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Most of the journalism organizations featured in this study are still relatively small, but they are not all young. More than 25% of the media in the directory have been publishing for less than five years, but 38% have been operating for 10 years or more.
This graphic below shows the number of new media that started publishing each year across all three regions in the directory. The oldest ones we’ve found started in 1997, and from 2000 to 2021, you can see steady growth in the numbers.
In 2022 and 2023, there appears to be a drop in the number of people starting digital native media in all three regions. This may be due to economic challenges that are slowing the growth of the media sector, high inflation in countries like Argentina, slow growth and low salaries in countries like Mexico, and conflicts in Europe.
This decline in digital news startups may also be an indication that markets are approaching a saturation point in some places, especially in big cities, where the majority start, but it also may be due to the fact that many of the media in the directory started informally, which can make them hard to identify in the first year or two of operation.
Many of the digital native media we’ve studied were launched by journalists who were motivated by media capture and other restrictions to media freedom. They are often “reluctant entrepreneurs” who founded news organizations because they were frustrated by the limitations of media conglomerates that were beholden to business or secretly (or openly) supported by a political party.
Their founders are often veteran journalists, and nearly all of those interviewed said they were motivated by the desire for editorial independence. Many report that they left prestigious positions in more traditional media organizations because they were prohibited from covering the stories they thought were important or from serving marginalized and neglected communities.
Many of the projects featured in this study are well-known, award-winning news sites, such as Block Club Chicago in the U.S., Chequeado in Argentina, Animal Político in Mexico, and La Silla Vacía in Colombia. Others fill niches that others have neglected, such as site Flip in Germany, which does investigative journalism on business and the environment.
Many media leaders say they were motivated by the desire to cover stories they were told they couldn’t cover, because “they weren’t important” or they were “too dangerous”, or because they threatened the political or financial interests of the media owners.
While the motivations for the journalists that have started their own news organizations are varied, what they have in common is their commitment to telling stories that have an impact. Their unique voices are key to filling in the holes left as traditional media outlets pull back or go out of business entirely.
Luz Mely Reyes, co-founder of Efecto Cocuyo in Venezuela, who was the first woman to become the editor of one of the largest daily newspapers in the country, left to start an online investigative news site because of government controls and media capture. She has won numerous awards, including the 2018 International Press Freedom Award from CPJ, the WOLA Prize in 2019, the Lasa Prize in 2021, and multiple awards from the Gabo Foundation (often referred to as the Pulitzer prize of Latin America). After receiving numerous threats for her work, Reyes now lives in exile.
Even in relatively open media markets, journalists have told us they left traditional media because they were told that the stories and communities they wanted to cover were not important.
Lilliana Elosegui, co-founder of the Mexican fact-checking site Verificado, said she started her news organization when her editor at the daily newspaper where she worked told her she couldn’t write about the health problems caused by drinking Coca-Cola, because they were one of the paper’s biggest advertisers. Mexico is the largest market for Coca-Cola, and the country has surpassed the United States with the highest per capita rate of obesity in the world.
Necessity is the mother of innovation, and digital media founders — dedicated to serving their communities — are developing creative ways to produce and share news, even with limited resources.
Most of the media in the Project Oasis directory were started with limited resources and small teams, yet many are reaching large audiences and competing with much larger media organizations. They are developing revenue sources that combine grants, advertising, and a broad range of creative strategies to earn enough revenue to produce high-quality journalism.
The notoriously fickle (but much-pursued) young audience has migrated from the formerly popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to newer spaces like TikTok and Instagram Reels. YouTube has shown the greatest longevity and popularity, and it continues to rank second as the most popular search engine.
Short news videos have exploded online as the format has caught on with younger viewers who are interested in current events. This would represent a cultural shift for many legacy newsrooms focusing more on multimedia productions.
The Reuters’ Institute Digital News Report 2024 finding that news publishers are planning to produce more video also provides evidence of this trend, as shown in this graphic from their report. They also found that younger audiences favor videos, especially on TikTok and Instagram, while older audiences are more likely to visit news websites.
Another phenomenon to watch is the blurring of lines that is taking place as “influencers” increasingly start to integrate news into their content. Evolving from merely commenting on events, influencers are starting to do their own original reporting, in their tireless efforts to grow and retain an engaged audience.
The Digital News Report also found an increase in the number of young readers who get their news from influencers on social media, while older news consumers were more likely to visit news sites directly.
In Paraguay, El Surti uses visual storytelling to engage audiences across multiple channels, using a variety of journalism techniques, including investigative reporting shared through memes, graphic-novel-style stories, and in-person events. The innovative team has experimented with visual storytelling to reach younger audiences in a country where 25% of the population is under 15.
They’ve also developed a sustainable model that combines grants and donations with a digital design agency that serves clients beyond the borders of their small county. Their success has attracted global attention for its innovative approach to helping NGOs and other clients to create visual ad campaigns and other content with impact.
