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In this section, we explore some of the regional variations among Latin America, Europe, the U.S. and Canada.
Number of countries 21
Number of media profiles 1,032
Latin American Media Directory
created by SembraMedia in Spanish
Brazilian Media Profiles were
created by AJOR in Brazil in Portuguese
Latin America’s political landscape has been complicated by extreme swings between left-wing and right-wing governments. In many countries, this has resulted in political instability, leading to the rise of authoritarianism, and the weakening of democratic frameworks. These fluctuations, and the economic crises that often accompany them, contribute to the general instability of media business models, the erosion of advertising markets, and legal restrictions on international funding for journalism.
In contrast, some countries have maintained political systems with stronger legal protections for freedom of expression, such as Chile, Mexico, and Costa Rica. However, the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few wealthy families and business owners, limits the diversity of voices, and puts new players that seek to form more independent media organizations at a financial disadvantage.
Latin America has a tumultuous history marked by autocratic leaders, dictatorships, and oppressive regimes that have violated human rights for decades. During the second half of the 20th century, the region witnessed the rise of 16 dictatorial regimes, in which freedom of expression and access to information were the first victims of government repression. In the 21st century, the region has seen a resurgence of authoritarian leaders, who have turned the press into an easy target for attacks and a scapegoat for national problems.
In the early years of our research on digital media, we saw steady growth of the media in our SembraMedia directory as hundreds of new ventures emerged. But since the peak of the COVID pandemic, that trend has reversed.
In the last two years we’ve been concerned by the growing number of digital news outlets that have closed. Since we started the SembraMedia directory in 2015, we’ve identified and vetted 1,664 independent digital native media organizations that serve Spanish-speaking audiences. As of May 2024, 678 have been removed from our directory because they stopped publishing. Nearly a third of those were removed in the last year.
Today there are 982 media profiles in the SembraMedia directory, but by the time you read this, that number may have changed, because our ambassadors add media when they are at least six months old ––and remove media profiles if they stop publishing for more than six months. (Note: we save all of the profiles for historical reference and add them back to the directory if they resume publishing.)
We’ve also seen a decline in the number of new media organizations being started each year in the region. Based on the latest data from our SembraMedia directory, after several years of relatively consistent numbers of digital media startups, they dropped by nearly 60% from 2021 to 2022.
In the early days of the pandemic, advertising sales plummeted, but the international community responded with a significant increase in grant support, and audiences desperate for vital information led to dramatic (but temporary) increases in online traffic to media throughout the region.
Emergency grants helped many media survive the pandemic, but as those funds dried up, many were left with a financial hangover that has made them even more vulnerable to new threats, such as the security costs caused by the increasing danger from organized crime and authoritarian governments.
Compounding the loss of pandemic emergency funds is the lack of ongoing general support for the most vulnerable news organizations in high-risk countries, including Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Although international donors have helped fund the flight of journalists from these countries, there is a lack of funding for programs that support long-term housing and living expenses —and most have fled to countries where the cost of living is significantly higher.
Despite the challenges, independent digital media entrepreneurs are still informing millions of readers throughout the region, and they have transformed the way that journalism is conducted and consumed in Latin America. They are not just producing news — they are generators of change, promoting better laws, defending human rights, exposing corruption, and fighting abuses of power.
Although we do not have detailed, up to the minute traffic data from the media in the directory, we have had many reports about the fluctuation of traffic to media sites over the last few years, most notably when Facebook and Instagram deprioritized news in their feeds.
Over the last several years, traffic has fluctuated, said Patricia Mercado, founder of Conexion Migrante, a digital news outlet in Mexico. But in the last year it has dropped more dramatically than ever.
By 2018, traffic had grown to more than 1 million page views per month with information for migrants in Mexico, Central America, and the U.S., she said. But when Facebook changed its algorithm in 2019, traffic dropped 70%.
Vowing never to rely on social media again, she started investing in driving direct traffic to her website and holding weekly training in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The effort paid off and traffic slowly rose back to more than 500,000 pageviews per month last year.
But at the end of February of 2024, she was alarmed by a precipitous drop in traffic. Over the next few months, her traffic dropped from nearly 400,000 to only 48,000 page views per month. She called her web designer in March to ask his advice and he confirmed that numerous news sites in Mexico and around the world had reported dramatic drops in traffic over the last months.
