Digital natives still depend heavily on grants, advertising

Public-service mission fuels business models in Africa, SE Asia, and Latin America What follows is an edited excerpt of the Business Models chapter of SembraMedia’s Inflection Point International study of 201 digital native media in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Read the full report here–also in Spanish and Portuguese. It is republished under Creative Commons […]

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Digital natives fill coverage gaps, drive community impact

Public-service content attracts financial support in Africa, SE Asia, and Latin America What follows is the Content and Impact chapter of SembraMedia’s Inflection Point International study of 200+ digital native media in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Read the full report here–also in Spanish and Portuguese. It is republished under Creative Commons 4.0 ShareAlike international […]

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Media entrepreneurs ‘punch above their weight’

In Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, digital natives are innovating and thriving What follows is the Executive Summary of SembraMedia’s Inflection Point International study of 200+ digital native media, with findings and recommendations on their impact, innovation, threats, business models, and teams. Read the full report here–also in Spanish and Portuguese. It is republished under […]

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salesperson

Build a loyal community, not a big audience

Focus on your users’ needs, their problems, their values, their tastes Any news media entrepreneur who is trying to create a sustainable business model should keep these three things in mind: Build a media community, not an audience Focus on relationships, not scale Measure engagement, not page views What follows is, first, my message during […]

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What we should tell entrepreneurs about risk

Success is really the exception, but there are strategies to make it more likely Recently I read an enlightening book by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-prize-winning economist–Thinking, Fast and Slow. The book is filled with rigorous economic and psychological studies of how our instincts and reason mislead us, especially when we are dealing with statistics. His […]

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‘Friends’ support investigative news site through 8 years of losses

Spain’s infoLibre increases subscribers, staff, audience during Covid crisis The name of one of Spain’s notable survival stories in public-service journalism–infoLibre–contains the essence of its guiding principle. It literally means “free information”–that is, free of undue influence from political and business interests. In his annual public letter, Jesús Maraña, editorial director, attributed the publication’s financial […]

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‘A crisis is the best time to launch a startup’

Author’s note: My friend and former colleague Hector Farina Ojeda at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico invited me recently to be interviewed on his radio show and podcast. Professor Farina knew of my interest in media entrepreneurs and wanted to know how covid-19 was affecting them, among other topics. What follows is a translation […]

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