Clocking in at a little over 140,000, we were overjoyed. In 2021, this would have taken a year.
If things continue at this rate, by the end of December we’ll be looking at an audience of well over a million.
As much as I’d like to ascribe it to social media savvy or better SEO, there’s no technological or marketing genius behind it.
The blame, if you could call it that, rests entirely with our tireless editorial team and the incredibly high-quality work they’re doing.
Every member of our staff is working at the height of their powers, writing passionately about their subjects. Their analyses are deep and convincingly argued.
From John Foster’s insightful takes on global politics and William Noah Glucroft’s intimate portraits of German dysfunction to Josh White’s trenchant commentaries on UK media, and Ari Paul and Mitchell Plitnick’s fearless work on Jewish affairs and the Middle East conflict, it’s easy to see why.
Complemented by Charlie Bertsch’s inspired readings of underground music and European cinema and Duncan Simpson’s dramatic field recordings, The Battleground has evolved a new template for general-interest media, albeit one driven by left politics.
If you’re familiar with neighbourhood media in the so-called Brussels Bubble, the picture becomes even clearer. Nearly all are centre-right and focus on policy analysis and EU affairs.
It’s an insular publishing scene driven by press releases and specialist newsletters aimed at lobbyists and lawmakers. It is highly technocratic and offers little in the way of a global perspective.
While The Battleground’s mandate has evolved over time, our goal was always to defend democracy from populist encroachment and tackle European affairs in a wider context
Despite our political motivations, we remain a modest team. However, our efforts succeeded beyond expectations, reaching a level we hadn’t anticipated. That’s a positive position to be in, and we aim to strengthen it further.
While there is still meat on the bone for EU institutional readers, The Battleground has also built a solid US audience and has growing followings in Brazil, China and Saudi Arabia.
Editing the publication from Torino, perhaps the biggest surprise to me has been how much our Italian readership has grown. As of last month, it had become our second-largest.
Achieving that level of visibility where I live is very gratifying. However, I know how international Italian press reading is, so it doesn’t surprise me. I’m just glad to have connected with it.
This autumn, we’ll be engaged in some of our most sustained, long-form work yet.
We’ll be publishing new books on Mideast politics and UK media by Mitchell Plitnick and Josh White, and the first English edition of Italian historian Simona Colarizi’s La resistenza lunga: Storia dell’antifascismo 1919-1945.
Additionally, we’ll be releasing my new documentary audio LP, Yallah Ciao: Italy on Gaza, which features field recordings of Italian protests against the Gaza war made since 7 October.
There’s more in the works. But that’s what we can talk about now, and why we have so much to be proud of. For an independent platform that produces public interest media, we feel vindicated.
Stay tuned and keep following us. The Battleground is taking a well-deserved two-week break. See you again in September.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
