The Rise of Independent Journalism and The Future of Content Creators

Declining ad revenues. Increased competition for subscribers. Fake news. Information overload. Dominance of social media platforms. Distrust of the media.

These factors have been playing out on the media stage over the past few years, creating an extremely blurred line between content and journalism — as well as concern over the future of true, objective, independent journalism. This has led to a rise in independent journalism that is free from the constraints of consumer media, delivering unbiased, authentic news with a high level of transparency and trust.

British journalist and filmmaker Jake Hanrahan is one such independent journalist, who founded Popular Front. It is described as conflict journalism done differently. It reports on the parts of war big media rarely acknowledges, and talks to people they’ll never find.

“We don’t have corporate bugmen trying to dictate what we do either,” the website states. “This is all independent, funded by members through subscriptions and sponsorship.”

To make what it calls proper independent journalism, Popular Front relies on a grassroots approach for its revenue, which comes from donations, sponsorship, and limited advertising from ethical companies only. The organization also sells content subscriptions via Patreon and sells some merchandise.

An informed populace is the key to a working democracy, writes Rachel E. Stassen-Berger in a special report for the McKnight Foundation, based in Minnesota, USA. While access to news is greater than ever before in human history, that access has not necessarily kept citizens as well-informed as they deserve and demand.

The report lays out the landscape of independent media in today’s fast-changing landscape, and identifies the major challenges for independent media:

Over the past decade, legacy media companies that have traditionally been the source of independent, unbiased news have been in decline. Television network news and news magazine staff numbers have declined by half since the late 1980s, and there are 200,000 fewer people involved in dissemination of traditional news than there were 15 years ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

One way that we have seen the rise of independent journalism through all these changes is in the large numbers of not-for-profit news organizations that have been created. In 2009, journalists from 27 nonpartisan, nonprofit news organizations gathered at the Pocantico Center in New York to plan the future of investigative journalism.

The result of that meeting was the establishment of the Institute for Nonprofit News — an organization with a mission to strengthen and support more than 250 independent news organizations in a new kind of media network: nonprofit, nonpartisan and dedicated to public service. INN’s vision is to build a nonprofit news network that ensures all people in every community have access to trusted news.

INN believes that nonprofit journalism serves people and communities, and has a unique role because they are created as public trusts with a mission to serve communities’ information needs rather than generate revenue. This builds public trust, equity and inclusion.

Finding and supporting “real news” is like voting, says Sue Cross, executive director and CEO at INN.

“As consumers, we have the ultimate defense: credible news. We can find real news, follow it and support it,” Cross writes. “We’re entering a golden age of grassroots, public service journalism. More than 300 nonprofit, nonpartisan news sites cover the U.S., beholden to no one but the people they report for, responsible for public service rather than profit.

“This is news for the people, with the people. Finding and supporting real news is kind of like voting: it’s one of the best ways each of us can support our own individual rights and pull our country and communities together. Where there is news, research has found the politics are less polarized, government finances stay out of debt, more people run for office, more of us vote. Our right to free speech is upheld, our governments are held accountable.”

Some of the largest and most successful nonprofit, independent journalism organizations include ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, CalNews, Marshall Project, and MinnPost.

In June 2020 an online event was held, Truth-tellers in Crisis: Protecting Independent Journalism. Speakers included Carroll Bogert, president of The Marshall Project; Nishant Lalwani, managing director at Luminate; and Pavla Holcová, Central Europe Editor for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. John Nery, columnist and former editor at Philippine Daily Inquirer, was the moderator. This panel, along with journalists in attendance from around the world, took a deep dive into today’s troubling media dynamics. The panelists discussed the importance of media freedom, the critical role investigative journalists play in uncovering corruption and promoting open societies, and how to promote an independent press when freedom of expression is under threat.

“Vigorous reporting and a free, open press play a vital role in preserving the rule of law by holding the powerful to account and protecting the public’s right to know,” says the World Justice Project, which sponsored the event. “This has never been more true than today, with authoritarianism on the rise worldwide, growing instances of media harassment and capture, and a global pandemic triggering — or simply giving cover to — increasing press restrictions and crackdowns.”

The work of independent journalism takes on even more importance as traditional newspapers fold and communities continue to lose access to unbiased news reporting. A University of North Carolina report released in 2018 found that nearly 1,800 newspapers had folded since 2004.

