Is quality journalism sustainable? Here are 20 media organizations that are solving this problem

This post is part of a study that identifies 20 media organizations from 16 countries and four regions  --Eastern and Central Europe, Western Europe, Latin America, and the United States-- that have developed sustainable business models for high-quality journalism. This list is by no means exclusive. The examples were chosen to present a variety of solutions to this challenge. We welcome comments on other media we could have included.

-- James Breiner

Click graphic to enlarge.

This hub nurtures investigative journalism in LatAm

Huertas: Developing the next generation

BOGOTA, Colombia --  Independent news media in Latin America often lack the financial resources to act as a counterweight to the political powers and multinational businesses in the region.

But these media, many of them digital natives, have found that by banding together they can multiply their scarce resources and magnify their impact beyond their borders to challenge these powers.

One example is a platform for journalists interested in investigative journalism, Connectas.org, based in Bogota, which organizes training and operates a collaboration hub for investigative journalists (in Spanish, ConnectasHub), offers grants of up to $3,000, and publishes investigative projects from all over the region.

Versión en español

The founder and director of Connectas, Carlos Eduardo Huertas, told me in an interview that the goal of the platform is to "pull together a new generation of journalists with training in practical methods of doing in-depth journalism and investigative journalism".

Women are making their mark in digital news startups

Women are taking a leadership role in the development of digital journalism in Latin America, according to a new study of 100 startups.

The study, Inflection Point, by SembraMedia in partnership with Omidyar Network, offers many clues to achieving the elusive goal of sustainability for new digital media.

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One clue is that women have the skills and experience to lead the way: 62% of the 100 organizations in the study had at least one woman founder, and women represented 38% of the total founders of all the media (p. 41 in the PDF version).

Extensive interviews with the founders -- 25 each from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico -- produced data that clarified the elements of successful business models and showed the best places to invest resources and training.

"This finding suggests that women are taking advantage of the low barriers to entry in digital media startups to go around the glass ceilings of traditional media and build their own publishing companies," wrote the directors of the study, Janine Warner and Mijal Iastebner, who are also co-founders of SembraMedia. (Disclosure: I worked as an editor of the study.)

Versión en español

100 digital news startups in Latin America show paths to achieving sustainability

A new study of 100 digital news startups in Latin America by SembraMedia in partnership with Omidyar Network -- Inflection Point -- offers many clues to achieving the elusive goal of sustainability.

Extensive interviews with the founders -- 25 each from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico -- produced data that clarified the elements of successful business models and showed the best places to invest resources and training.

Janine Warner, co-founder of SembraMedia and an ICFJ Knight Fellow, directed the study, which was managed by her co-founder, Mijal Iastebner. (Disclosure: I participated in the study as an editor.) Among the insights:

• You don't need a lot of money to get started. 71% of the media in this study had startup capital of less than $10,000, but a tenth of those now generate at least $500,000 in revenues (p. 8). 
• Those that focus on business development do best. Those with at least one sales person reported median annual revenues of  $117,000; those with no sales staff had a median of $3,900 (p. 9).
• Women are playing a key role in development of new digital media in a region where men traditionally have held almost exclusive control of the industry: 62% of the 100 organizations  had at least one woman founder, and women represented 38% of the total founders of all the media (p. 41).  
• Differentiation is key. In terms of content, technology, distribution, or style, these media positioned themselves as offering something different from traditional media and independent of political or business interference. In some cases, they exposed the cozy relationships between big media, politicians, and business (p. 25). 
• Even a small organization can have big impact nationally and internationally. Although these organizations had median staff size of 13 employees, 72% have had their stories picked up by national news media in their home countries and 66% by international media (graphic above).

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12 road maps for sustainable digital media worldwide

Renaissance maps showed monsters, hazards to avoid.

The future of journalism is increasingly digital, mobile, and in flux. It is unexplored territory. 

Like the explorers and navigators of the Renaissance, various organizations – governments, NGOs, journalism groups, and universities, among others – have been trying to map the most promising routes to sustainability in the new media ecosystem. 

It's not just about making money; it's about providing news and information crucial to a democratic society. 

Versión en español 

(At left, a map from Chet Van Duzer's book Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps. Click to enlarge.)

As traditional news media organizations have lost revenues, laid off employees, and reduced coverage, new digital media have emerged as important players in providing public-service journalism, especially on the local level.

Databases and promising routes

Researchers from a variety of organizations have created databases of thousands of new digital media to study best practices and find new models for sustainability. Below are the 12 studies that I have found useful, mostly taken from a paper I presented at the World Media Economics and Management Conference May 5 at Fordham University in New York City.

