What this is, how it runs, and what we are asking for.
Everything on this page comes from the record or from a dated file, not from a pitch deck. The numbers are generated when the site is built; the chart is drawn from the channel’s real publish dates. If a figure here disagrees with a figure anywhere else on the site, the site is wrong and this page is right, and I want to know.
The model, in two sentences
Editorial: We Them Media
Street journalism and builder interviews from eight countries, filmed by people who live there, published free with the transcript and no advertising. Paid for by monthly supporters through Fractured Atlas (our fiscal sponsor), by bounties that fund specific stories, and onchain through Giveth.
Commercial: We Them Worldwide LLC
Commissioned production for brands and events, executed with SuperBio, our production partner in Abuja. Same network, a different product, and a separation we enforce: funding does not direct the editorial work, and the standards say so in public.
Cadence
Public videos published on the channel per month, the last eighteen months. 54 in the last 90 days; 364 in the last twelve months. The spring of 2026 is the Denver and Philadelphia street work; the summer is ETH Global, the Channel 5 carnival, and the first contributor desks.
Drawn from youtube/channel.json at build time. Unlisted and private videos are not counted.
The numbers, as the archive counts them
Supporter and team figures as of August 24, 2026; everything else counted from the record. Site traffic is measured with Cloudflare Web Analytics and available on request.
What the money is for
Wages first: contributors are paid for the work, and the goal on tape is a paid contributor in every country where we have a supporter. Then the archive: transcription, the pages, the open dataset. Then reach: the Weekly Connect, the newsletter, and the season releases. The supporter page shows the running total and what each level covers; State of the network has the quarter; the Q4 roadmap is public and names who is doing what.
The ask
Advisors: two or three people who have run a newsroom, a community institution, or a media business, for a monthly hour and honest notes. Partners: institutions in the cities we film in who want their community documented on its own terms. Funds: the conversation about what a community-owned archive is worth when the footage is the product and the people in it are the owners. Write to wethem.xyz@gmail.com; I answer it myself. The four-minute version of all this is on Start here.