Reader TTS

The human cost of Covid-19 has been huge: globally, nearly 1.2 million have died. With France and Germany announcing lockdowns of varying severity, and many millions of people in northern

Britain now living under Tier 3 measures, it seems only a matter of time before the rest of the country follows suit. In London, the R number is now 2.86, meaning that coronavirus is

spreading very rapidly indeed through the capital. Infections across the UK have more than doubled in a month to 1.28 per cent of the population and deaths are rising at an even faster rate.

But we are also still counting the economic cost of containing the pandemic. Stock markets reacted badly to the likelihood of new lockdowns, which threaten to stifle a promising recovery

from the record falls of the first half of the year. The streets of our cities may soon be deserted again, with ever more businesses shutting down permanently. Some firms are so beloved,

however, that they can appeal to their customers to keep them going. One such is the Strand Bookstore, which has been the favourite destination for bookish New Yorkers for 93 years. It

boasts 18 miles of bookshelves, but more important is the uniquely romantic atmosphere of the building on Broadway. This is a place to fall in love — and not only with books. When lockdown

struck, Nancy Bass Wyden, the third generation of the Bass family to own the shop, laid off most of her staff. It was not enough. Facing closure, she appealed to regular customers to place

orders. So they did. Last weekend the Strand received more than 25,000 orders — enough to crash the website. For the moment, at least, this temple of the book trade has been saved. Here at

TheArticle, we pride ourselves on offering our members and even casual visitors free access to everything on our site. Nothing is hidden behind a paywall. You can join without paying a hefty

subscription or frustrating limits on the number of free articles you can read a month. As a result, TheArticle has become the fastest-growing platform of its kind in the UK. We now have

nearly 15,000 members and a monthly readership that fluctuates between 400,000 and 650,000, measured by unique page views. This is an achievement in less than two years of which we and our

contributors are justly proud. Thanks to our interactive platform, we know just how much you enjoy TheArticle. It has already become a daily must-read for many thousands of the most

intelligent men and women, not only in the UK, but across the world. However, like every other business, TheArticle too has been affected by the pandemic and its consequences. Advertising

across all parts of the economy has collapsed and investment, even in the digital sector, has all but dried up. Without a minimum volume of paid-for advertising and carefully targeted

investment, platforms such as TheArticle cannot survive in the long term. So we are asking our readers to help. If you have a product or a service to promote, do get in touch. Contact

details are on our site. Our rates are reasonable and negotiable. If you might be interested in investing, please write to me, the Editor, at this address: [email protected] .

Our CEO, Stephen Rand, will get in touch with you.   We very much hope that you will not only continue to read TheArticle, but will link everything you like to friends and contacts via

social media. They will be pleasantly surprised to find that they are not confronted by paywalls, but can clock straight through to some of the best writing and sharpest comment anywhere.

Above all, there is no corporate agenda and no echo chamber. We are genuinely interested in every angle and every reasonable point of view. This winter will be hard for everyone and most

people are battening down the hatches. There is talk of a Covid-19 vaccine by Christmas. Let’s hope it happens. In the meantime, TheArticle is a vaccine against boredom. Please help us to

keep informing, provoking and entertaining you into the New Year. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important

contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation._