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How investigative journalism can pay for itself, independent of grants and philanthropy, is an ongoing challenge — particularly because producing impactful journalism is often not enough to break even or make it profitable.
“By 2024, we can all acknowledge that the business model of ‘build it and they will come’ doesn’t work,” said Bilal Randeree, managing director of the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), which invests in media companies, many in Africa and the Middle East. “Good quality journalism and content is not enough, unfortunately, to help us build sustainable organizations,” he added.
At the 2024 IPI World Congress in Sarajevo, Randeree moderated a panel discussion on the “investigative journalism profit puzzle” as part of the conference’s focus on media innovation. It brought together experts — whose roles combine journalism with business development or fundraising — to discuss their experiences with diversifying revenue as well as their successes, failures, and how they have balanced revenue and independence.
The conversation touched on the role of grants in funding independent outlets — which, while not the perfect solution, remain an important revenue stream for many news organizations. But the key takeaway was that various forms of diversification have helped independent outlets in Brazil, Romania, Senegal — as well as the Associated Press (AP) investigative team — pay for their investigative journalism.
Alina Păduraru, who started as the first intern at Recorder, a Bucharest-based independent video publication, is now the executive manager of the Recorder Community Association, the NGO that oversees the donations that make up 90% of Recorder’s revenue. The rest of its revenue comes from sponsorships from private companies that can choose to redirect 20% of their taxes per profit to an NGO, followed by grants, and, finally, advertising.
The latter two help fund their investigative journalism. And because spatial analysis, maps, and data are a large component of their investigative journalism, they can do a lot of investigative journalism “without going on the ground,” said Mori.
Păduraru shared Recorder’s plan to take over a successful newsletter that had been run by a magazine that closed, which didn’t go as expected. “They didn’t want to give us the newsletter, so we decided to create one from scratch… We had a situation where we saw an opportunity, but we didn’t analyze well enough the need that we had,” said Paduraru. “Was it truly our need, or not?” Recorder now has a successful newsletter, but the previous experience was “extremely painful” at the time, Păduraru recalled. “We lost a lot of time, money, and energy.” The lesson was not to embark on a big new project without proper planning.
How to balance revenue and independence is part of the “puzzle” the panelists discussed — and they agreed the latter is non-negotiable.
A small percentage of Recorder’s revenue still comes from ads on its YouTube channel, which is its main publishing platform. But to maintain its independent reputation, the site suspended that funding stream in 2024 ahead of Romania’s presidential elections in September, because YouTube viewers were seeing election ads alongside Recorder’s video investigations. “We prefer not to have those ad revenues from YouTube if this is the situation,” Păduraru said.
Mori said InfoAmazonia is transparent about who is funding their projects, and is mindful to avoid conflicts when they are co-publishing. For instance, when a larger news organization expressed interest in republishing InfoAmazonia’s work, the site’s team decided not to go ahead because the potential partner also accepts advertising from companies directly causing harm to the Amazon.
Tidiane Sy explained that in Senegal, you can easily fund a media site with advertising if you’re friends with politicians and powerful business people — but at the cost of your reputation. “They can support as long as you run a favorable story about them or one that hurts their enemies,” he said. “We can have new technology, we can have new approaches with collaboration, but the minute you lose independence, call it what you want, but it’s not journalism anymore,” he said.
To close the discussion, Randeree said independent media should regard similar outlets as allies — and focus on collaboration. “Small independent media regard each other as competitors. But [our competitors] are not those in the room with us,” he said. “It’s the bad actors. We can’t be strong in isolation. To grow, independent media needs to be in an environment where there is other strong independent media.”
Nixon added that publications should also look beyond the media business. “Journalism can be insular,” he said. “We can learn from other industries that have reinvented themselves. ‘How did they do that?’ Do some research and development. There isn’t one business model. What works for you will depend on where you are.”
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