After interviewing Mercado as well as experts in analytics and media traffic trends, it appears that a combination of factors contributed to the dramatic drop in traffic. One of the reasons may be that Conexion Migrante attracts nearly half of its traffic from the U.S. Hispanic market, where advertising rates are higher, and there is growing competition in the market. Those premium ad rates have also attracted the attention of big newspaper brands from Spain and Latin America, which are targeting audiences in the US market, where Spanish-language content earns the highest revenues and programmatic makes it possible to monetize from anywhere in the world without a local sales team.
Another contributing factor may be a content algorithmic update that Google made last September. Although Google has publicly stated that they are not trying to exclude news organizations from search results, some of their recent updates seem to be affecting small sites across all content categories.
Although the drop in page views has nearly eliminated the tens of thousands of dollars Conexion Migrante earned through programmatic advertising last year, Mercado said she has been able to maintain her small team with a renewed effort in selling local advertising directly, as well as funds they receive through grants, memberships, and donations.
In a renewed effort to rebuild traffic to her website, Mercado is working with her team to start producing more video content and to attract more email newsletter subscribers.
In countries like Belarus and Azerbaijan in Europe; and Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua in Latin America, independent journalists need international support because they are often subject to arbitrary detentions, persecutions, or broadcast interruptions.
For example, in 2020, Cuban journalist Abraham Jiménez Enoa was pursued, stripped, and handcuffed to be interrogated for five hours. He and his family were threatened because of his monthly column in The Washington Post that describes life in Cuba.
In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega’s persecution of independent media has forced several outlets to close and driven all independent journalists into exile. Recently, Nicaraguan journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, director of the portal Confidencial, received the Golden Pen of Freedom Award in Oslo, in recognition of his fight in defense of freedom of expression and the press.
In Venezuela, the government undertook various actions of persecution and criminalization against journalist Roberto Deniz from the portal Armando.info for uncovering a corruption network.
According to the international press freedom index from Reporters Without Borders (RSF 2023), there are no countries in the Americas with a “good situation.”
Costa Rica dropped five points in the index year-on-year and fell to 23rd place, behind Canada. Mexico fell one more place to 128th. Ecuador fell 20 places in the index, primarily due to the effects of criminal gangs and drug cartels. Central American countries El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras also fell three, one, and two points respectively, placing them at 115th, 127th, and 169th.
In the Southern Cone, both Uruguay and Argentina have seen a decline in their press freedom rankings. Uruguay has dropped two places, while Argentina has fallen four places compared to 2022. This downward trend is likely to continue under Argentina’s new president, who has repeatedly discredited and attacked the press, especially when he or his government is scrutinized. He has also cut public funding and threatened to impose strict controls on journalism.
Digital media in Latin America report grant funding as their primary revenue source, although many are diversifying their revenues with reader support, such as memberships and donations, consulting, and content services.
Consistent with what we’ve found in other regions, nearly 60% of for-profit media rely on advertising as their primary source of revenue. Meanwhile, 68% of nonprofit organizations report grants as their primary revenue source.
The average annual revenue reported by digital media leaders in Latin America was nearly $160,000. More than half report $20,000 or less, and 1 in 30 earns more than $1 million.
In Latin America, many of the media in the directory were started informally when one or more journalists started working together on a news website or blog. Some operate for years, producing valuable reporting and building an audience, without ever incorporating.
When we find organizations like this in our mapping, we distinguish them in the database as “not yet incorporated.” In the graphic below, you can see how these organizations fall into the lowest revenue category.
Operating informally may simplify administrative operations, but it does limit their options for funding because many foundations require that grant recipients are legally established first.
We use the term “Hybrid Model” to describe those that combine nonprofit and for-profit organizations, or have opened a second venture in another country.
It’s notable that Hybrid Models earned the highest revenues, although they represent a small percentage of the nearly 1,000 media in the Latin American directory. The number of them has grown over the last few years.
There are two main reasons that media leaders start a second organization: they want to expand their business model to manage nonprofit and for-profit activities separately, often for legal or tax reasons, or they need to open a second organization in a new country, either to expand operations or because they have been forced into exile.
De los Cintis operates with a small part time team and volunteer support. They have yet to secure funding to employ full-time staff.
The digital media outlet covers the seven municipalities that make up the Cintis region of Chuquisaca, Bolivia. To cover all of seven small cities on a tight budget, they have developed a network of twenty “citizen collaborators,” distributed across the seven municipalities. They perform reporting tasks and send the information by phone to the editor and founder, Luis Alberto Guevara López, who manages the production from Sucre, the capital of Chuquisaca, Bolivia.
