The Written Wilds

How this keeps independent journalism alive

There’s been a quiet change on The Written Wilds lately, and if you’ve noticed more ads popping up, you’re not imagining it.

I want to explain why they’re there.

This site doesn’t run on venture capital. It doesn’t have a newsroom funded by a billionaire. It doesn’t get government grants or foundation money. It runs on one thing only: whatever income it can generate on its own.

And right now, ads are the simplest, most reliable way to keep the lights on.

Every article you read here, whether it’s war reporting from Ukraine, long-form geopolitical analysis, or deep dives into how the world is shifting, costs time, energy, and money to produce. Hosting, servers, image tools, software, subscriptions, and the hours spent researching and writing all add up. None of it is free, even if the content is.

Ads are the trade-off that lets the writing stay free for everyone.

Instead of putting up paywalls, locking stories behind subscriptions, or turning The Written Wilds into a gated community, I chose something simpler: let the site earn small amounts from many readers, rather than large amounts from a few. When you see an ad, it’s not just clutter on the page. It’s what keeps the page online at all.

There’s also something deeper at stake.

Independent war coverage, especially in a conflict like Ukraine, doesn’t fit neatly into corporate media. Big outlets have advertisers to keep happy, governments to avoid annoying, and political lines they won’t cross. An independent site like this can say things more plainly, follow stories longer, and connect dots that don’t always make it into mainstream headlines. But independence only survives if it can pay its own bills.

That’s what the ads are doing.

I don’t expect anyone to love ads. I don’t love them either. But I’d rather be honest about why they’re here than pretend the site magically runs itself. Every ad you scroll past helps fund another article, another investigation, another long night of reading reports so you don’t have to.

If you’ve ever found value in something you read on The Written Wilds, if something here helped you understand the world a little better, then those ads are part of how that work continues.

Thank you for being here.
Thank you for reading.
And thank you for helping keep this corner of the internet alive.

— Damion/The Written Wilds