Univision looks beyond the U.S. to capture audience of 500 million Spanish speakers

AUSTIN, Texas -- Univision has been the most important Spanish language media company in the U.S. Now its digital news arm is taking aim at the 500 million Spanish speakers around the world. 

Borja Echevarria, its digital editor-in-chief, says his team is at the beginning of an initiative aimed at Spanish speakers in Latin America and globally. 

"Fishermen in the desert," Univision's report on a lake that dried up in Bolivia.

“We are covering topics that might occur in Bolivia but that could be related to something that occurs in Colombia or in Peru. We are not trying to attack highly local topics, at least not in this first stage. We are looking for topics of international interest.”
He made his comments to me in an interview in April on the sidelines of the International Symposium on Online Journalism.

Versión en español

An example of the kind of coverage he described was Univision.com’s multimedia package on Lake Poopó, the second-largest in Bolivia, which dried up because of climate change and has left a community of fishermen high and dry. 

Latin America spawns scores of innovative news sites

Latin America has spawned a rich breed of online news publishers who are challenging mainstream journalism. These digital natives have achieved significant influence by innovating with digital tools.

They often aim to provide an alternative to the traditional voice of mainstream media, which are usually linked to political and business interests that have long predominated in these countries.

"Digital-ness" of highly influential websites. 

These are among the findings of a new study of 67 native-born digital news publications by Ramon Salaverria of the University of Navarra (Spain) and Summer Harlow of Florida State University. The study, published in the journal Digital Journalism, is an ambitious effort to measure the innovation, influence, and goals of these 67 digital natives -- "Regenerating Journalism: Exploring the 'alternativeness' and 'digital-ness' of Online-Native Media in Latin America".

And while the scholars have not set out to create  a viral listicle a la Buzzfeed, they have created two tables in their article with fascinating detail, one of which I have condensed (at left).

The rankings of "digital-ness" are based on measurement of each site's use of multimedia, interactive elements, and degree of audience participation. All 10 listed here were rated as "highly influential" by the researchers, based on measuring their per-capita Facebook and Twitter following and their global ranking in the Alexa audience measurement service.

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Investigative journalists form alliance in Latin America

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The United States has been the world's biggest market for just about everything, including illegal drugs, and that creates big problems for its neighbors.

Carla Minet

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So much money from the drug trade flows into Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean that it corrupts governments, courts, police, armed forces, trade regulators, and other institutions that were not that strong to begin with.

The result is that many of these countries are ruled, de facto, by the whims of organized crime and not in the public interest. Criminal organizations have gone global, and investigative journalists need to go global as well in order to expose this corruption and serve their communities better. 

Cross-border cooperation was the big takeaway from a three-day meeting of investigative journalists from 17 countries in San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 4-6. Billed as "The First Caribbean Meeting of Investigative Journalists: Tracking the Stories that Connect Us" (in Spanish), one aim was to create a counterweight to the power of organized crime by cooperating across borders, according to Carla Minet, executive director of the host organization, the Center of Investigative Journalism of Puerto Rico. Sponsors included the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations.

Media innovators inspire hope around the world

A year ago I wrote an article about digital media startups around the world and attempts to categorize and analyze them. Some of that material is now a bit dated, and I have come across some other analyses and lists that have good road maps for media entrepreneurs.

The Open Society Foundations has sponsored a series of studies. One of them is Publishing for Peanuts: Innovation and the Journalism Startup, by JJ Robinson, Kristen Grennan, and Anya Schiffrin of the Columbia University School of International and Political Affairs.

The study takes an in-depth look at 35 "innovative media outlets" producing high-quality news that have a chance at long-term survival. Researchers have often neglected examples outside of Europe and North America, so this study included examples from South Africa, China, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and Bosnia Herzegovina, among others.

'Desktop is the new print' as public goes mobile

Julio Alonso, director general WeblogsSL (James Breiner photo)

BURGOS, Spain -- In 2004, management consultant Julio Alonso got the itch to write about gadgets and technology. He started a blog and a year later that evolved into the website Xataka.

Since then he and his partners have built WeblogsSL, a community of 36 websites in Spanish with more than 13 million unique visitors a month. The sites focus on autos, lifestyle, business, leisure, and technology.

They have survived the global financial crisis, which hit particularly hard in Spain. And they have expanded their websites to Mexico and recently Colombia.