In Ecuador, the digital native media outlet Tinta Digital was founded in 2021 by two young political scientists to explain complex events using new narratives. The founders focused on using research to understand their country’s under-served audiences, identify specific needs and better identify how they consume information. This enabled them to create a media company, editorial voice, and content production system that better responds to the needs of their audience.
“Those of us who work at Tinta Digital speak through Tinta’s personality. It is rebellious, charismatic, non-binary and it generates trust. People believe in it,” said founder María Rosa Zury in an interview for a case study by SembraMedia.
Zury said they started thinking about creating a business model that would be sustainable before they launched. Three years later, they are successfully reaching young audiences with creative multimedia formats. The revenue model they developed includes consulting, workshops and training, content creation, advertising, and research, as well as grants and other support from international foundations.
Digital native media throughout Europe are producing news and other information using a variety of innovative journalism techniques and formats. From solutions journalism to fact-checking, to slow journalism to satirical news sites, digital media leaders told us they are attracting audiences that are disillusioned by the constant barrage of clickbait news, misinformation and polarizing tactics practiced by many of the other news outlets in their markets.
Among the examples we found, Armenian outlet Urbanista produces solutions-oriented journalism with a focus on architecture and local government initiatives in the country’s urban areas and in other parts of Europe. It also conducts interdisciplinary research on urbanism and urban governance.
Urbanista has produced a variety of journalism projects, including Interactive City Budget, a project that investigates how the budgets of 12 Armenian towns are distributed; Women of Borderland, which shares the perspectives of women in urban developments; and Rethinking Post-industrial Cities, a web documentary on the past, present and future of four Armenian cities.
In Sweden, our researcher found the independent digital media landscape to be diverse and innovative, both in content and in form.
Newsworthy, to name one example, was founded in 2016 as a news service for local, data-driven journalism in Sweden. Its business model is based partly on subscriptions, but mostly on producing commissioned content for companies and organizations.
Newsworthy’s automation technology and experience in data journalism enable the creation and distribution of local press releases with high efficiency, quality and impact.
The platform’s subscribers include editorial offices, public administrations and civil servants in Swedish municipalities. With a stack of tools for process automation, including natural language generation, Newsworthy can produce over 300 local news feeds. In 2021, the media platform published more than 40,000 articles.
The majority of the media in this study define themselves as dedicated to presenting information that is fact-based, verifiable, and nonpartisan. Nearly 15% say that “fact checking” is one of their primary reporting techniques. Their motivations include countering propaganda, as well as providing context and holding politicians and business leaders accountable.
Many of the media in the Project Oasis directory devote resources to fact-checking, and some were founded with a focus on fighting disinformation. The oldest and one of the most successful, is Argentina’s award-winning Chequeado.
Chequeado is a non-partisan, nonprofit website founded in 2010 by a chemist, a physicist, and an economist. It is operated by La Voz Pública Foundation, and it is the first dedicated fact-checking site started in Latin America. Over the last 15 years, Chequeado has generously shared its research methods and tools in training sessions and seminars that have helped to launch or strengthen the work of more than a dozen other fact checking sites throughout the Latin American region.
Chequeado covers serious topics, but it often uses comics, humorous animations, and public art installations to expose and share the truth with their diverse audience.
For example, they set up two boxes in front of a public building in Buenos Aires with signs that prompted passersby to place a ball in either a box that read “I love the truth” or a box that read “the truth doesn’t matter to me.” Video of their experiment is on YouTube.
“With the data and verification that we share, we contribute to improving the level of knowledge and understanding of public events and increase the transparency and depth of the debate,” they say in their About Us page.
In 2013, Chequeado became the first media organization in the world to offer live fact-checking during a political debate. With a team of trusted experts on hand, and reams of research on each candidate’s platform, the small team at Chequeado verified all the candidates’ statements in real time. The live fact-checking was a hit, and it was replicated soon after at The Guardian and PolitiFact, said former Executive Director Laura Zommer, a well-respected leader in Poynter’s global network of fact-checking sites (and a member of the board of SembraMedia).
As part of its efforts to strengthen fact-checking in the region, Chequeado also leads LatamChequea, a network of more than 30 organizations that work collaboratively to combat misinformation.
Building on the success of the Latin American fact-checking network, in April 2022, Zommer, who was then the Director of Chequeado, partnered with Clara Jiménez-Cruz, the founder of Maldita.es from Spain, to launch Factchequeado in the United States. The independent, Spanish-language fact-checking organization is dedicated to combating disinformation targeting U.S. Spanish-speaking communities.
A core component of Factchequeado’s model is its community of 90+ partners (and counting) around the country, including both media and community organizations. Enlace Latino NC, Conecta Arizona and Planeta Venus all joined this partnership, which is free, in its first year. Partner organizations contribute topics for fact-checkers to investigate, as well as co-report stories and coordinate Factchequeado-led media literacy training in their local communities: “We want the public debate to be based on data and facts, not on ideological preferences, prejudices, partisan interests, or mere negligence or superficiality.”
