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Cracking the media management puzzle through insights, solutions and data. ▪️Website — http://thefix.media ▪️Newsletter— http://bit.ly/2Tsr0M9 Reach out: @thefixmediabot
How did The Kyiv Independent manage to sell 3,000+ pieces of branded clothing in 5 months, reaching new audiences and supporting Ukraine in the process? Amélie Reichmuth spoke with Zakhar Protsiuk, the outlet’s Chief Operating Officer, to find out.
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How do you build genuine community engagement when you're a digital-first media outlet? The team at Partizán, a Hungarian YouTube-based news organization, has some fascinating insights to share. Especially interesting is their creative approach to transforming online audiences into real-world communities.
📍 Read the full article by Lela Vujanić for more insights on how a small community organising team (led by a former software engineer!) is reimagining what audience engagement can look like today.
📍 Plus, read today’s newsletter in full for industry news, story recommendations and fresh opportunities!
✍️ Sign up to get your portion of media news in your mailbox every Monday!
🇪🇸🇸🇾 How does a refugee-led news outlet survive in Spain's crowded media market? Romain Chauvet looked at Baynana’s experiment in bilingual journalism in his latest article for The Fix.
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A good January tradition – Reuters Institute’s annual trends and predictions report by Nic Newman and Federica Cherubini came out last week. Here’s a subjective list of four most interesting/fresh findings from Anton Protsiuk. Bonus: three smaller but noteworthy tidbits.
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Ukrainian freelance journalists covering the war turned down staff jobs to tell Ukraine’s story their way – even as it means working without a safety net. Romain Chauvet spoke with Anastasia Rodi and Inna Varenytsia about the difficult work of covering the Russian invasion as freelancers.
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✌️ Good evening! Here is the recap of the stories we published this week:
📊 Five trends that defined 2024;
📝 A selection of ten of our best stories of 2024.
At the beginning of 2025, let’s take a moment to look back at five trends that defined news media in 2024 – and The Fix’s coverage of them.
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During his 23 years working for Gazeta Wyborcza, Vadim Makarenko held a lot of roles – everything from reporting on Warsaw police to leading a data journalism team to hosting a podcast. He then took his experience to lead a research team at Statista. We sat down with him last year to learn about his experience in media and beyond.
◼ In 2021, Makarenko left the paper – and the news media industry – to take a position as Director Research Digital at Statista. In this role he oversees four teams that produce research on different digital industries, from advertising and media to hardware and telecom.
◼ As Director Research Digital, Vadim Makarenko leads a department that produces research on digital industries. He oversees four teams which are responsible for different sets of industries – advertising; media; internet; technology & telecoms.
◼ Makarenko's job is primarily a managerial one; he leads the department and sets its agenda. He estimates that 70% of his time goes to management and administration: tasks like team coordination and working with the sales team to help support client requests. Editorial work – such as editing the outputs created by his department and participating in brainstorming sessions – takes the rest 30%.
◼ "It's not journalism", however. The business model and audience are different, and researchers led by Makarenko don't go out into the field to speak with people; they work with datasets and crunch numbers.
◼ Makarenko says that the biggest driver for him to make the leap was curiosity and the eagerness to try himself in other areas. "In journalism, there's a strong conviction that people are one-trick ponies… once a journalist, always a journalist"; for Makarenko it was a personal challenge to prove himself outside the news industry.
◼ A number of skills Makarenko learned working for Gazeta Wyborcza are applicable to his current position. The first set is data skills – "dealing with data, visualising data, cleaning data, all things you can do with data". The second one is project management, basic managerial skills like planning a project, setting milestones and getting the team to stick to it.
◼ Makarenko's advice for journalists looking to make a leap both outside and within the news media industry is just that – learning to work with data and get to know project management. Both skills are "in short supply in newsrooms", and they are a great addition to journalists' traditional skills as powerful storytellers.
◼ To take an outsider's look, Makarenko's career offers one more valuable insight – the benefits of changing a job within one's organisations even without venturing outside. Especially in big newsrooms like Gazeta Wyborcza, with the right combination of curiosity and proactiveness, there might be opportunities for journalists to try something else and gain new skills, whether it's editing, managing or dealing with clients.
