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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
Can you imagine hosting live debates in main city squares, inviting anyone to debate controversial topics while being an oppositional media outlet in a politically dominated country? This is exactly what Partizán, Hungary's innovative media platform, accomplished during their spring tour across seven cities.
◼ Partizán has emerged as a force in Hungarian media, ranking fourteenth in online reach according to the Reuters Institute Digital Report 2024. With a 70-member team, 532,000 YouTube subscribers, and approximately 180 volunteers, they've built a platform delivering investigative journalism, talk shows, podcasts, and live events on a €1.5 million annual budget.
◼ Their spring tour featured two shows per city: public debates hosted by founder Márton Gulyás and evening broadcasts from local venues. Between shows, they organised intimate gatherings between Gulyás and volunteers, fostering connections with their community.
◼ The tour's fundamental message was clear: Hungary extends beyond Budapest. As community organiser Ádám Székely explains, "The main focus was about getting our content, ourselves, and our philosophies to every city we could, which is something media outlets didn't really do before."
◼ This initiative challenged traditional media-community relationships. Instead of one-way communication, Partizán experimented with making audiences "part of creating the whole system that produces this content."
◼ Partizán became Hungary's largest publicly funded media outlet through the "1% tax" system, securing €1 million in public support. This achievement surpassed major healthcare and charitable organisations, demonstrating the power of community engagement.
◼ The campaign's success relied on three pillars: large-scale offline events featuring live debates, strategic campaign booths in city squares, and an extensive call centre operation connecting directly with supporters.
◼ Today, Partizán maintains a network of 180 volunteers split between Budapest and other cities. They continue organising club evenings in various locations, consistently growing their volunteer base and strengthening community bonds.
◼ Perhaps most surprisingly, this robust community organising operation is managed by just two people with software engineering backgrounds. As Székely notes, "A big chunk of the work with community organising is defining systems that work well and sustainably."
◼ The key insights are Partizán's commitment to decentralisation, democratisation of content, transparency about production costs, robust offline event organisation, and dedicated community management – proving that modern media can thrive through genuine community engagement.
📍 Read the full article for more insights into Partizán’s story.
📰 Last week, we reflected on the 2025 International Journalism Festival in Perugia, and our contributor noted down three learnings he left Italy with – fostering the right newsroom culture, innovating responsibly, and adopting AI with organisation-wide involvement.
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Thousands of journalists, including many freelancers, have continued covering Russia's war in Ukraine despite the risks like targeted fire and detention. According to Reporters Without Borders, over 100 journalists have faced violence, with 11 losing their lives.
◼ "As a freelance journalist, you always have this challenge with security," said Ukrainian freelancer Anastasia Rodi, who mainly works for German media. "It's important to have a back officer in a war zone, but for freelancers it's not a question at all because they bring their story and try to sell it."
◼ Inna Varenytsia, another Ukrainian freelancing for Reuters and The Telegraph, deals with financial pressures too. "If you're a freelancer and you're not working, nobody will pay you for this time," she said, though she prefers freelancing for the freedom of choice.
◼ Varenytsia faced trauma after her photojournalist partner Maksym Levin was killed in 2022. "I have strange emotions… Sometimes I can be very emotional, and sometimes my feelings completely disappear."
◼ To support journalists, groups like the 2402 Foundation offer hostile environment security training. "When the invasion started, thousands found themselves without any protection, basic things such as helmets or vests...So we started equipping them," said Katerina Sergatskova, the executive director.
◼ After nearly three years, Sergatskova notes awareness has improved. "Now people are aware there's a danger of being unprepared to report in the war zone."
◼ Freelancers also face major mental health impacts. "Freelancers are more exposed to trauma than people in the newsroom, because they don’t have this connection with this newsroom...This exposure to lack of supervision leads to long-term consequences like mental health issues or burnout," Sergatskova said.
◼ Varenytsia experienced disturbing nightmares for years after earlier coverage and recent physical pain from heavy gear. Rodi also worries about the future: "It's a miracle we are still on the agenda, but I'm not very optimistic."
📍 Read the full article for more insights into challenges faced by freelance journalists covering the war in Ukraine.
L'Orient-Le Jour, the oldest French-language publisher in Lebanon, is one of the most popular outlets in the country. How have recent crises reshaped its business model? Romain Chauvet spoke with director Fouad Khoury Helou.
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From a detention cell to Montenegro: Dusica Tomovic reports on how award-winning Belarusian journalist Iryna Khalip continues her fight for press freedom while in exile.
