It’s that time of year again. Journo Resources, the scrappy website I set up in my bedroom at 3am, is turning a year older. I always feel a bit weird about our birthdays, especially as the years have slowly grown bigger and bolder. This year marks our ninth birthday and it feels exceptionally weird.
A Journo Resources birthday always feels odd — there was never really a plan to set up a social enterprise, a community, a movement. I was just a young journalist from a working-class background, far from home, who’d lost her job. I didn’t know how to find the tools I needed to survive, pay my rent, and find people who didn’t make me feel like an outsider. I couldn’t find what I needed, so I started collecting the scraps I could find. I often describe what happens next as “things getting out of control”.
I feel incredibly lucky to now be able to call this my career, which is something I could never have even imagined as a possibility nine years ago. I won’t lie, it’s been tough, both mentally and financially, and I’m not sure I’ll ever break out of those cycles. But it’s a privilege to be able to say this is now my career, that we’ve built a community, and that we’ve managed to effect real change in the industry.
During the past nine years, hundreds of thousands of people have used our unique online resources and they tell us it’s helped them demystify the industry, build their confidence, and find opportunities. We’ve put tens of thousands of pounds back into the hands of journalists by paying fair rates for their contributions to our community. Our policy on salary transparency has forced dozens of companies to list salaries for the first time on their adverts. I like to imagine we’re “chucking some stuff around and breaking shit”, but really we’re just a website, so I’m not sure it’s quite that hardcore.
There’s Another Reason Turning Nine Feels Weird…
There’s also another reason turning nine feels weird — because it’s the number nine. No shade, but nine is an odd one. It’s a big number, and certainly one to be proud of, but it’s not quite 10. As Kayleigh, our wonderful deputy editor, explained it best the other day: a decade feels like an era, a solid chunk of history that can be defined and celebrated. Nine is cool, but it’s not quite an era.
So, this year, as we turn nine, we wanted to use this opportunity to look forwards, to what a decade of Journo Resources might look like. How might we have created change and chucked some more stuff around? What else do we want to break? What do we want to achieve?

In the past, many of our crowdfunding campaigns have been about a lack of money and while that’s undeniably still true (we still only have one full-time member of staff and stable income has reduced considerably), we don’t want that to define us. We want to set out a hopeful vision for both us and the wider journalism industry.
That’s why we’re launching 10 Reasons To Be Hopeful, our 10 commitments of what we’re going to build before we turn 10 in 2026 — and celebrate a decade of Journo Resources. We’re talking big ideas that can make a difference to your lives on a day-to-day basis and give the journalism industry the shake-up it needs. We’ll need your help to make it happen — we need to welcome 100 new members to fund these ideas, and we also need you to tell us what you’d like us to make.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT AS A MEMBER HERE
TELL US WHAT YOU’D LIKE US TO BUILD
10 Reasons To Be Hopeful, Launching Now
Our team has combed through your responses to last year’s community survey to come up with nine ideas we think you’ll love — we’ll be revealing them here over the coming month and over on our main campaign page. But we’ve also left a spot for you to tell us what you want — give us your biggest, your boldest, your wackiest ideas, that you think could make a difference to journalists in the UK. Our team will come together to select the one we think will be the most achievable and impactful — and we’ll do our best to make it before Summer 2026.
The form will be open until 23.59pm on June 30, so please get your ideas in fast (or multiple ideas if you’re the kind of person who’s brimming with them). We can’t wait to read them.
And, if you haven’t already, please do pledge your support as a member of Journo Resources — all of our work is made by real people and requires time and fair pay to make it happen. By pledging your support right now, you’ll be part of something even bigger and helping to make the media industry a fairer, more equitable place.
1. A Freelance Jobs Board
2. A Member’s Podcast Bringing Together Knowledge From Our Expert-Led Workshops
3. TBA
4. TBA
5. TBA
6. TBA
7. TBA
8. TBA
9. TBA
Make sure you let us know what you’d like our 10th project to be before the end of June. Simply fill out the form here and it’s a contender — you could also be in with the chance of a free prize!