Leveling Up: Welcome to moldovamatters.md

New Domain, Same Mission — And What’s Coming Next

Hello Moldova Matters readers! I have an exciting, and overdue, announcement about how this newsletter and website is organized. As of today Moldova Matters is now on its own domain at moldovamatters.md. For your user experience nothing at all should change. The old domain - moldovamatters.substack.com - just redirects to the new one and you won’t have any troubles with bookmarks, etc.

This change is part of my work professionalizing this website and setting the stage for some growth and expansion over the course of this year. Some more little changes are coming - for example I’ll be migrating my email soon to an “@moldovamatters.md” address - but once again your user experience should not change. You might just get a response from a different email but none of the old systems will break along the way.

Moves like these are small and technical but also necessary to consolidate the branding and make it possible to have more contributors operating in a professional team.

So please use the new moldovamatters.md whenever you share this publication with a friend! Or just click on one of the share buttons like this one :)

Since I added an Investigations section late last year I’ve heard from a lot of readers that they found content like this really valuable and want more of it. But working on articles like these takes a *LOT* of time. Between 10 and 20 times the amount of work that goes into a typical Weekly Roundup. Right now Moldova Matters is entirely a reader-supported publication - which means that the more subscribers we have the more I can afford to bring on additional contributors and cover stories that no one else is working on. I have some big plans for this year in addition to investigations including adding a series of quick-orientation pages. Descriptions of the relevant parties, politicians, local business and more. Ways for people to quickly answer the “who is that again?” question and to proceed from there to other areas to get more information or data on a certain subject. This is a big year in Moldova and with your support Moldova Matters can provide insights and coverage not found anywhere else. So if you haven’t already - please consider subscribing.

Also! I’ve mentioned before that I’m working on a sponsorship program so that companies or organizations could support this work in a mutually beneficial way. Don’t worry - we aren’t heading towards lots of ads and flashing lights. But I think “This post brought to you by…[your company name here]” and similar efforts will be minimally intrusive while allowing sponsors to speak to all you wonderful people and the newsletter to find some much needed resources. So if you’re responsible for such things at your company - feel free to reach out. As always you can just respond to this email.

Finally, a massive thank you for all of the support and emails you all send me. I get fascinating questions every week and do my best to provide thoughtful responses. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know many readers over the years and developing something of a community here. The biggest thank you to those of you who are paid subscribers - Moldova Matters (and moldovamatters.md!) would not exist without you.

I’ll be back in your inbox soon with more news and analysis from Moldova. Until then, enjoy the weekend,

David Smith
Author / Editor at Moldova Matters (cited by The Washington Post, FAZ, Radio Europa Liberă Moldova RFE/RL, Open Democracy Russia, The United States Institute of Peace and Emerging Europe)
Freelance Contributor to Euractiv, the Wilson Center
RPCV Peace Corps Moldova & Kazakhstan