📍 Learn more in the full article.
Harassment and sexism remain deeply embedded in Italy's journalism schools and internships. A major investigation by freelance journalists Francesca Candioli, Roberta Cavaglià, and Stefania Prandi uncovered alarming findings: half of their 200 respondents witnessed or experienced harassment, including verbal abuse, attempted violence, and blackmail. Alessandra Vescio analyses their findings in her latest article for The Fix.
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What's Inside The Fix Weekly Newsletter: The article, reimagined
▪️The articles featured pertain to a blueprint for child-friendly journalism, the woes of Italian journalists, and Google's experiment to remove European publishers' content.
▪️Interesting insights on findings from RSF's annual report, and revenue-sharing deals with AI companies for publishers from our colleagues at Reporters Without Borders, and A Media Operator;
▪️Great opportunities from UNESCO, Balkan Documentary Center, and The Fix.
📍 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more news on the European media space!
For a few weeks, Google is showing some of its users fewer news articles from European publishers. Romain Chauvet looked at the implications of this experiment in his latest article for The Fix.
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Italian journalists are navigating a broken system where six out of ten work as freelancers, earning an average of €15,641 per year. Many report stress, anxiety, burnout, and job insecurity. Grassroots efforts are building support networks, but major reforms are still needed. Read Alessandro Pilo’s article to understand the challenges and possible solutions.
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What's Inside The Fix Weekly Newsletter: News worth investing in
▪️The articles featured pertain to alternatives to X, the emergence of AI video avatars, and how press freedom is under threat in Georgia.
▪️Interesting insights on The Observer’s sale to Tortoise Media, and how major outlets are promoting vertical video from our colleagues at Financial Times, and Nieman Lab;
▪️Great opportunities from the REINFORCING project, Institute for Human Sciences, and Jnomics Media.
📍 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more news on the European media space!
Journalists in Georgia are increasingly facing physical, verbal, legal, and financial attacks. The Fix has spoken with people covering the most recent demonstrations on the ground.
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Can newsrooms automate video creation with AI avatars? Alberto Puliafito considers what AI avatars bring to the table for journalists and how to start using them in The Fix’s latest guide.
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Up to 80% of articles might be “ghosts” – barely read despite significant resources spent creating them. Should newsrooms cut them? Media experts weigh in on the battle between profitability and pluralism in Romain Chauvet's latest article for The Fix.
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✌️ Good evening! Here is the recap of the stories we published this week:
📊 2025 trends;
🇭🇺 Community building tips from Hungary;
🇸🇾 Syrian refugee outlet experience in Spain.
Based on a survey of 300+ news executives from 50+ countries, a recent Reuters Institute study looks at what’s in store for the news industry this year – political headwinds, uneasy relationship with tech platforms, managing talent, getting on top of the generative AI boom, and more.
We read the study and gathered a subjective list of four most interesting / fresh findings:
• publishers are extremely worried about AI causing search traffic to fall, although it hasn’t actually fallen yet;
• BlueSky is the winner among *new* beneficiaries of X/Twitter disinvestment;
• newsroom leaders have high hopes for non-news products like games & education;
• audience-facing AI features are becoming commonplace, but publishers are competing with external platforms.
📍 Read today’s newsletter in full for industry news, story recommendations and fresh opportunities 👉 https://bit.ly/thefix1301
📍 Subscribe to get your portion of media news every Monday 👉 bit.ly/TheFix-Newsletter
As we’re emerging from the holiday season, let’s take a moment to revisit some of The Fix’s standout stories from 2024 that you may have missed.
1️⃣ Romain Chauvet wrote about two unique small French media outlets, funded by their readers, trying to survive in countries where press freedom is not always respected.
2️⃣ Emma Löfgren interviewed a few media leaders for her course on audience building and engagement. Her conversation with Tav Klitgaard, CEO of Zetland, about the Danish outlet’s recipe for success, is particularly interesting.
