Ownership & Funding

Who owns RTD JOURNAL

This site is published by a small independent operation, owned and run by the working editors who founded it. There is no parent media group, no outside shareholder pulling strings, no political party’s media arm, and no larger business with interests in the sectors we cover. Nobody owns a piece of this publication who is not also doing the work of it.

The company is registered where its founders are based and files what the law there requires. We do not print the registration particulars on this page, mainly because that material gets scraped and reused in scams that impersonate small publishers. If you have a genuine reason to need them, serving a legal notice, or verifying us for a transparency body, write to support@rtdjournal.com and we will send them.

Because the owners are the editors, there is no proprietor to phone the desk with a demand, and nowhere for the editors to hide either. If this site publishes something indefensible, the people who own it published it.

No party money, no government money for coverage

We take no money from any political party, campaign, candidate, or organisation acting for one, in exchange for coverage or anything else. Political advertising that hides who is paying for it is refused, and during elections we would rather lose the revenue than let our space quietly become somebody’s undeclared campaign spend.

We accept no payment from a government or public body in return for favourable coverage, and we do not blur the line between a news story and a message somebody paid to place. Where public bodies advertise through the same open marketplaces as everyone else, that buys ordinary advertising space and nothing more, and it does not touch what the newsroom writes about them.

Where the money comes from

Advertising is our main source of revenue and, at present, close to all of it. Most of that is programmatic display advertising filled through the open exchanges, with a smaller amount sold directly. Occasional clearly labelled sponsored posts and any newsletter sponsorship make up the rest. The rules those sales run under, including the categories we refuse and how labelling works, are on our advertise page.

There is no paywall, no subscription, and no reader payment of any kind. If we ever add affiliate links, where we might earn a commission when a reader buys something we linked to, they will be marked as such in the story and described here, and they will never decide what we choose to cover or how we cover it. We have no syndication or licensing income today; if that changes, this page changes with it.

Keeping advertising out of the journalism

Our team is small, so the wall between the money and the reporting is procedural rather than architectural, and it holds because the rules are few and absolute. Advertisers do not see stories before they publish. No advertiser is told what is coming. No story is shown to a buyer for comment as a courtesy, and no advertiser gets a softer version of a story about them because of what they spend.

When an advertiser asks for a story to be pulled or softened, the answer is no, and the request itself may become something we report. When a company that advertises with us becomes the subject of coverage, the story discloses the relationship. On programmatic space we usually do not even know which advertiser bought a given impression, which is inconvenient for selling and useful for everyone else. How this connects to the reporting itself is in our editorial standards.

Affiliate links, sponsored content, and disclosure

We believe you should always be able to tell, at a glance, whether you are reading independent journalism or something commercial. Sponsored content is labelled as sponsored, in plain words, not in grey type you need good eyes to find. If a piece contains affiliate links, that is disclosed in the piece. If a trip, a product, or access was provided by someone with an interest in the coverage, the story says so.

The principle is simple: a reader should never discover a commercial interest after the fact that they would have wanted to know while reading. Where we fall short of that, it is a correction like any other, handled under our corrections policy.

Grants, donations, and conflicts

We currently accept no grants, donations, or reader contributions. If that ever changes, the terms will be set in advance and disclosed here: we would name the funder, describe the amount in a meaningful band, state the purpose and duration, and say plainly whether the funder had any say over coverage. A grant conditioned on covering a subject, or on approval of what we produce, is not one we can take.

The owners hold no stakes in the companies on our beats and take no paid work from parties, governments, or businesses we cover. Where an editor has a personal or financial interest in a story, they declare it and step aside. If the ownership changes, if an investor appears, or if a new revenue stream grows into something that matters, this page is updated before it is announced anywhere else. The wider account of who we are is on our about page, and if anything here reads as thin, write to support@rtdjournal.com and ask the specific question.

Last updated: August 2026