During the iMEdD International Journalism Forum 2023, various global media organizations and foundations shared their best practices on how they attract or provide funding, while at the same time making a lasting and meaningful impact with their journalistic work. This guide on funding and sustainability in journalism is based on the panels “Funding journalism: A how-to conversation” and “Sustainability models in an era of digital revolution”.
Subscription model
Carine Fouteau, Chief Editor at Mediapart explained in her keynote “Media sustainability models: The Mediapart case” how the French online investigative newspaper managed to be fully independent from advertisers, state subsidies, financial shareholders and GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), while relying solely on subscriptions. In order to attract and sustain subscribers, Mediapart constantly tries to improve readers’ experience and enlarge its audience by getting to know them and offering them space to express their opinion, criticism and/ or objections through blog posts and comments. What is more, they prioritize transparency, since the methodology followed in their investigations is published, filling the “black box” of investigative journalism. As a result, Mediapart has gained the trust of its readers, who turn to it in order to be informed about “what they wouldn’t know without them”.
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