3️⃣ “When you cover a niche group and are close to that group, you’re their voice … but we also have to cover our target audience”. Julia Agha, CEO of Alkompis, Sweden’s largest Arabic-language news site, experienced this first-hand and recounted her experience in a conversation with Emma Löfgren.
4️⃣ “Journalists should be deeply curious about why they’re not being seen as useful or important,” Joy Mayer, founder of the Trusting News initiative, believes. She has some great practical advice on how publishers can build trust.
5️⃣ Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war, local newsrooms in Ukraine have faced an acute crisis. How have they survived? Anastasiia Kuzmenko gathered five insights from their experience.
6️⃣ The Fix’s Sofiia Padalko spoke with Maciej Okraszewski, founder of one of Poland’s most successful independent podcasts Dział Zagraniczny, about how he gained a wide audience reporting on niche foreign topics.
7️⃣ Denník N’s managers have a journalistic background. How did they build a successful media business? Iryna Hoiuk interviewed Veronika Munk, Director of Innovation and New Markets.
8️⃣ The role of private capital in media is set to grow in the coming years. But there’s a lot of confusion about how investing in journalism works – as well as the hurdles involved. The Fix’s director Jakub Parusinski lists 10 misconceptions and challenges holding the sector back.
9️⃣ Anton Protsiuk spoke with Jennifer Mizgata, author of the “Building News Culture” course, about what it takes to build a better newsroom culture for new and established media organisations.
🔟 “Leadership is balancing between being a microscope and a telescope… making sure you are not over indexing in either micromanaging or being absent”. For our regular series on media careers, Anton Protsiuk profiled head of publishing at McKinsey & Company and veteran newsroom leader Raju Narisetti.
The Fix's New Year’s resolution
December and early January is the time for ubiquitous coverage of year-in-review trends and year-ahead predictions. We at The Fix have done our fair share and have more in plans. But – forgive the pun – predictions tend to be extremely predictable. Barring black swan events like the pandemic or the launch of ChatGPT, trends unfold slowly over multiple years. Our year-old piece on 2024 trends could very well be today’s piece on 2025 trends.
So, our New Year’s resolution is highlighting more fresh ideas and undercovered stories from outlets from across Europe (and sometimes beyond).
Who’s building the next big media company in Bulgaria or Austria? Who’s figured out a sustainable business model for a small outlet in Lithuania or Norway? Who’s successfully monetising in-person events in Ukraine?
We have some ideas, and we’ll bring them to you in the coming weeks and months. But we’d also love to hear from you. We’re open to story ideas and guest columns from industry practitioners. If you’d like to tell us more about your work or suggest an idea, just email us at newsroom@thefix.media
Let’s take a moment to revisit some of The Fix’s standout stories from 2024 that you may have missed.
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✌️ Good evening! Here is the recap of the stories we published this week:
🆕 The article reimagined;
🇮🇹 Harassment in Italian journalism;
🏙 Media-related accounts to follow on BlueSky.
BlueSky is quickly becoming the go-to platform for journalists, media experts, and news enthusiasts seeking fresh perspectives and innovative conversations. If you're exploring this decentralised network, we've compiled a list of nine influential media-related accounts to follow.
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The static web article is overdue for reinvention. That’s why TIME's AI experiment with its Person of the Year announcement stands out – far more than the actual Person of the Year choice.
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✌️ Good evening! Here is the recap of the stories we published this week:
👧 A blueprint for child-friendly journalism;
🇮🇹 The woes of Italian journalists;
🇪🇺 Google's experiment to remove European publishers' content.
Head of Audience Development is an important role at the intersection between the editorial and all other teams in the organisation. This person is managing a team responsible for creating a distribution strategy across multiple platforms – SEO, social media, newsletters, and more – to grow the product's audience.
◼ In late 2022, we spoke with Sebastian Katthöver, Head of Audience Development at German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, who has a team of seven specialists and two student interns, to learn about his experience in this position.