(Versión del blog en español)

However, Alonso, 45, struggles with what to do about the latest tsunami of change. The audience has flooded to mobile devices and advertisers are going with them. He has more than a decade of experience in the business of digital media, and an international perspective, having studied in Holland and worked in Brazil and Italy, among other places.

Still, he and his team have their doubts. "The question of how we should migrate to mobile is crucial. We have internal debates about whether the mobile users read in the same way as desktop users, if we have to provide the same contents, if the way we slice up the articles should be different. The times when they consume are different. It is not the same to be seated at a desk at work or at home as to be standing on a commuter train looking at a smartphone."

A one-man band: journalist, designer, salesman

Versión en español.

Erick Falcon started out as a journalist. Mainly he liked writing about science, technology, and fine food in long feature articles as a freelancer for the Sunday magazine of El Universal newspaper.

That might seem like a strange mix, but he lives in Ensenada, Mexico, on the northwest coast, about 65 miles south of Tijuana. Ensenada, with population of about 470,000, is in the heart of Mexico's wine country and also is a center of research, in particular the Center of Scientific Investigation and Higher Education.

In 2010 he wrote about agriculture in the desert (Spanish, PDF), an article that Reuters recognized as the best environmental reporting for Latin America in 2010. He wrote in Spanish and English, including for Cosmos magazine in Australia.

Then late in 2011, everything changed. El Universal decided to shut down its magazine, Dia Siete, that had been his main source of income. He was not going to be able to earn enough from his other freelance sources. Then his wife suggested that if the magazines wouldn't hire him, he should start his own.

Latin American news sites lag in innovation

Versión en español.

It was a bit depressing to hear the results of a study of 34 digital media natives during the Third Latin American Forum of Digital Media and Journalism.

Overall, these sites showed little interaction with their audiences in social media, little use of maps, graphics, and visualizations, and little consideration of the business side of journalism before launching.

The Center of Economic Research and Teaching hosted the session Oct. 9 in Mexico City. (Videos of all the sessions here, in Spanish.)

In Latin America, 4 digital pioneers create solutions

Versión en español.

Four digital journalism pioneers in Latin America have four different solutions for the problem of how to finance an independent news organization.

For Daniel Moreno, director general of Animal Politico in Mexico, one strategy has been to launch a brand extension called Animal Gourmet, a publication about fine dining, which attracts a new group of users and advertisers.

Jorge Zepeda Patterson, founder and publisher of Sin Embargo (On the Other Hand) in Mexico, has patient investors and a model of online advertising.

For Juanita Leon, founder and publisher of La Silla Vacía (The Empty Chair) in Colombia, the solution has been constant innovation. Besides landing grants from NGOs, the site generates revenue from its club of Super Amigos, from universities, and from sponsorship of online discussion groups.

And Oscar Castilla, executive director of a new investigative journalism site in Peru, Ojo Publico (Public Eye), is still looking at many possibilities, including support of universities and NGOs.

On 5 continents, thousands of digital media startups

Versión en español.

As traditional media organizations cut back on staff and coverage, thousands of new digital media are popping up all over the world to fill the gaps.

I've compiled 14 lists of startups below. Some startups are included on more than one list. Can you think of any lists that I've left out?

Many of the organizations that compile lists also share tutorials, especially on revenue-generating models, to help others launch and sustain their news sites. Sustainability is the Holy Grail. Part of the reason digital media are springing up is because of the gaps left by cuts in coverage and staff at major media (graphic below, from Mark J. Perry's Carpe Diem blog via Clay Shirky's Medium post, "Last Call").

Mark J. Perry's graphic shows newspaper decline. A digital opportunity?

United States

1. The Pew Center has done a study of 178 nonprofit journalism websites with a detailed breakdown of their business models, "Nonprofit Journalism: A Growing but Fragile Part of the U.S. News System."

Gigaom followed up with an analysis of the study, and the Knight Foundation sponsored a roundtable discussion on the topic, with videos of the sessions.

Demand for entrepreneurial journalism training is multilingual, international

One in six U.S. residents is of Hispanic or Latino origin. Half consume news in Spanish.

This post was prepared for sharing at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism Entrepreneurial Journalism Educators Summit July 10. Much of the material is drawn from previous blog posts. 

American universities are leaders in creating programs in entrepreneurial journalism. We could strengthen that position by reaching out to Hispanic communities in the U.S., which is one-sixth of the U.S. population (53 million). We could also learn from the many innovations among Spanish speakers in the Americas (418 million).

Potential benefits:

1. Universities could attract more students from Latin America interested in seeing some of the advances taking place in the dynamic U.S. media market.