“We can kind of pick up the slack where national media isn’t doing the job they said they want to be doing,” independent journalist Lindsey Gilpin told the Poynter Institute. “Having … more independent journalists that love their region and that are really attached to a place can be a benefit to the industry.”

Gilpin writes a popular weekly newsletter, Southerly, that covers environmental justice in the Southern United States.

Independent journalism is also good for freelancers, giving them a way to report in-depth on important topics that interest them — without such reporting dependent upon an editor at a traditional outlet accepting their pitch.

In the earlier part of the decade, Open Society Foundations took a look at how many of the world’s journalists are at risk doing their jobs — harassed, vilified, attacked, imprisoned or even killed for uncovering and reporting on news that is absolutely critical to democracy.

The result was the Mapping Digital Media project, one of the largest studies ever completed of its kind, examining 15 of the world’s most populous 20 countries to reveal common themes:

“It’s striking how, across 56 countries of every type and size, these issues crop up again and again: political interference, control or even ownership of the media, lack of affordable access to the internet, declining resources, and worsening labor conditions for journalists,” the report stated.

But the report also revealed an upside: If digitization is handled in the public interest, it can help advance open society values. Despite the vast and continuing challenges facing independent media worldwide, there are signs in many countries that progress is being made, with inclusive media policies being developed or in prospect.

Independent journalism and digital publishing has also given rise to a new breed of reporters: content creators. Independent and nonprofit media are not constrained to telling only news stories, nor to publishing those stories in the traditional text content. Video, audio, and multimedia storytelling continue to challenge traditional word-on-paper (or, increasingly, word-on-screen) delivery.

A content creator is someone who is responsible for the contribution of information to any media and most especially to digital media. They usually target a specific end-user/audience in specific contexts. A content creator can contribute any of the following: blog, news, image, video, audio, email, social updates and other related content.

Sergey Faldin claims that content creation is the job of the future, and that it will take the place of the role of “entrepreneur.”

“What we think of as a profession or a career is quickly changing,” he writes. We live today in the “passion economy” in which virtual goods are exchanged and education has become more accessible than ever before. As the Head of Content for a startup, Faldin says that his job wouldn’t have existed twenty years ago.

“The Passion Economy created a whole new sector of jobs, allowing people to monetize their thoughts, skills, and ideas.”

Content creators are, first and foremost, communicators and their main KPI is engagement.

Many high-profile journalists have exited legacy media to go solo as their own content creators, launching newsletters and other publications. These entrepreneurs have faced the realities of what it takes to go it alone and generate revenue as an independent journalist.

One such person is Casey Newton, a former editor covering Silicon Valley at The Verge. Newton created his own newsletter, Platformer, which has 30,000 free subscribers and around 1,000 paid subscribers. His goal is to convert 10% of the free subscribers to paid.

Danish media analyst Thomas Baekdal is familiar with some of the pitfalls of going solo, even with big numbers, reports the Media Voices Podcast. He started his site Baekdal.com in 2004, and for six years, monetised it through advertising. By 2010 he had a million visitors per month — but even with that huge subscriber base, he was only pulling in around £200 per month.

So Baekdal changed his model to a reader-revenue hybrid, with a mixture of free articles, a newsletter, and deep-dive paid reports which require a Baekdal Plus membership to access.

Many of these former staff journalists were able to migrate subscribers from their previous publications — Newton, for example, brought 20,000 subscribers to Platformer from his newsletter email list at The Verge. But even for journalists with a large audience, monetization doesn’t come quickly. It took Baekdal three years to reach a positive cashflow, and he says the only reason he was able to keep it going to that stage was because he had saved up a lot of money.

Every movie is its own separate project that requires its own unique location, set of skills, cast and crew members, etc. Journalist Shane Snow says that the model is the same for content creation.

“In the movie business, each project presents a unique challenge. Meeting that challenge means assembling a team that combines proven coworkers with new talent. I bring this up because I believe that the future of content production is going to look more and more like this model.”

The Hollywood Model gives content creators the greatest chance to tell stories that resonate with their audiences.

“The best creators don’t do the same thing over and over again. They continuously tap into different types of talent so they can push the boundaries of their field,” Snow says. “In other words, they aren’t afraid to think like Hollywood.”

Core dna outlined what it believes will be the top 10 content marketing trends that creators should pay attention to in the coming year:

As we move forward into a new year, it’s clear that independent journalism and content creation are not merely new trends, but complete industry evolutions that are here to stay.