Lupa Media is an Ecuadorian entrepreneurial digital media organization, founded by Carolina Bazante in 2023, with the mission of “defending factual truth and promoting critical thinking in Ecuador.”
Lupa Media specializes in correcting misinformation in science, economics, politics, human rights and the environment. In its first year, Lupa Media produced more than 200 fact-checking pieces and trained hundreds of journalism students and organizations in fact-checking tools to provide more tools and information in a complex media context. They seek to “build an informed society, based on verifiable facts and contribute to transparency and honesty in the public discourse.”
Since 2024, Lupa Media has been part of LatamChequea, the network of checkers throughout Latin America, the United States, Spain and Portugal. They credit the start to the support of the Emerging Media Leaders program of the International Center for Journalists (Fall 2022) and the GNI Startups Lab Hispanoamérica, SembraMedia’s media incubator, and the Google News Initiative.
Throughout the world, digital native news media are breaking important stories, connecting with their audiences through social media, and inspiring citizens to take action.
Many of the media projects in this study have produced investigative reporting that had significant real-world repercussions, from protecting endangered species, to leading universities to develop new policies, to forcing corrupt government officials to resign in disgrace.
Entrepreneurial journalists are breaking stories that other media in their countries often can’t (or won’t) cover because of government control, threats, or the influence of financial interests. Once they break stories, however, national and international media are picking them up and sharing them with even broader audiences.
Tvoe Misto is a local media outlet in Lviv, Ukraine and was founded in 2014 as the city’s independent multimedia hub, comprising a website, online TV and production studio. All of which rely on advertising and grants from international donors while backed by citizens of Lviv who have come together as “Friends of Tvoe Misto.”
They have been organizing and moderating public debates and forums since launched with speakers who include city officials, policymakers, experts, and civil society actors.
“Citizens come to us and tell us they have been struggling with some challenge for months or years: ‘This is such a huge problem for the city and officials do not listen to us. Can you make a public debate about this?’ Then we organize it, and it works; it helps us find solutions, because people are open to us,” said Taras Yatsenko, co-founder of Tvoe Misto.
The first public debates after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 were about topics strongly connected to war, such as helping veterans find volunteers to help them. But then they realized that they had many other challenges in the city, like economic development and maintaining resilience in times of war. In response to the community’s interest in discussing issues related to the city’s development, they started covering issues related to city development and other local issues again, which had been part of their strategy from the start in their public forums.
The Tvoe Misto team of journalists monitors follow-ups on these topics. In some instances, officials will publicly respond on the forum: “Okay, we will fix this.” Journalists will then, often, reach out to the official to get an update on whether changes have been implemented.
Some of the more innovative media outlets in the directory are creating new ways to engage their audiences — and build revenue — around online conversations.
At the Czech outlet Deník Referendum, editor-in-chief Jakub Patočka came up with a way to better control online conversations, and earn revenue from its most loyal readers: “Readers who wish to debate under our articles pay a fee. This approach generates a modest income and also helps cultivate the discussion in the comments section.”
The news site, founded in the second-largest city in the Czech Republic in 2009, covers politics, human rights, and other topics with the slogan: “No oligarchs, no paywall. Just your donations and our work.”
In Colombia, the innovative team at Mutante has been attracting international attention for the way they use investigative reporting to spark conversations and debates online.
Mutante’s model revolves around social listening and facilitating conversations with their audience — often on taboo or controversial topics such as children sexual abuse. Mutante will then open up an online discussion about the topic in communities where the incidents take place.They start by detecting topics their readers are interested in, then research and present stories, and use their reporting as the foundation for online discussions, often with thousands of active participants.
“We believe in participatory journalism as a tool for social change,” said Juan Camilo Maldonado, founder and director of Mutante. “We were born as an independent alternative to confront polarization, fake news, click tyrannies and ‘public agendas’ manufactured by private interests.We live in times when our audiences are willing to mobilize and contribute to the process of news production, especially when it concerns issues that affect them. This was the opportunity we saw at Mutante.”
The team took an unusual approach to journalism from the start, said Maldonado. “We had a list of concerns about how we produce and consume media: the hierarchy between journalists and sources, a significant gap between media power and ordinary people, a lack of complexity in information, and therefore, difficulty in making sense of what really happens in the world. Moreover, the sense of doom conveyed by traditional media and the rejection of news consumption by people concerned about its impact on their mental health. All these issues showed us that we needed new approaches. And that’s basically what we tried to do: explore new approaches in a participatory and highly experimental manner.”
Their innovative approach has attracted support from international donors, as well as local sponsors. More than 50% of their revenue comes from “sponsored conversations.” Maldonado said they work hard to maintain editorial independence and that sponsors have no control over the online conversations. Since they launched in 2018, they’ve built a team of more than 20 people and a budget that has grown steadily and now puts their annual revenues in the top 10% of the Latin American media in the directory.
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