been my go-to place for sanity for the best part of two years now. Please don’t let me down Toby and the team
Done worry Free Lemming. We won’t be censoring any of our content at the behest of advertisers.
yet
Surely all that advertisers are interested in is the rate of page views, which is obviously proportional to the rate at which their ads get seen. So it’s content that is popular that draws in the sponsors, that is what they “want to see”. It’s been fairly clear to me from the start that the team have had a relatively philanthropic drive to get the truth out and provide an alternative narrative, that has been sorely missing from most publications. So to become “mainstream-compliant” as you suggest would be self-defeating (i.e. it would have to be renamed the “Daily Orthodoxy” or something like that, maybe the “Daily Sheep”!) There’s no room for scepticism in “mainstream-compliance”.
It also depends on what you mean by the mainstream. This is a fairly fluid concept these days, as there are more and more new(ish) publications – such as this one – that are emerging into the limelight of media consumption, which are embracing a much more diverse range of viewpoints; Perhaps one day they will become the mainstream.
Well, that obviously depends on who the advertiser is and how much they are willing to pay for their ‘advertising’. A company/conglomerate can pay for so much advertising space that they essentially become a key investor – one which cannot be easily shut out without significant penalty. You appear to only be considering small advertisers that do not have an alternative agenda; the last couple of years should have led you to believe that the world we find ourselves in is not controlled by the little people. For the elites, money is not an issue, getting everyone dancing to their merry little tune is what’s critically important. People can be bought – that’s how we’ve got to where we are now, with the chilling silencing of dissenting voices. To quote Orwell – “The Party told you to reject all evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”. The ‘Party’ has infiltrated every organisation of influence and they silence others through purchasing them (in one way or another).
Anyway, Toby has replied directly to my concern and that’s more than good enough for me.
There may not many Christians on here but as a Christian, I truly believe God sent Toby Young and his staff to us The DS has been one of the few beacons of truth throughout this most shameful episode of our nations history and the MSM will NEVER be trusted again regarding health or climate. We will triumph.
Do you think Toby and Daily Sceptic is right on Ukraine?
Well done. Commenting by donors-only a great idea and caused me to donate.
I’ve been on a break from the internet – I stopped commenting on here for a while and stuffed up my login. So here’s me version 2.0 (£5 poorer).
How things change when you take a break. Nice idea asking for a fiver to comment. I like the idea of the 77th brigade having to pay to spread misinformation (except that this money will basically be coming from taxpayers like myself – better spent here than on more propaganda I suppose)
We ended up going to Portugal for a week last month – really enjoyed it. It was just easyJet that ruined everything with their insane mask policy which everyone ignored as soon as the food turned up.
I had to get a stupid bloody PCR test to go there – but the worse thing was I found out my other half has caved in and went and got the jab without telling me. I’m not sure if she had it while pregnant (I bloody hope not, I was dead against this and she knows that), but I’m now worried about breast feeding. Time to get the baby onto solid foods ASAP I think.
I think all of my relatives (except daughters) are now jabbed. Hopefully they won’t all drop dead within 5 years but I am mentally preparing myself for this eventuality together with the food shortages, riots + inevitable collapse of western civilisation.
Time to stock up on shotgun cartridges – pigeons are not going to shoot themselves and I’d rather eat them than insects.
you spent $5 to tell us that?
I’m struggling a bit with the new format / layout on my phone – but that’s just me having to get used to the changes. I suppose it’ll curb my somewhat useless posts
Good luck with the new format and hope the donate to comment approach reduces the number of trolls.
All looks good to me, the only thing I would change would be to add links to the NEXT/PREV articles to save having to keep going back to the front page.
SOmething like with WattsUpWithThat, but please put the links at the TOP of the page as well as the bottom so if I don’t want to read it all I can skip easily.
Thanks for all the great work you do.
The re-do looks great. I just made a one-time donation and hope to do a recurring donation in the future. I’ve discovered a lot of excellent Substack sites in recent months and wish I could support all of them, but due to inflation I am cutting back on paid subscriptions. (This is actually a common inflation “workaround” that I’ve posted about in the excellent Comments Section of The Daily Skeptic.)
I broke my rule about cutting out paid subscriptions because the Daily Skeptic site is too important. Your site stands out because it has wonderful original content produced by your own small team of contributors, but it also has many links to scores of important stories from all over the world. So it’s kind of a “one-stop-shop” clearing house of information and commentary.
P.S. I’ll be curious to see what companies advertise here. I would think just about any company would want to reach your highly-intelligent recurring users and I know your viewer numbers are very impressive. This said, I also suspect most of the “woke” advertisers will not want to support a site that promotes skepticism of the official narratives … They know as oligarch “club members” what Internet sites they should boycott with their ad spends. Sigh.
