[6] The project was co-founded by Dutch journalist Rob Wijnberg, creative director Harald Dunnink, CTO Sebastian Kersten, and publisher Ernst-Jan Pfauth.

Wijnberg, former editor-in-chief of the Dutch newspaper NRC Next, proposed the crowdfunding idea for an ad-free news media platform on national television in March 2013.

[13] The crowdfunding was enabled by a US$1.8 million "runway funding" by grants and loans from the Omidyar Network, the Dutch Democracy and Media Foundation, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.

De Correspondent intends its authors to report on under-reported themes including energy, privacy, technology, and future economic trends.

In 2018, Kendzior expressed concern on Twitter[18] that an editor at De Correspondent was refusing to review her draft articles due to climate change denial.

The fundraising campaign for The Correspondent featured endorsements from political celebrities primarily based in the United States, including Jimmy Wales, DeRay McKesson, and Rosanne Cash.

[20] As such, crowdfunding supporters as well as "ambassadors" including Baratunde Thurston and Nate Silver noted an expectation that The Correspondent will launch as an outlet specifically focused on the United States.

[22] Zainab Shah, a former strategy leader of BuzzFeed who resigned from The Correspondent a month prior, claimed that the platform's decisions "was a betrayal" and criticized the fundraising drive for operating under a "false pretense".