“One would aspire to be able to have, let’s say, one or two people who could dedicate themselves full-time because of the amount of news we have to cover in the Cintis region,” said Guevara. “There are many stories we miss simply because we don’t have staff dedicated exclusively to this work. Why not? Because finding funding for local journalism is complicated, and relying solely on advertising is challenging.”
The Amazon rainforest covers 60% of the land in Brazil, one of the most diverse countries in Latin America. After working for many years as reporters for some of Brazil’s leading newspapers, journalists Kátia Brasil and Elaíze Farias were frustrated that stories about the Amazon were not being covered by traditional newsrooms that were focused on national news. So in 2014, they founded Amazônia Real.
“When I was a reporter at Folha [a large media conglomerate in Brazil], I suggested writing stories about people in the Amazon that were never published because São Paulo readers, theoretically, were not interested in events from other regions of the country. However, we did it because the media did not cover relevant issues in the Amazonia region,” said Kátia Brasil, co-founder and editor.
In addition to covering environmental issues, the award-winning website covers the people who live in and around the Amazon, including indigenous communities, riverside dwellers, environmental advocates, and migrants.
To cover these diverse communities, Amazônia Real’s team has built a network of more than 40 reporters, editors, photographers, developers, designers, social media, columnists, and more to cover 14 states: Amazonas, Acre, Amapá, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Roraima, Pará and Tocantins, Mato Grosso do Sul, Pernambuco, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The nonprofit organization relies primarily on reporting and photography grants to support its team.
Number of countries 42
Number of media profiles 633
Media profiles provided by
Project Oasis Europe
Despite the political, economic and linguistic differences among the more than 40 countries where we mapped digital media in Europe, the 565 digital native media organizations included in the Project Oasis directory face many common challenges.
More than 65% of the media in this study exist in markets where media is controlled by a relatively small group of owners. These markets are typically dominated by large media players and are often heavily influenced by business and political leaders. Half of these countries also have government restrictions on media and low press freedom rankings.
In our interviews with media leaders in France, Georgia, Luxembourg, Portugal and Turkey, we learned that many of these journalists left more traditional media outlets to set up their own news sites.
The local digital news site Indip was co-founded by a group of freelance journalists in Sardinia, Italy, in 2021 because they wanted more control over what topics they covered, and how.
“Too many times, the editors-in-chief of national and local newspapers prevented us from developing a story in order not to annoy politicians or entrepreneurs,” said Raffaele Angius, one of the site’s founders. “On Indip, by contrast, we are able to publish hidden stories, such as the presence of mafia organizations in Sardinia, or the corruption that affects our public administration.“
In media markets where press freedom scores were low, our researchers found that digital native media often chose publishing platforms that made it easier to evade digital attacks and surveillance.
Despite the political, economic and regulatory pressures, we found independent digital native media in Hungary are reaching significant audiences — especially those who use social media to distribute content.
444.hu, established in 2013 by journalists who left the independent digital site Index.hu, quickly became popular with its distinctive “gonzo-style” journalism and mobile-friendly design. As of July 2024, the 444.hu team had nearly 457,000 followers on Facebook, and nearly 300,000 followers on YouTube.
In Turkey, which is often cited as a challenging media market due to political polarization and government restrictions, many media leaders said they have opted for a social-first approach, avoiding publishing on a website altogether.
In more than half of the 29 countries in markets with concentrated media ownership, we also found a high rate of digital native media practicing investigative journalism, solutions journalism, explanatory journalism and fact-checking, often with a focus on covering human rights and environmental issues.
Press freedom faces significant challenges in several European countries, especially those with authoritarian governments or in conflict. Intimidation, detention, and physical violence against media professionals pose serious threats to the practice of independent journalism in this region.
More than 60% of the digital media in the directory from the European region reported attacks, legal and other threats. The challenging environment for journalism in many of the countries in this region underscores the threats to press freedom and the critical role of journalists in reporting under difficult circumstances.
After more than two years of war in Ukraine, the impact on journalism in the country is evident. Reporters Without Borders has reported that more than 100 journalists have been victims of Russian crimes while covering war in Ukraine, and 11 have lost their lives. In addition, more than 230 media outlets have been forced to shut down.