This said, I will also make a special effort to SUPPORT the advertisers who do believe in free speech and think it’s okay to question dubious narratives. I hope others do the same. (Pass that nugget along to your prospective advertisers!).
The economic viability of this site is of particular interest to me as I once actually drew up a business plan for a contrarian site that would focus on taboo investigative journalism. My simple idea was that if the “gatekeepers of the news” weren’t going to do their most important job, someone would have to do it themselves.
My first thought was such a site needed capital from a contrarian and principled wealthy investor(s), who didn’t care if he/they ever made money. This is kind of the Elon Musk Twitter model.
But I also thought if the site became popular, which I think it would, maybe this site would get a decent number of paid subscribers and/or people who make regular “donations.” For example, if you attracted one million people who would pay just $1/month that would be $12 million in annual revenue just from reader donations. Or: if just 500,000 people in the world made the “one-time” donation of $17 I just made, that would be $8.5 million in revenue.
Advertising revenue would be “gravy.”
Anyway, the combination of start-up capital from wealthy investor(s), small monthly donations ($1 is 3.3 cents/day), one-time donations and some advertising money … and the site would surely “make” money. The more money it makes, the more full-time, smart journalists and researchers the site could pay – and the site would produce even better and more original content … which would lead to even more readers.
In short, I think there is a “market” for contrarian or taboo journalism and research. But even if they never make money or barely “break even,” such sites are vitally important in a world where dissenting journalism and commentary rarely reaches a sizable audience.
I do think if readers can spare a few bucks and believe the “cause” is worthy, such people should try to make a contribution … and definitely support the advertisers who choose to advertise here. Believe it or not, these advertisers are also showing a little courage. That is, I hope they get an excellent return on their advertising investments at The Daily Skeptic. If this is the case for many of them … more prospective advertisers will take note and also decide this is a great place to advertise.
Personal anecdote: I once owned a weekly newspaper in my hometown. I was writer, editor, ad-seller, business manager, photographer, layout guy, janitor and paper boy. Doing all these tasks almost killed me and I eventually closed the paper and raised the white flag.
My one take-away from my experience as a publisher is that any media organization HAS to have recurring monthly revenue to sustain the operation. I needed a lot more “annual contracts” from advertisers that I didn’t secure. You also need a solid and growing subscriber or donor base …. So, when Toby writes about the necessity of recurring revenue streams, I know the importance of which he writes!
You’re right. The idea of keeping anything going on the scale of something like this without a predictable financial base is pie-in-the-sky. As businesses expand, so do their costs. The internet would barely be a viable phenomenon if it weren’t for advertising. The net is just one big advertising machine, but it works for me!
For as long as I consider the content and general direction of the site sensible, I’ll continue to donate 13.33 every month. That’s money certainly better spend than giving it to the BBC.
Putting my money where my mouth is.
I hope this development won’t discourage the vast majority of BTL folk whose excellent contributions have been the lifeblood of this site. I have learned more from you all in the last few months than from a lifetime of mainstream cr*p.
Come on, Sceptics, open your wallets! Fight the good fight!
Thanks, Toby and Team, keep up the good work. Someone’s got to do it.
For now, it seems that BTL has virtually been annihilated overnight. And that’s certainly very bad.
A cull of the people who supplied lots of links to material far more useful to sceptics than that supplied ATL?
How this will work out in future remains to be determined. But so far, it seems like a misguided attempt to monetize something that seemed popular enough for that.
I’m still here! (After some technical issues) happy to contribute to a site I’ve depended on for sanity for many months.
You have said it for me too CG.
The new website looks nice, but I find it hard to read the grey text on a white background even with large screen and special computer glasses.
Re: Soliciting advertisers for this site, this is a no-brainer in my opinion.
I’m the rare journalist who’s also spent a lot of years selling advertising. The keys to successful “advertising sales” are not rocket science. Here are a few keys:
Advertisers want to grow their businesses and so they want to advertise where they can reach potential customers. In print advertising, these businesses want to reach “eyeballs.” In radio, they want to reach eardrums.
Advertisers like media outlets that allow them to reach many people at the best “cost-per-thouand-people-reached” price point. They also want to reach people who fit their company demo (those most likely to buy their product or service). This means ratings are very important, but so are demographic characteristics of these stations or news organizations.
It’s also important to advertise where viewers are loyal to the site. For example, advertisers would like to reach people who routinely check out an Internet site, read a magazine or spend a lot of time on one radio or TV station (instead of constantly “channel surfing.”)