2. U.S. students with Spanish skill could find opportunities in Hispanic media in the U.S., from the big operators like Univision and Impremedia to the hundreds of small radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and internet media.

3. U.S. students with sufficient language skill could find opportunities to work in Latin American media and study in the region's finest universities.

4. Professors in the U.S. could enrich their courses with examples from Latin America, where difficult political and economic conditions have led to innovation.

5. With a global focus, faculty and students could benefit from international exchanges and guest lectures via Skype, Hangouts, webinars, and other telecommunication aids.

6. Faculty exchanges. More universities around the world want courses taught in English. U.S. professors with specific expertise, such as multimedia and entrepreneurial journalism, are in demand.

Have I missed anything? (Special thanks to Jeremy Caplan, education director at the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY for suggestions on improving the usefulness of this post.)

What venture capitalists like about Latin America

Versión en español.  

Venture capitalists in Latin America are looking for digital media startups with rapid growth, a plan for monetization, and international potential.

Francisco Coronel: digital media well positioned

Obviously, most new media don't fit that profile. But startups with these characteristics are starting to attract angel investors who provide the first rounds of capital, says Francisco Coronel, CFO and cofounder of Nxtplabs, an incubator of digital companies in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Digital media have extra potential because there is a growing demand for content that these companies are positioned to satisfy at lower cost than traditional media, Coronel told me in an interview.

(Disclosure: I just spent two weeks at Nxtplabs training three digital media teams under a contract with the International Center for Journalists.)

Land of opportunity in digital news: Buenos Aires

Miranda Mulligan, right, and me, left, with the startup teams.

Versión en español aquí.

We hear a lot about the next Silicon Valley, but we don't hear much about the Valley of Death. That is where 80 percent of tech startups go to die.

Startups die or join the walking dead mainly for two reasons: they don't have enough cash or they don't have enough knowledge to get to the next stage of development. They are unable to show investors that their project could be commercially viable.

The Media Factory News Accelerator, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, wants to change those odds of making it across the Valley of Death.

Narrative in Latin America: conscience and credibility

Versión en español.

For a class on narrative techniques here in Mexico, I was looking for examples of the kind of writing you find in New Yorker. The magazine Gatopardo has that reputation.

Alejandro Almazán. Photo: MasPorMas.com

It was there I found the story of "A hapless narco" ("Un narco sin suerte) by Alejandro Almazan and immediately got hooked.  It tells the story of one J.R., a singer of corridos, traditional songs that tell stories of heroes and villains based on real people and events.

J.R. and his family are living a quiet life up in the mountains when he hears about the fortunes being made in the illegal drug trade by people in Culiacan, in northwestern Mexico. He decides he wants a piece of that. But his every attempt fails for reasons that are by turns hilarious and frightening.

The story is perfect in every detail. So perfect, in fact, that I wondered if this were really journalism or fiction. The magazine gave it a journalistic label: "reportaje," which is definitely not fiction.

'Journalists need to educate themselves to stay relevant' -- Esther Vargas

Versión en español aquí.

Esther Vargas is a force of nature. She is social media manager for a news agency of the Peruvian government, she teaches at the Catholic University of Peru and she is a tireless promoter of education for journalists through her website, Clases de Periodismo.

The home page of Clases de Periodismo

She and her team of four dedicated collaborators compile the latest news and courses of interest to journalists and share it all through social networks such as Facebook  (54,000 "likes") and Twitter (@cdperiodismo 109,000 followers).

In addition, Clases de Periodismo -- "The Virtual Journalism School of Latin America" -- attracts 10,000 visits a day and generates enough revenue to pay salaries to its staff. The leading traffic source is Mexico, followed by Spain, Colombia, Argentina and her native Peru.


The financing model

The site has low costs. There is no office. The staff meets in cafes or Vargas's home. "We finance the site with workshops, consulting work and social media work for various companies and events," Vargas said in an interview in Puebla, Mexico, where she was giving a lecture. 

10 entrepreneurs test new style of learning

Tenth in a series on teaching entrepreneurial journalism. Parts of this post are adapted from an article originally published in Revista Mexicana de Comunicación.

Latin American journalists have a great thirst for establishing independent media. Many of them are tired of working for low pay at media outlets that protect the friends and punish the enemies of the owners. 

They want to cover topics neglected by the mainstream media, such as education, health, environment, human rights and indigenous culture. They want to expose incompetence and corruption in government.

More than a dozen digital news entrepreneurs described how they are overcoming financial obstacles to sustain independent journalism during the Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism this spring sponsored by the Knight Center for Digital Journalism in the Americas.