In addition to Belarus, where many media are operating from exile, there has also been a notable increase in media leaders recently leaving Azerbaijan because of government repression. Legislative pressures, as well as threats, were also reported in other Central and Eastern European countries.
In Russia and Belarus, there were several arrests and imprisonments of government-critical journalists. Illegal surveillance, abusive legal demands, and other forms of intimidation towards the media were also exposed. In Turkey, at least 18 journalists were detained in 2023, and threats to press freedom persisted. In Ukraine, there were 11 alerts reporting physical attacks and threats against the safety and integrity of journalists in 2023. Two journalists, Bohdan Bitik and Arman Soldin, died while reporting on the war. Moreover, in France, Italy, and Serbia, there were reports of physical assaults, detentions, and other attacks on journalists last year.
More than 40% of independent digital native media featured in this report said they cover society and human rights issues. Many media leaders told us they started their news organizations to provide coverage for underrepresented communities and audiences, including topics related to migration, refugees, gender and feminism, which also appear among the primary topics covered by digital media in the region.
The Serbian media outlet Mašina publishes information about society, labor rights and movements, women’s rights, the environment, politics and culture. Founded in 2014 by the Kontekst association, Mašina describes itself as a “space for the production of social criticism,” seeking to foster a critical approach to information and research beyond the daily news.
Like many of the media in the directory, Mašina’s team works hard to get to know their audiences and their areas of interest. It’s one of the few media outlets in Serbia that brings a gender perspective to covering violence, women’s rights in the workplace, as well as people who do not fit into gender binaries.
This aligns with a trend found for this report: many digital native media have built audiences by addressing underserved communities or focusing on niches such as economics, business, and the environment.
In Lithuania, Aikštėje has built a media business with a niche focus on architecture, urbanism and public spaces in Lithuanian cities. Among its innovative approaches to reporting, the Aikštėje published reports with names like “home and homeliness.”
The project was started by a collective of writers and architects, and is managed by the Architecture Foundation. In addition to the website, the team produces a podcast and tries to approach each subject from many different points of view.
“We invite architects, architecture students and everyone interested in the environment around us to create texts and visual stories about the architectural order,” according to the site. “How is an architectural order born? Who formulates the task for the architect and decides what kind of architecture we need?”
To better understand the innovative ways these media organizations cover the news, we included a question with 11 common journalism techniques, including: explanatory journalism, which aims to provide more in-depth context to foster understanding of a topic; collaborative journalism, where organizations work together and share resources on a project or story, and solutions journalism, a growing approach to reporting that has been championed by the Solutions Journalism Network, which is “leading a global shift in journalism focused on advancing rigorous reporting about how people are trying to solve problems and what we can learn from their successes and failures.”
The most cited journalism technique was explanatory journalism, which is also gaining more prominence in digital media. In the increasingly frenetic news cycle, digital native media are building audiences by providing context and analysis to help readers better understand the complexities of news events.
Explanatory journalism has proven especially important for digital media covering conflicts, including the prolonged war between Russia and Ukraine, and the renewed conflict between Israel and Hamas.
A deeper dive into the issues also helps journalists better balance their coverage of the immigration debate, political fervor in Spain, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom, the climate crisis, and intense heat waves, among other events.
The high rate of media leaders who say they participate in collaborative journalism also stands out. It’s another trend we’ve also seen in Latin America, the U.S and Canada. Digital native media leaders often partner with each other and traditional media, to cover international stories that often cross borders.
More local media startups are launching, especially in Western European countries. This trend may be aligned with numerous studies that show readers tend to trust local news sources more than national or international ones.
These startups focus on local or hyperlocal communities, engaging directly with their audiences and addressing issues that are overlooked by larger, traditional media organizations. By prioritizing transparency, community involvement, and investigative journalism, these local startups aim to rebuild trust and offer an alternative to the often-criticized mainstream media.
The growth of local news sites in Europe has been hard to keep up with, and we hope to delve deeper into these sites in our ongoing research. Among the media we’ve mapped so far, nearly 10% reported that they cover local or hyperlocal news.
In the United Kingdom, West Leeds Dispatch is a local news site that practices engaged, community-driven journalism and “consistently puts the community first,” according to its founders.
Launched in 2015 as a non-profit social enterprise, the site is run by West Leeds Community Media. The founders credit their “people-powered community newsroom,” and a free community reporter course, with their success at building a team of 60 community reporters who work on stories with more experienced editors in the community newsroom. Local volunteers and businesses have also contributed to the creation of this collaborative news venture.
