How we work with partners

We want to be open about the business model of our journalism, too. At Tortoise, we don’t take ads. We don’t want to chase eyeballs or sell data. We don’t want to add to the clutter of life with ever more invasive ads. We think that ads force newsrooms to produce more and more stories, more and more quickly. We want to do less, better.

Instead, our journalism is funded by our members and our partners. We establish partnerships with businesses willing to back a new form of journalism, enable the public debate, share their expertise and communicate their point of view.

We host three types of ThinkIns with our partners:

• Public ThinkIns: open conversations with partners and Tortoise members.
• Private ThinkIns: private conversations for partners with their stakeholders on issues that matter to them.
• People ThinkIns: internal conversations for companies and their staff to enable employee voice.

Our partners, of course, know that we are a journalistic enterprise. Our independence is non-negotiable. If we ever have to choose between the relationship and the story, we’ll always choose the story.

We respect the confidentiality of conversations in our private and people ThinkIns, but we are a journalistic organisation and, as in other background or off the record briefings, what we learn also directly and regularly informs our journalism.

We value the support that those partners give us to deliver original reporting, patient investigations and considered analysis.

We believe in opening up journalism so we can examine issues and develop ideas for the 21st Century. We want to do this with our members and with our partners. We want to give everyone a seat at the table.