Five senior Observer journalists including Carole Cadwalladr have launched their own culture-led publication partly funded with their redundancy money.
The Nerve, which is promising culture journalism that connects the dots with tech, politics and art, is launching as a twice-weekly newsletter through Substack rival Beehiiv, with a beta website.
The aim is to expand it to a full website and twice-yearly print publication in 2026 around the launch of its first major investigation.
Cadwalladr is a two-time winner of the Technology Journalism prize at the British Journalism Awards as well as Investigation of the Year in 2018 for her work with The Observer exposing the harvesting of millions of Facebook users’ data by the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica.
She was employed as a freelance writer for The Observer on a long-standing contract arrangement but was dropped by new owner of the title, Tortoise Media. Around half The Observer’s 70-odd staff took redundancy rather than transfer over to Tortoise Media when the ownership of the title changed in March this year.
The Nerve’s founding team is being led by Sarah Donaldson, former deputy editor of Observer New Review and digital editor of The Observer, who was Cadwalladr’s editor on the Cambridge Analytica investigation.
They are joined by former Observer New Review editor Jane Ferguson, former Observer creative director Lynsey Irvine, and former New Review senior editor Imogen Carter.
The four former Observer staffers are funding their time on the project using their redundancy payments.
Donaldson said the name The Nerve had been chosen because “we realised nerve is the essential quality needed in our increasingly turbulent world.
“Too many people in positions of power are losing nerve, and the people we most admire have it in spades. We want to channel that kind of courage into a new publication. As our lives become more and more dominated by AI and algorithms we love that the name feels human and captures the idea of connecting people.”
Donaldson said the sale process, which included a four-day strike outside The Guardian’s offices, had “really sharpened our minds. We decided to launch a title that the journalists themselves would own, that would be truly independent, and that would have a deep and genuine connection with its members.”
She added that it was a “strategic decision to start small so that we can grow with our readers and be shaped by what they want”.
They plan to fund the next phase of the project with grants from philanthropic foundations before launching a full investment round and crowdfunder in 2026.
They will also offer a voluntary membership model, priced at £6.95 a month or £68 a year.
The Nerve is the first UK publication to be part of Beehiiv’s invitation-only Media Collective, which provides benefits such as legal support, access to tools like Perplexity Pro and Getty Images, and extra platform support.
In the US, members of the Media Collective include Status, the media newsletter from ex-CNN media correspondent Oliver Darcy, ex-Buzzfeed journalist Ryan Broderick’s tech newsletter Garbage Day, and Catherine Herridge Reports from the former CBS News investigative correspondent.
Cadwalladr had already launched her own Substack publication How to Survive the Broligarchy (using income from this to fund her time on The Nerve). She said: “I’ve loved going truly independent but I’ve always believed that journalism is a team sport.
“The former Observer New Review team are some of the most talented editors in the UK, Lynsey is the best creative director in the business and I’m thrilled to be part of a collective that’s fully journalist-owned and that is going to be able to take risks and experiment at a time when so many people believe the mainstream media is failing to step up to the moment.
“We have hard-hitting investigations in the pipeline but we also want to have fun. Sarah was my editor through the entire Cambridge Analytica investigation and she really did have nerves of steel. And she and Jane and Imogen have always understood the power of ‘the mix’ with cultural inspiration and entertainment alongside more serious features.”
Former Observer columnists comedian Stewart Lee and agony aunt Philippa Perry will both write for The Nerve, with Donaldson saying they “were frequently among the most-read contributors across the entire Guardian and Observer’s weekend output”.
The team have also signed up a roster of contributing editors and writers.
Contributing writers include: reporter John Sweeney, who will write about Reform, film critic and broadcaster Ellen E Jones, freelance journalist and arts critic Kadish Morris, art critic Emily LaBarge and author and podcast host Dorian Lynskey, who will write about theatre.
Contributing editors include: Carol Vorderman, actor Michael Sheen, US writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, photographer and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Misan Harriman, musician and activist Brian Eno and investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan who was previously editor-in-chief of Open Democracy.
The Nerve will have a soft launch event on Tuesday in Liverpool during the Labour Party Conference, with a panel including Lee, Vorderman and Jones. More events will follow, with talks with Sheen and tech writer Cory Doctorow planned, as well as video and audio output being rolled out.
The launch is being advised by former Observer and Guardian US editor John Mulholland, former Open Democracy editor-in-chief Mary Fitzgerald and Branko Brkić, founder of South Africa’s Daily Maverick.
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