The founder of Greater Govanhill said she started her hyperlocal news site to help residents understand the real challenges in their community in the south of Glasgow. When journalist Rihannon J Davies moved there in 2018, she said she felt the need to challenge the negative stereotypes that were often covered by existing news organizations.
In 2020, after consulting with various members of the community, she launched the new site and began covering the local community. In December 2020, Davies began publishing, and today she leads the team of five staff members and 20 collaborators.
Davies said she tries to focus on a wide range of local new stories, including some that show how Govanhill is a place where diverse cultures live together. In 2024, they also started a series of events that include open house drop ins, media workshops and documentary discussion groups. The nonprofit organization earns revenue through advertising, donations, grants, training and consulting services.
In their effort to reach the many cultures, languages and social groups co-existing in Govanhill, the news team publishes information in Urdu, Arabic, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Latvian, as well as English.
Greater Govanhill is not an isolated case. In June 2023, Public Interest News Foundation (PINF) launched an interactive map of local news outlets in the UK. In their report, they noted that there are approximately 1,196 local news outlets in the UK, according to their local news definition, an average of one outlet per 56,000 people. This number represents both independent digital media and traditional media, indicating a growing trend in the country.
Nearly half of the media in the directory from Europe said that fact-checking is a core part of their journalistic work. In 2016, the Reuter’s Institute published a report titled The Rise of Fact Checking in Europe, and it continues to be an important aspect of journalism in the region.
TjekDet, which means CheckIt, in English, is a politically independent fact-checking site founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2016. The site positions itself as a provider of facts working against political polarization intensified by fake news and misinformation.
“The fact-checking part is our engine, the motor of our work,” said Thomas Hedin, co-founder of Tjekdet. For a short period, TjekDet published fact-checking stories in Russian to combat Russian disinformation.
They focus primarily on fact-checking opinion leaders and politicians in parliament, combating misinformation, especially when they see that it is going viral on social media. They have an active audience that sends them reports when they see misinformation online, such as bad health advice.
The data collected for this project shows that the type of coverage provided by digital media in Europe can affect their revenue.
The media outlets in this study declared that they have the following coverage focus:
Although national coverage constitutes more than 50% of the media we studied in Europe, it is noteworthy that their average annual revenue is more than $5 million, and regional, while a much smaller part of the directory, is more than $6 million.
Most of the media outlets in this study were founded by journalists or editors, and they often employ more reporters than business people, but the ones that have invested in expanding their teams to include staff members with skills beyond content production are building more sustainable organizations.
Our findings showed that organizations with at least one employee dedicated to sales or business development reported an average annual revenue nearly six times higher than those that did not employ people in these roles: $710,832 compared to $127,723.
These insights about the value of having dedicated staff members focused on revenue generation are consistent with our findings from previous research projects.
Digital media in Europe report grant funding as their primary revenue source. Consistent with what we’ve found in other regions, most for-profit media rely primarily on advertising as their primary source of revenue, while nonprofit organizations report grants as their primary source of funding.
In the Balkans, Booksa.hr, a niche site that covers literature, earns revenue primarily through private foundations grants, as well as grants from the EU and from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.
It was launched in Zagreb in 2003 by the Kulturtreger association to promote and popularize literature and other forms of contemporary culture. They also cover human rights, social injustice and women’s rights through the lens of literary works and book reviews.
The website has become a reference for literature, with more than 30,000 visits per month. It is also a member of the Eurozine network. The website is linked to the Club Booksa, a café in the city center of Zagreb. Since its opening, Club Booksa has hosted more than 500 national and international writers for book promotions, readings, public discussions, and literature festivals.
An example of the importance of journalistic quality and focus, whether local, national, or international, can be seen in the work of Onderzoekscollectief Spit, an investigative journalism collective founded in 2019 by journalists Parcival Weijnen and Bram Logger. “We see a gap in the market for regional investigative journalism, since regional media do not have the capacity for it. We partner up with these media, which leads to different stories than they are used to,” said Logger, co-founder of Onderzoekscollectief Spit. The cooperative earns its revenue through fundraising, donations, grants, and by selling its work to other media outlets.
With political polarization dividing the United States ahead of the 2024 presidential elections and disinformation rampant around the globe, a strong independent media ecosystem is more critical than ever. Fortunately, in contrast to other regions, the U.S. independent media ecosystem is growing.