◼ His team works across all 32 DW languages. As Head of Audience Development, Katthöver optimises the strategy on all the platforms his team works with, including journalists' personal social media accounts. His team's main task is to bring audience growth to the organisation's editorial team.
◼ "My role is to be the hinge between all the different teams in a media company. I try to be the problem solver when things are stuck; I try to talk to the parties involved and try to find a solution," shares Katthöver.
◼ He explains the difference between Audience Development and Audience Engagement: "Our role is to advise and to network with them. We bring them together, try to convey knowledge, and they are the ones who actually bring it into the product".
◼ Asked about the most exciting part of the job, Katthöver replies, "Every day is different". The environment is unstable with "Elon Musk tweeting and something about X (Twitter) changing every 15 minutes".
◼ The hardest part is reaching the last 20% or 30% of the goal. Things like changing the strategy of an account are difficult, but necessary to achieve a 100% result.
◼ For those seeking a job in Audience Development, Katthöver recommends trying internships, including internal ones, which are common in big organisations like DW.
◼ Another tip is to stay open to what data tells. "We try to make every recommendation to editorial teams based on certain data. It shouldn't be a gut feeling," says Katthöver.
◼ Katthöver also advises finding newsletters covering your region or language and subscribing to people you find inspiring, who work "in digital products or digital product management who are driving digitally first publications".
📍 Learn more about the role in the full article.
Dr. Sonja Merljak Zdovc shared with The Fix four ways media publishers can include children as news consumers with lessons from the Slovenian online newspaper Časoris.
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✌️ Good evening! Here is a recap of the stories we published this week:
🐦 Alternatives to X;
🧠 Introducing AI video avatars;
🇬🇪 Press freedom under threat in Georgia.
Newsletters are an effective way to establish direct contact with your audience, unmitigated by the whims of social media algorithms. Publishers have invested in the medium, and it's also a low-barrier point of entry for individual news creators.
◼ One project has succeeded in turning untold stories into a profitable newsletter, is Sham Jaff's “what happened last week” (whlw). Started in 2014, Jaff's newsletter delivers interesting stories from Asia, Africa and the Americas to your inbox every Monday. It's filled with unique yet underrepresented stories from the Global South in an easy-to-follow style. A few months ago we spoke with Jaff to learn more about her experience.
◼ "I wanted to highlight the stories and perspectives that I thought were missing from Asia, Africa and the Americas. I also noticed that I knew so little about those places even though I was studying Political Science. So I decided to create whlw as a way to curate voices and perspectives and to get acquainted with those countries," she recalls.
◼ Operating weekly since the last decade, whlw has amassed 21,000 readers from the ages of 26 and 44. Most of its readers come from Western countries, with the bulk coming from Germany, the US and the UK. Of the total subscribers, whlw has 1,000 vip readers. The paid version, whlw vip, costs €9 monthly and €79 yearly, except for students who get discounts.
◼ How to make newsletters profitable, according to Sham Jaff?
1️⃣ Find a niche
People are more likely to pay for newsletters that are original yet specific. Hence, finding a niche will help the audience recognise your newsletter's worth and pay for it.
2️⃣ Gathering a dedicated audience
Jaff has been penning her newsletter since 2014. Since then she has amassed a dedicated audience for herself. A major reason behind this is Jaff's willingness to incorporate the reader's feedback.
3️⃣ Something free, something paid
With 17% of the audience currently paying for subscriptions, according to Reuters, only 2% are willing to pay the full price. This is why many publishers are likely to release a 'lite' version of their products.
📍 Find more tips in the full article.
What's Inside The Fix Weekly Newsletter: Is news avoidance overrated?
▪️The articles featured pertain to BlueSky's potential turning point, tips on how to grow digital subscribers, and disinformation amid floods in Spain.
▪️Interesting insights on Schibsted’s initiatives to reimagine the future of news, and Canada's major news organisations suing OpenAI for copyright violations from our colleagues at Newsroom Robots, and The Guardian;
▪️Great opportunities from Journalismfund Europe, Global Investigative Journalism Network, and Contexte.
📍 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more news on the European media space!