Editor's Note
Lapok is a community-owned network of 18,400+ independent journalists across 71 countries — founded in Budapest in 2021 by former Reuters and AFP editors, audited by the Tow Center, and paid out by its readers.
Chapter I
It began, as most serious things do, with a disagreement. Six former Reuters and AFP desk editors, sharing a long table over cold coffee, argued about what had gone wrong with the news — not in the editorial sense, which was sometimes noble and sometimes shoddy, but in the structural sense. Who paid the writer. Who decided who was read. What happened to a story once a platform decided it did not move fast enough, or did not fit the day's appetite.
The platform economy had reduced independent reporting to a series of tolls. Every cut required a compromise — a headline rewritten for the algorithm, a byline dropped to lift engagement, a story chopped because it would not perform until Friday. The reader paid in attention. The writer paid in dignity. The editor paid in time.
The six of them wanted a different arrangement. They wanted a publishing network that looked the way a great newsroom used to feel: slow enough to be careful, accountable enough to be named, and paid well enough that a freelancer in Lagos or Lima could file the long piece their editors had commissioned rather than the short piece an algorithm would reward. They called it Lapok — Hungarian for "the pages."
From that kitchen table the cooperative grew into a publishing house: 47 full-time staff in Budapest, 12 regional editors across six continents, and 18,400+ verified journalist members in 71 countries. Four years later, Lapok serves 4.2 million monthly readers in nine languages and has paid out an industry-leading median of $412 per published piece. Not because it is bigger than the platforms it competes with. Because it is built the other way around.
The Mission
Every story on Lapok is human-edited, fully attributed, and pays its writer. We are reader-supported, writer-paid, and editor-approved — and we publish on no other terms.
— The Editors of Lapok, ratified by the membership, 2024
By the Numbers
Sources: Lapok membership registry, Q3 2024 · SimilarWeb, Q3 2024 · Reuters Institute benchmark study, 2024 · Tow Center audit, 2024.
The Desk and the Field
Lapok is deliberately small at its centre and wide at its edges. The headquarters in Budapest holds the editors, the standards desk, the payouts team, and the membership review. The field is held by twelve regional editors — one for each of the six inhabited continents, doubled up where reporting requires it. They commission, edit, and pay.
Founded and run from a converted printing house on József körút. The headquarters holds masthead, membership standards, the TipJar payouts team, the syndication desk, and nine language desks covering English, Spanish, German, and Hungarian at full editorial coverage, plus five additional languages in translation.
Each regional editor holds commissioning authority for their territory, a discretionary payout budget, and an editorial veto. They are senior reporters themselves and are publicly named on every story they commission or edit. They meet weekly with Budapest by encrypted video and annually in person.
A standing advisory board drawn from press-freedom NGOs, university journalism programs, and reader-elected member representatives reviews editorial standards annually, audits the TipJar payout formula, and holds the right to publish a public minority report. The board's recommendations are binding on the cooperative.
Standards We Publish By
Press-freedom organizations, journalism schools, and independent auditors have spent four years asking whether Lapok is what it says it is. The receipts are below.
