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Whether embarking on a new venture, or working to expand an existing one, we hope that the following insights and recommendations help you.
These are some of the ways that we have seen successful publishers attract, grow, and retain an audience:
Once you understand what your audience needs, you can create more compelling content that drives sustained engagement, loyalty, and greater journalistic impact.
Assemble a well-rounded team that includes expertise in business, sales, accounting, and technology, as well as the essential journalists and editors that produce your content. Our research has consistently shown that media leaders who invest in sales and business development staff report four to six times more annual revenue.
Foster an inclusive environment that encourages all of your team members to grow and develop their skills in management and team-building. Encourage team members to take on leadership roles, and help editors, directors, and others to become better managers by providing coaching and mentorship.
Teams with diverse perspectives are more innovative and inclusive, and the low cost of creating online digital news organizations is opening the doors for many communities that have been underrepresented in newsrooms in the past. Women are increasingly breaking through the glass ceiling to lead their own news sites, while indigenous journalists are launching podcasts to share stories and engage their communities.
Building a new business is inherently challenging, and even the most successful entrepreneurs face obstacles. Mission-driven journalists can push themselves (and their teams) into an unhealthy work-life balance. Maintaining a supportive and resilient work environment is essential for long-term success. Make sure team members take regular vacations and that you get out of the office once in a while to connect with each other outside of the stress of work.
Cultivate strategic partnerships to expand your audience, market new products, and develop new products and revenue streams. Collaboration can enhance your reach and resources, providing mutual benefits and fostering innovation. Partnerships can also open doors to new opportunities and insights that might not be accessible independently.
Diversify your revenue sources and explore new products, but be mindful not to overextend your resources. Most digital native news organizations can effectively manage only one or two new projects at a time. Focus on initiatives that align with your mission, and the strengths of your team. Take a long-term approach, with clear objectives both from a content and a business perspective, to ensure that each new venture is manageable and sustainable.
Invest in the development of new products and business strategies that enhance your revenue potential and operational efficiency. Carefully evaluate opportunities to ensure they align with your organizational capabilities and market needs. A strategic approach to product development can lead to innovative solutions and new revenue sources.
Diversifying your funding sources to include grants can help you get the resources you need to grow and develop your operation. Here are three newsletters that send regular notices about new opportunities for grants, as well as training and other resources:
If you’re looking for funders that support Spanish-language media in Latin America, you’ll find opportunities in the SembraMedia resource directory.
Media organizations that effectively measure and report journalistic impact are more likely to receive donor funding, paid membership, and other types of vital support. Measuring your impact also helps you better understand how your work serves your community.
One of the best ways to understand your journalistic impact is to invite your audience to tell you how your work serves them, and to monitor social media and news sites, to see if your stories are picked up by others in ways that extend your reach. When possible, get out in the community to talk to your audience, and collect their feedback. A great way to showcase your impact online is to take notes when someone tells you how your news has impacted them, use that to create a testimonial, and then share it (with their permission) with your funders and your community.
Implementing efficient business-management software and other tools can streamline administrative tasks and improve workflow, ultimately enhancing productivity and reducing operational costs. A good place to find useful tech solutions is the Resource Directory on the LION Publisher’s website.
Seek out training opportunities both for yourself and your team. Continuous learning and development are vital for staying current in a fast-changing industry. We recommend exploring resources and programs offered by organizations that provide insights and training tailored to the needs of digital media professionals, such as:
The European Journalism Centre (EJC) is an independent, non-profit institute, based in Maastricht, Limburg, The Netherlands.
Media leaders operating in exile face unique challenges, and require specialized strategies to sustain their operations and reach their audiences effectively. Here are tailored recommendations for exiled media organizations:
Cybersecurity is a critical area of need for digital journalists, especially those covering conflicts, corruption, or hot-button political issues. The increasing availability and sophistication of AI tools has made it easier for trolls and organized censors to harass reporters and editors with greater frequency and force. The good news is that there are multiple pro-freedom of speech groups that have built cybersecurity toolkits for journalists, such as:
Establish networks and alliances with other exiled media organizations, international media, and human-rights groups. These connections can provide critical support, amplify your voice, and help in resource sharing.
No one plans to go into exile, and few organizations provide long-term funding for media leaders who flee their countries, but there are organizations that offer small, emergency grants, often available within 24 to 48 hours. One of the best-known options is Free Press Unlimited, which offers an online application, and details about their emergency grant program for journalists on their website. Journalists in Distress and the Committee to Protect Journalists also provide resources and support for media leaders.
Media leaders in exile need tools and training to circumvent censorship and reach their audiences. We recommend exploring the use of VPNs, encrypted messaging apps, and hosting blocked domains on alternative platforms to help ensure your content remains accessible. The nonprofit organization AccessNow provides training and other support to defend the “digital rights of people and communities at risk.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation also offers tech resources that can be useful for digital media.
Our recommendations are based on what we’ve learned from our research and interviews for this report, as well as nearly 10 years of working directly with entrepreneurial journalists and other media leaders in our training and acceleration programs at SembraMedia.
The desire to produce editorially independent information leads many journalists to be fiercely self-sufficient. Their independence is what enables them to do reporting that others won’t (or can’t) do, but it can also leave them isolated and vulnerable.
Although there are a few organizations that provide pro bono legal support to journalists, such as TrustLaw, many entrepreneurial journalists are unaware of these programs, or they lack the time and resources to meet all the requirements for them, especially when they are facing arrest or lawsuits.
