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.

Frustrated fact-checkers: the lies keep being told

Lies have a life of their own, and people want to believe them, especially when they are about people they don't like, "the other". Facts don't sway people.

As Laura Hazard Owen recently reported in Nieman Lab, three leading fact-checking organizations have said their work needs to go beyond simply calling out the lies of prominent people. This work is valuable, but the fact-checkers don't have big enough audiences to reach everyone who is receiving the false or misleading information. "Fact checkers are outspent by [political] campaigns 100 to 1 or more at election times," say the fact-checkers. 

So the fact-checkers have issued a call to action in which they don't just clarify or disprove the misleading information. They "publish and act". "We seek corrections on the record, pressure people not to make the same mistake again, complain where possible to a standards body. In other words, we use whatever forms of moral, public, or where appropriate regulatory pressure are available to stop the spread of specific bits of misinformation."

See also: Nieman Lab's list of news credibility projects 

Less than half of people in 38 countries trust "most news most of the time". And they have very little trust in the news they find in social media. From Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019, p. 21.

Investigative journalism: great return on investment

Between fines and recovered funds, journalists get results

Lately a couple of us here at the University of Navarra have been looking for models of high-quality journalism that are sustainable. As it turns out, many of the best news organizations that are thriving are doing investigative journalism.

Readers like this type of journalism, which holds the powerful accountable for their actions, makes them responsible for serving the public rather than themselves.

In a 2016 article, two leaders of global investigative journalism organizations made the case that investigative journalism actually has a great return on investment, ROI.

Versión en español

"Over the years [Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)] has accepted $5 million in funding from the U.S. and other governments. The return on that funding? With $2.8 billion recovered in fines and seized assets by various governments, the payoff is over 56,000 percent (or a 560-fold return)".
The authors of that article were  David E. Kaplan, executive director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, and Drew Sullivan, one of the founders of OCCRP.

In Eastern Europe, a media battle for hearts and minds

Atlantic Magazine features the clash of ideas in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban vs. philanthropist George Soros.

Many of the right-wing or nationalist leaders of Eastern and Central Europe have been winning votes by attacking the political correctness of the European Union and its allies.

And they have chosen as their whipping boy George Soros, the billionaire and philanthropist whose Open Society Foundations have been funding programs that promote Western democratic values like freedom of expression, human rights, equality, and social justice.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is part of the reason. He has never gotten over the humiliation of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Even worse was seeing three former member republics --Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia-- join the European Union in 2004, along with four former Eastern bloc members, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. He is using media to try to get them back.

People are more important than the product

Reflections on several decades of managing news publications

A student in a media management course had to interview a media professional for his final research project. I agreed to be his subject, and in the course of an hour, he got me to talk about my philosophy of management in the digital era.

Reading over the transcript of that interview, I realized how my thinking had changed over the years. The main lesson I learned was to put people first. Growing up in the old newspaper model of the news factory, I developed skill in the processes of production, meeting deadlines, getting the product out the door. That was the priority: produce a sufficent quantity of content at a level of professional quality consistent with the limitations of time, money, and space (the news pages) available.

The paradox

Over time, I discovered an interesting paradox: Putting people first generates more profit. If you think first about developing your people and helping them achieve their personal and professional goals, the profit will follow. When you create an organization where people feel they are growing and learning and participating in a mission bigger than themselves, they become tremendously creative and productive.

Smart money is betting on local, trustworthy news

This blog post started out as an explanation to my friends and family in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, why their local newspapers had become shadows of their former selves. Why their newspapers were so thin. Why news coverage was so shallow. Why they felt like they weren't getting their money's worth.

From trust to distrust in one decade. Pew.

And we will get there in a minute, but first, some good news. It was heartening to see the Knight Foundation's recent announcement that it was committing $300 million over five years to strengthen journalism, from the ground up, by focusing on local news and on encouraging collaboration.

 “We’re not funding one-offs. We’re helping to rebuild a local news ecosystem, reliable and sustainable, and we’re doing it in a way that anyone who cares can participate,” said Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation president.

Gradually, civic minded individuals and organizations have realized that the loss of local news coverage threatens democracy and citizen participation. Citizens don't know what's going on, which leaves elected officials unaccountable for how they provide services and spend the public's money. “Reliable news and information are essential for people to make democracy work,” said Jennifer Preston, Knight Foundation vice president for journalism.

Time machine: the year broadband arrived

Digging through some old files recently, I came across a column I wrote for the Baltimore Business Journal 22 years ago. It described how our cable TV and internet provider had installed fiber-optic cable in the neighborhood.

This new distribution channel transformed a clunky dialup internet service into a lightning fast information source. The hyperbole and enthusiasm expressed in the column are slightly embarrassing for someone who prides himself on skepticism. But some of it was right on target.

From PeakOptical.com

Versión en español

It began, "Public libraries could be in danger." I described how I used this new service to research an advertising client before going to a meeting with the CEO. I was the publisher of the newspaper and thus ultimately responsible for sales. The column went on to contrast the internet with a library: