GK has survived and thrived with a model of in-depth story-telling
Isabela Ponce and José María León met on Twitter more than a decade ago when it was still “a nice place where you could meet people,” Isabela recalls.
From that meeting, they began to exchange ideas and collaborate. What emerged from this partnership in 2011 was what became GK. They declare their mission (in Spanish) to be “to change society, set the media agenda, and make the world a better place.” They do this by producing “in-depth journalism with social impact.”
The co-founders of GK, José María León and Isabel Ponce.
They seem to be achieving their goals. They have won numerous national and international journalism awards (see link above). The independent news outlet now has 20 employees and a monthly audience of 2 million in a country whose population is 18 million
My apologies to readers. I interviewed Ponce on March 7 via Zoom. I promoted it as a live session, but all the links I sent out were for the Zoom host — me — so people couldn’t sign in to the session. I am sorry if this error on my part caused you frustration or disappointment. Here is the video recording of that session. You can make comments there or on this newsletter. I’ve edited the text for length and clarity. — James
A revolutionary idea
Ponce and León both were news media veterans. She worked for a large daily. He had the idea of creating a kind of collective citizen blog. Eventually they found common ground. “There were many people that wanted to talk about things that were not mentioned in traditional media, such as abortion, same same-sex marriage, drugs,” she said. “So when it started, it was very revolutionary, and it was basically why I came to GK.”
They received some grants, enough money that they could both quit their jobs in 2014.
The turning point. They successfully applied to participate in a media accelerator run by the Media Factory in Buenos Aires. GK (then known as GKillCity) was one of three startups chosen from among 115 applicants to receive $75,000 in investment, plus four months of training in Buenos Aires. The goal: make a sustainable business out of their media operation.
Intensive weeks and months
The investors were Nxtplabs, Media Development Investment Fund and North Base Media. The Media Factory’s Mariano Blejman was supported by a fellowship from the International Center for Journalists. I spent two weeks working with the teams on business models and revenue sources.
Ponce recalled, “Even though there were months of workshops and conversations, it takes time to understand and to realize why you need to consider it as a business.” An obstacle she faced was “this idea that journalists shouldn’t manage money or journalists shouldn’t mess with advertisers.”
Here I interjected that for many journalists, “marketing” is a dirty word, “monetize” is a dirty word, “advertising” is a dirty word. (I’ve written about this before: “Dirty words journalists have to say without blushing.”) — James
A new business idea
These days Ponce, GK’s editorial director, is past that. But a year after the Media Factory, GK was struggling. Advertising and sponsorship models that worked for others didn’t seem to work for them.
One day León, the CEO, was doing a sales presentation to a group of business people. “He talked about what we do — in-depth journalism and very high quality content,” Ponce said. He showed them a lot of the new multimedia and digital tools GK was using.
“After that meeting, someone called me from one of those companies and said, ‘I really like your quality. How can I have that in my brand?’
“This is how we started what we called Editorial Services,” Ponce said. They created content for clients, applying their writing, interviewing, and multimedia production skills. Over time this service evolved into GK Studio, which has been generating half their revenue.
Headwinds
The next biggest revenue source has been grants, at 27% of the total. Their School (Escuela GK) and GK Content each brought in 9%, advertising 5%, and audience contributions less than 1%. GK’s investigative work sometimes costs them advertisers but enhances their reputation for credibility and trustworthiness, Ponce said.
A perfect storm. A series of uncontrollable events, starting in 2020, has made it tough to run an independent media outlet in Ecuador.
- Covid 19. Many businesses froze all of their advertising and marketing in 2020. Ecuador was one of the hardest hit countries in Latin America, with big spikes of deaths and infections in July of 2021 and January of 2022.
- The economic downturn in 2020 occurred largely because of covid 19.
- Wars in Gaza-Israel and Ukraine. GK saw two potential clients with contracts worth about $70,000 shift the money to Ukraine in 2022. The war in Gaza had a similar impact the next year.
- Political instability in 2023. Snap general elections were called for the president and the national assembly, which was dissolved for several months. Many businesses and NGOs froze their spending, waiting to see the outcome.
- Public safety crisis. On Jan. 9 this year, a series of prison riots, gang violence, kidnappings, and the takeover of a TV station by masked gunmen led the president to declare war on gangs. Businesses were wary of investing.
Data driven
“All of this is hard for a citizen, but as a journalist it’s almost triple worse,” Ponce said. “You have to put in twice as much time, you have to worry about safety, and it has been very rough for more than a year.”
I asked her if she would do this all again, knowing what she knows now about the difficulties of being an entrepreneur and being an independent journalist.
“I would still do it,” she said, “but I would do it differently.” For example, she wishes that they had established key performance indicators (KPIs) from the beginning. “Measuring everything, reporting everything, tracking everything. We started doing that about five years ago, and things have improved a lot.”
Voice of experience
They had to let some people go. But with a smaller team they ended 2023 better traffic wise and strategy wise, she said. Data helps them “make hard decisions, to think about what’s best for the organization. That’s what I would have wanted to learn before.”
“If I had to give some piece of advice to someone who wants to start a project, it’s that it requires a lot of energy. Because when you like a project like we do, you want to see it grow.
“You know, we were two people at the start, and now we’re 20. Despite all the problems, I really feel proud about this. I know I could have done much better and made fewer mistakes. But in the end it’s something that pays off, you know, like spirit, for me.”
We used to call that “psychic income.” — James