Fund matchmaking programmes or provide outreach support to help promote pro bono legal services to journalists at risk. Similarly, providing resources to legal support organizations could help them to better identify digital native media that should qualify for legal, technical, and business support services.
To address the high cost of technology and limited access to resources, we recommend creating a way to provide these kinds of services so they can be shared by multiple media organizations to help manage the costs.
There are some examples from other regions that might serve as models. These include the NewsPack, which is a solution for media that publish using the WordPress CMS. We’re huge fans of NewsPack, which is popular in the U.S. and working to expand in Latin America, but so far their pricing, which starts at $750 per month, has proven too expensive for most of the media we work with in Latin America.
Another potential model is Indiegraf, a Canadian organization that provides technology and services to more than 60 media organizations in the U.S. and Canada. In addition to providing the kind of technology support that NewsPack provides, they also provide an email newsletter system, and ad server. After many conversations with one of the founders, SembraMedia has confirmed they are interested in working in Latin America, but again, their pricing is still a bit high for Latin American media.
Create a shared services program that is affordable to media in countries with lower income levels than the US. If this program is developed and staffed by teams of technology experts in Latin America or other developing nations, costs can be set at a level relative to the revenue opportunities in these regions.
Journalists working in risky contexts often face threats, harassment, violence, and legal intimidation, forcing many to invest in expensive security measures, or go into exile.
Journalists working in exile or high-risk environments face unique challenges when it comes to financial sustainability. Traditional funding models, such as advertising or subscriptions, may be impractical or even dangerous in these situations.
Here are a few recommendations:
Thanks to support from UNESCO and others, SembraMedia has conducted extensive research on universities that offer entrepreneurial journalism programs in Latin America to better understand which universities provide entrepreneurial journalism courses and what skills professors teach in those classes.
We started this research in 2018 and found that less than 3 percent of universities that teach communications offered any courses in business or entrepreneurship. When we conducted a follow-up study in 2023, we found a 15% increase in the number of courses on entrepreneurial journalism.
More outreach, support, and training for professors could help this grow even more, and ensure the journalism students who are in school today are better prepared to lead media organizations in the future.
You’ll find a recommended curriculum and a variety of materials and rubrics that professors can use in these courses in Spanish on SembraMedia’s Red de Profes site.
If you’re looking for resources for teaching entrepreneurial journalism in English, check out the Entrepreneurial Journalism Teaching and Learning Toolkit, created by Jeremy Caplan, Director of the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program at the Craig Newmark School for Journalism at CUNY.
Independent media organizations are most vulnerable in their first few years of operation, when resources are often limited and teams are often made up of volunteers and journalists with little or no business and management experience. In our work at SembraMedia, one of the best ways we’ve found to help media leaders grow from startup to sustainability, is to put them through a media acceleration program that combines direct funding with training, as well as tailored consulting services in business, management, product development, and other skills the need to build organizational capacity.
SembraMedia has now completed media acceleration programs, thanks to the support of four different donors: Luminate, Meta, Google News Initiative, and USAID (through sub-grants from ICFJ and Internews). The results of these acceleration programs consistently show that when donor support is combined with business training and tailored consulting, media organizations can, and do, invest in developing new and more diverse revenue sources. During the course of these programs, the majority of our participants earned new revenue that was four to six times the value of the grant they received.
SembraMedia’s media acceleration programmes are customized for each media organization with strategic consultants who assess their needs and work to develop and implement personalized action plans. We also bring in tactical consultants with expertise in areas related to media organizations so that they can provide specialized support. These programs provide foundational organizational development support with training and consulting in management and leadership, financial planning and accounting, audience development, innovation and technology, and ultimately revenue and product development.
Media acceleration programs can bring much-needed funding to organizations that are too small to qualify for funds from bigger donors, and in the best cases can help them grow to a level of revenue that helps them attract new funders in the future.
Media organizations that track their journalistic impact are more likely to receive grants, new members, and other types of valuable support. They also better understand how their work serves their community. Yet many media leaders tell us they don’t know how to consistently and effectively measure and report their own impact – and they find it hard to prioritize in the midst of a busy news organization.
This challenge is compounded by the fact that donors don’t all agree on the best ways to measure impact, so media leaders have to scramble to develop different types of reporting practices for each new grant they receive.
This lack of consistent guidelines makes it hard for media leaders to measure and share their impact. It also makes it harder for donors to coordinate and align their goals and objectives or compare notes on what success looks like in the field of media development.
Develop shared impact tracking practices across donor organizations and invest in training and consulting support to help media leaders track their impact more consistently and communicate their impact more effectively.
Starting with our first Inflection Point report in 2017, which was funded by Luminate Group, we have made many recommendations. One of the most important is that foundations provide grants not just for reporting, but also for organizational support. Media leaders need funding to hire, manage, and develop professional sales, accounting, and business teams, as well as dedicate resources to audience growth, product development, and technology.
In the years since our first report, we’ve been inspired by the way foundations, most notably the Ford Foundation, have increased core support grants. We’ve also seen other foundations invest more in acceleration and training programmes focused on media sustainability.
Dozens of organizations informed us that our first report helped them better understand the need —and the potential— for these media to develop revenue beyond grant support as they seek to become more financially independent.
But we feel compelled to add this warning: building sustainable media organizations takes time, and cutting funding too abruptly can have devastating effects.
Over the years, we’ve heard from media leaders that some foundations that supported them for years have abruptly ended their grant support — sometimes giving media leaders just a few months’ notice.
We recommend that funders who are considering cutting or reducing grants, especially after years of significant support, should notify these media organizations at least a year in advance, and consider providing extra money in a final grant to help them build economic independence.
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