As LION Publishers reports, the organization’s database of independent local news across the U.S. and Canada has more than doubled since its first survey in 2020, with a total now of 1,601 media. Similarly, LION Publishers membership has grown by 169%, from 177 members in 2019 to more than 475 in 2023. The Institute for Nonprofit News reported 450 members in 2024, it has also grown in recent years, with 200% membership growth since 2017.
Yet the latest annual index report from the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) suggests growth may be slowing. After seven years of consistent growth, INN reported in 2023 that there was a decline in web traffic and a dramatic drop in referrals from Meta and X (formerly Twitter).
When looking at the bigger picture in the United States, there are a number of indicators that also show newspapers are also struggling financially. Recent layoffs at large media organizations, including Futuro Media, and the LA Times, as well as major cuts to the Spanish-language component of the Dallas Morning News, have stoked fears about instability in the news industry in 2024.
Smaller digital outlets showed greater resilience than larger ones, according to INN’s index, with a notable increase in the number of new nonprofit organizations. However, cuts at larger media companies cause ripple effects at smaller independent local media organizations they work with. This finding supports the idea that the development of small nonprofit and local news organizations isa key element to filling news deserts, and that increasing grant support and member donations may prove a way to approach media sustainability.
The following graphics compare revenues among digital media in the U.S. and Canada, based on whether they focus on hyperlocal, local, regional, or national news.
For years, U.S. independent media, especially those considered local and small, have looked to funding and professional or business development from programs such as the LION Publishers Sustainability Audits, also supported by Google News Initiative. Participating independent media accomplish key milestones on their sustainability journey, such as launching their first fundraising campaign. The companies funding these types of programs have changed with time.
One such funder was the Meta Journalism Project, which funded media accelerators for years and provided emergency COVID-19 reporting before laying off key program personnel and moving resources away from news-related efforts
In addition, a variety of individual and collaborative funding initiatives are currently under way in the U.S. to support the sustainability of independent media organizations. Several major funding efforts are focused on “reinvigorating local news,” such as Press Forward, which started in the fall of 2023. Press Forward’s “About Us” page describes the initiative as, “a national coalition investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms, close longstanding gaps in journalism coverage, advance public policy that expands access to local news, and to scale the infrastructure the sector needs to thrive.”
Press Forward’s focus is on smaller news organizations, as applicants need to be nonprofit or for-profit news outlets with annual operating budgets of less than $1 million. The initiative will have three different approaches to the funding – aligned grantmaking, a pooled fund and local chapters. In early 2024, Press Forward announced it would provide 100 grants of up to $100,000 each to help small newsrooms build sustainability, further evidence of the increase in support for local news in the U.S.
More broadly, there are various collaborative funding efforts in the U.S. that seem to be driving growth in digital and nonprofit media. For example, Democracy Fund highlights their work with other partners on multi-year projects including the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, the Institute for Nonprofit News’ NewsMatch, American Journalism Project, The Pivot Fund, and URL Media.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) also plays a significant role in the U.S. media industry. While the CPB website defines itself as a “public-private partnership that receives federal funding to support public radio and television stations,” public broadcasting support also indirectly impacts independent media organizations that often partner with public media.
As an example, in Northern Nevada the local National Public Radio member station KUNR Public Radio works with Noticiero Móvil, a bilingual student news outlet run out of the University of Nevada-Reno, Reynolds School of Journalism (which is also a SembraMedia directory member). The CPB funds projects with public media including KUNR, such as StoryCorps One Small Step program. KUNR then shares those resources on projects developed in partnership with local digital media partners, such as Noticiero Móvil. This funding model is designed to “deliver federal support in a way that does not affect a station’s ability to operate independently.”
The U.S. has more foundations and media support organizations than most of the other countries featured in this report, and there appears to be increasing funding available at state and local levels for local media.
There are also many organizations in the U.S. that have supported the development of news ventures, including the Tiny News Collective, the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation, and seven others that are featured in this article by LION Publishers
With more than 63.7 million people, the U.S.Hispanic population is the country’s largest racial or ethnic minority at nearly 20% of the total population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 2022.