In advertising it is important that a potential customer be exposed to your message(s) over and over as it takes “frequency” for a message to “take hold” and be noticed. For advertisers, consistency matters. Ideally, you’d like your company to stand out at one site, which would mean you are probably going to get a “bigger slice of the pie” of the universe of people who routinely visit said site.
I offer this pretext to make a simple point: The Daily Skeptic can deliver all of these desirable features to many advertisers.
– Large numbers of readers? Check.
– Readers who visit the site daily or many times in one day? Check.
– Readers who probably have disposable income and are highly-educated (they can afford a company’s products or services)? Check.
Now here’s the surreal and sad part of this post: Even though the Daily Skeptic checks all these boxes, it will probably be ignored (boycotted) by the vast majority of companies with large advertising budgets. This is because in today’s corporate world, “wokism” and supporting the authorized political narratives seem to be all that matters.
Tucker Carlson might be the best example of this. Carlson’s Fox News nightly show has consistently drawn the top of news ratings for YEARS. Furthermore, he has a very loyal audience who watches his show just about every night – from start to finish. And these aren’t poor 20-somethings with no disposable income. Generally speaking, these viewers are highly-educated, 30 to 65, middle class to wealthy. They are civic leaders and PTA volunteers.
Although the “narrative” would say Tucker’s audience is extremist right-wingers filled with hate – or “science deniers” – this is another bogus narrative. Really, they are just normal people seeking one show/site that provides content they can’t find anywhere else.
All of this stated, you can’t find one Fortune 500 company that advertises on Tucker’s show. It’s not that Coca-Cola or GM boycott all news networks or mainstream media platforms. They buy commercial time on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC. They spend millions of dollars on Facebook.
So these companies boycott “politically incorrect” content like Tucker offers but they support all the political-correct misinformation produced by the other networks and mainstream sites.
Tucker is left with the few brave outcast companies like My Pillow. (The “Pillow Man” must be getting a good return on advertising investment, as he’s been advertising on Tucker’s show for years.)
Personally, I think we’ll know the world has taken a turn toward sanity when big companies once again start advertising on shows like Tucker’s or at sites like the Daily Skeptic. This will tell us these companies actually believe in free speech and don’t mind reaching people who think for themselves.
Given that “paid advertising” probably will NOT be what it “should be” at such sites, paid subscribers or donors are the obvious cash-flow workaround for any “skeptic” media organization.
In a world hungry for information censored by the mainstream media companies, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Daily Skeptic’s global audience is one day larger than Tucker Carlson’s. But until this day happens, the site will need paying donors or subscribers to fill in the gaps that the corporate world won’t.
So when things flip, they’ll flip BIG TIME, right?
I’d give Toby Young and DS/LS “first mover advantage”.
And if I was a gambling man (I am not) I would invest in DS for a 4% lifetime annual return. As it is, I stick with the UK equivalent of VTSAX.
I think so. My prediction: There’s going to be an increasingly huge market for “the truth” or at least sites that are not afraid to search for it. The DS actually has a near-monopoly on many/most of the important Covid stories. Independent journalists at Substack sites are producing some of the same content, but these are not websites proper and don’t have near the features and links as this site … so Toby is well-positioned going forward.
Im grateful for Lockdown Skeptics and Daily Skeptics . but you sire are an ignoramus living in a bubble – those other sites are much more informed and much more comprehensive than this one
All of us have been reading for years that we live in an “information society” and that information is everything, the most valuable commodity, etc.
Well, what if the vast percentage of information we are receiving is false or dubious? That is, true information is actually quite rare, and thus precious. Wouldn’t any provider of true and accurate information be in the catbird seat? Isn’t factual information what consumers and citizens will search out and value in the future? I think so. Or hope so.
This hypotheses – that there is a growing demand for truthful information – can be tested by a comparison of ratings.
In America, Fox News is the only TV news network that questions elements of the Covid narrative. Well, Fox News ratings are blowing away those of its two cable TV competitors CNN and MSNB/CNBC. I’m sure the ratings of mainstream networks CBS, NBC and ABC continue to fall.
Zero Hedge, which has been running contrarian content since its founding and routinely debunks false Covid narratives, is now one of the most visited websites in the world.
The Daily Skeptic has gone from non-existent 25 months ago to millions of readers (I think).
All these Substack sites, created by smart skeptics, are blowing up and many are developing impressive followings.
Add it up and what I see is a ton of people who don’t believe what they are being told by the mainstream media and are looking for more credible sources that at least question all of these dubious narratives.