By many accounts, there is a dearth of Spanish-language media organizations proportional to the population, but a growing crop of independent Spanish-language digital media organizations are filling information gaps across the U.S., and building increasingly sustainable news organizations. In the Project Oasis directory, there are now 54 digital native media organizations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
As the Spanish-speaking population has grown, demand for Spanish-language, culturally competent reporting on and for the Latino and Hispanic communities has also grown, and new independent digital news organizations are playing an essential role in filling the information gap for this growing audience. Spanish is the most commonly spoken language in the U.S. after English, with almost 40 million Latinos who report speaking Spanish at home in the U.S.
Between 2022 and 2023, one-third of the overall growth of the U.S. Hispanic population resulted from international migration. The Venezuelan community in the U.S. is the fastest-growing U.S. Latino population. In the journalism industry, the number of Venezuelan journalists who live in exile in the U.S. has also grown. Other Latino communities with a growth rate over 50% between 2010 and 2022 include Hondurans (increase of 67%), Guatemalans (62%), Dominicans (59%) and Colombians (51%).
Increased funding for Spanish-language media has fueled this growth. Democracy Fund is among the foundations funding media organizations dedicated to communities of color. In November 2023, the organization announced $4 million in funding distributed among 11 media organizations, with an emphasis on long-term, operational funding. Grantee organizations include Conecta Arizona, Documented NY, and El Tímpano and Resolve Philly. These organizations all have a total or partial focus on Spanish-language reporting and community engagement initiatives.
Independent Spanish-language media organizations, such as Enlace Latino NC, are gaining attention with their innovative approaches to reaching Spanish-speaking audiences and building sustainable organizations.
Enlace Latino NC is an independent, non-profit news organization that was launched in North Carolina in 2018 by Paola Jaramillo and Walter Gómez, originally from Colombia and Argentina, respectively. The two journalists worked together at a Spanish-language newspaper in North Carolina for nearly a decade before deciding to launch their own digital news site focused on local politics and civic engagement.
Enlace Latino NC is one of the few digital media sites that covers local politics in Spanish. In 2023, they received a 4-year grant of just under $1 million from The American Journalism Project (AJP) to help build organizational capacity and sustainability. As part of the grant, AJP is also providing consulting support.
From the early stages of the organization’s development, they have taken an innovative approach to reaching the diverse Spanish-speaking audience in North Carolina, providing news and information through WhatsApp, a podcast, social media content, and news stories published on their website.
Enlace Latino NC serves as a bridge to local Spanish-language audiences, publishing information that was previously available only in English, on topics such as national, state, and local elections, and providing context for the audience. For example, the organization offers a voter guide for 2024 elections, with both text and audio options that explain how to vote. They also host community workshops and events.
After launching with a startup grant from the North Carolina Local News Fund (thanks to support from the Democracy Fund), Enlace Latino’s founders are building a business model that includes grants, advertising and consulting services, such as conducting surveys and producing reports for clients.
This desire to work together, to maximize impact with limited resources, is also evident at the Latino Local News Collaborative (LLNC), created to explore the issues surrounding electoral participation among Latino communities. Planeta Venus helped co-found this collaborative, alongside other media organizations such as 2PuntosPlatform, an independent Spanish-language news organization in Philadelphia (which is also a partner of Factchequeado and a member of the SembraMedia directory).
The LLNC stems from Solutions Journalism Network’s Local Media Project, which helped create 15 news collaboratives across the U.S. The participating organizations received support from SJN for two years, then worked on sustainability plans for their collaboratives. Many of these collaboratives have developed into permanent news hubs with a focus on solutions reporting.
In May 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Maritza Félix started Conecta Arizona to bring information to the Spanish-speaking population in the Southwest U.S.
Conecta Arizona started as a WhatsApp group, where community members could ask questions and share experiences. Initially, Félix was a one-person team, focused on delivering relevant, much-needed facts on public health and immigration issues to the Arizona/Mexico border community. She now runs a news website, as well as sharing her content through WhatsApp and a newsletter.
Journalist Claudia Amaro started Planeta Venus in 2015 in Wichita, Kansas as a radio show. Responding to the news needs of Kansas’ Spanish-speaking community, Amaro expanded Planeta Venus to be a website, newsletter and printed community magazine.
Planeta Venus is a member of the Tiny News Collective (TNC), which offers independent media organizations services including workshops, access to legal advice, fiscal sponsorship, help launching Ghost Pro products, and other resources.
The TNC and the Wichita Foundation offered local information startups $30,000 each, as well as two years of TNC membership. This support enabled Planeta Venus to join TNC (which charges publishers $100 per month).
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