The Censors might try to shut all of these sites down, but that’s a lot of de-platforming and banning they are going to have to continue to do.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Censors (like at Facebook) might be the companies really in peril and are no doubt losing large numbers of their audience share.
dream on pal – like 1% of 1% actually care
You Sire are a pompous moron and you are being tickled like a trout
You can only have so much for free, and as this has been such an important site for me over the last two years I’m happy to fork out a paltry £5/month, not much more than the price of a pint these days.
I only drink ALDI’s own brand, at home, over a meal, every so often. Aye. A lifetime’s savings of pub money, ready to do its bit to prop up DS!
I’m not sure how much I pay by way of subscription, I think it’s ten pounds as I upped it last year. I wish I could pay more but I have quite a few subs going out – UK Column, TCW, Off- G, In This Together, White Rose I think, Daily Expose although this may have suffered from PayPal action, Laura Dodsworth although I never receive any articles so that might have to go. There are probably one or two others.
There is no intention to brag. My MSM used to cost about £30 x four weekly and I intended keeping to that. I am now way over so upping contributions is difficult at the moment. TCW have put a call out but I don’t know if funds allow. I’ll see.
DS is however well worth the money and something I would hate to lose.
Despite my occasional moans please keep up the great work.
I love to hear you moan, hux
I love the Daily Skeptic. Its original incarnation as Lockdown Skeptic saved my sanity in the first year of lockdown. And it remains great. I like its increasing bailiwick.
I do not wish to be rude. I was disturbed by the first do-over but that passed quickly. Unfortunately, after a while to settle, I still find the new layout ugly, and slow to load. Parceling it out in pieces to sell advertising is an unfortunate tradeoff and any reliance on advertising is a risk to the Daily Skeptic’s independence.
That said, I’ll be back daily as usual. I had no problem donating 5 quid, I made it 20, in order to comment. And my browser will ensure I don’t see any advertising.
Keep the readers in the loop with finances. DS is worth supporting.
Thanks to the team!
Problem is $5 a month for this, $5 dollars for that all adds up – i understand the need for revenue but if i add up my Substack Subscriptions its not like – “less than the license fee” – or “less he price of a coffee per day” For $30 per month i can see a lot of stuff on Youtube The broadcasters have to be very careful how they say things of course but they cover as much as I read here and more. So YT (or alternative) DS channel to underwrite the website? I know – I cant believe I just wrote that
Sorry guys. Don’t want to be negative, but I think it’s important to say what I really think. I think the new look doesn’t work and fails on a number of levels. Firstly, the previous blog format, while it could have been improved upon, was actually very good for your form of content. You have switched to an image led format, but your articles aren’t really image led and you seem to be struggling to find inspiring images for each article. The net affect is the articles just become less interesting looking and I suspect clickthrough will have been reduced unnecessarily.
The alternative news sources summary really doesn’t work as box you need to click on before you read the headlines and summaries. IMO you really need to get each of those headlines and little summaries back onto the homepage. It used to work much better.
And lastly the all squares graphic format, while clean, looks incredibly dull. On looks alone it you would think this website is a business publication rather than a stimulating news and opinion resource.
I know this is a very negative response, but it’s important to accurately describe how I think about the change and this is how I feel. I really want you guys to succeed, but I think this new format is in many regards a step backwards.
Thank you for many of your very interesting articles, and amongst many others Elizabeth Evans’ recent one about the NHS “Calling all Superheroes”. Disturbed and inspired by its contents, I decided to write to our local MP (attachment). Very sadly, all I received back from him was a very weak “political” reply, as shown below: (any suggestions about how I could follow up and politely challenge him are welcome)
“Thank you for your email and for sharing your concerns with me.
While I appreciate your concern I have been assured that in all instances, the offer of vaccination must be accompanied by appropriate information to enable children, and those with parental responsibility, to provide informed consent prior to vaccination. In the rare event that a parent does not consent, but the individual wants to have the vaccine, there is a process by which vaccination clinicians discuss this with the parent and the child to see whether they can reach consensus.
Children under the age of 16 can consent to their own treatment if they’re believed to have enough intelligence, competence and understanding to fully appreciate what is involved in their treatment. This is known, as you mention, as being Gillick competent and is a standard concept in medical treatment consent. Covid-19 vaccination will not be treated any differently. If consensus cannot be reached, and the child is deemed to be Gillick competent, the vaccine will take place. I am assured that this is a rare situation, but something that the NHS is very well versed in delivering for other vaccination programmes. I am satisfied therefore that any instances of this situation will be dealt with in an appropriately sensitive way, with every effort made to reach a consensus. It is important that people are protected from pressure or stigmatisation when considering their options. Kind regards,”