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At the end of 2024, Google launched a surprising test, hiding news articles from European publishers for 1% of users in eight EU countries. The tech giant said it wanted to understand the impact of removing these sources on user behavior. However, publishers saw it as a new challenge amidst an unprecedented crisis.
◼ "It's a kind of power play. They demonstrated their power in the EU like they can block if they like to," said Karen Rønde, CEO of Danish Press Publications. Regulators worry Google is "jeopardising fundamental democratic values" by blocking reliable news sources.
◼ The test aims to provide data on the impact of news content per regulators' requests. But publishers accuse Google of lacking transparency by completely blocking access instead. The tension stems from the 2019 EU copyright directive allowing publishers to be paid when content is reused by tech giants.
◼ Since then, Google has faced hefty fines for not negotiating "in good faith" with publishers over payments for reusing snippets in search results. Some experts believe Google could use the test to justify removing news content entirely if users don't engage with it, avoiding payments.
◼ "Google has the feeling that it will need to pay too much. If it turns out that indeed Google users don't need this content, it will lead to less payment or no payment at all from Google," said Tom Evens, professor at Belgium Ghent University. This could substantially impact publishers' ad and subscription revenues.
◼ When pushed, Google has shown its power before, threatening to remove news links in Canada and actually doing so in California over potential payments to publishers. "If Google doesn't want to care about news, is there a way to force them to do so? I guess it's difficult," Evens said.
◼ Rønde suggests the test may be part of a broader strategy, allowing Google to claim news has no value once its Google AI Overviews summarisation tools launch in the EU. "They are smart, very smart," she said.
◼ The situation mirrors Facebook removing its News tab after being asked to pay publishers. Experts emphasize the need to increase competition against Google and Facebook's dominance. But the question remains – is it too late?
📍 Learn more in the full article.
We talked with Daniil Bogdanovich, the senior project lead for Media Simulation, a game focused on training media outlets, NGOs and other media initiatives to make data-driven and evidence-based decisions.
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French financial daily Les Echos sees a jump in account creation with new “18-20” app feature targeting young professionals during their commute home. Romain Chauvet spoke with editorial director Christophe Jakubyszyn.
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✌️ Good evening! Let's recap the stories we published in March:
▪️Guiding your newsroom through sexual violence coverage – lessons from the case of Gisèle Pelicot
▪️Malta’s latest watchdog – why the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation launched Amphora Media
▪️What the US aid freeze tells us about the struggles of Russian independent media
▪️The London Centric’s one-man reimagining of a sustainable local newspaper
▪️No paywall, no problem: how taz, a Berlin daily, successfully sticks to readers’ voluntary contributions
▪️Russian media three years into the all-out war: three key challenges
▪️Trump’s onslaught on VOA and RFE/RL leaves Eastern European media fearing a freefall
▪️How European publishers are approaching Trump 2.0 coverage
Sonja Merljak Zdovc, while working at Slovenia's national daily Delo, identified a critical challenge: the emergence of generations disconnected from news reading. With parents abandoning newspapers, children were growing up without understanding what newspapers are or their importance.
◾️ This observation led to the creation of Časoris in 2015, a free online newspaper for children aged 6-12. The platform, whose name cleverly combines "newspaper" and "drawing" in Slovenian, maintains traditional newspaper sections while adapting content for young readers.
◾️ With 13,000 monthly visitors (reaching 27,000 during Covid-19), Časoris sustains itself through workshops and grant funding, including support from the Google News Initiative News Equity Fund, Internews, and the US Embassy in Ljubljana among others.
◾️ "A newspaper for adults can learn a lot from a children's newspaper – on how to engage the audience, how to talk to the audience and how to include the audience," says Merljak Zdovc, emphasizing the importance of understanding and delivering what matters to young readers.
◾️ Časoris employs four key strategies to engage children: First, they create accessible content using simple language without being patronising, incorporating multimedia elements to make complex topics like elections and climate change relatable.
◾️ Second, they enhance engagement through interactive elements, including a glossary for challenging words and discussion questions at the end of each article, particularly useful in classroom settings.
◾️ Third, they actively involve children in content creation. Their most successful article was written by a high school student about a trending topic among Slovenian youth, which was later picked up by mainstream media.
◾️ Fourth, they practice slow journalism, publishing just one article daily to prevent news fatigue among young readers. "We don't want to overwhelm our readers with crises all the time," explains Merljak Zdovc.
◾️ This approach offers valuable lessons for traditional media outlets. As Merljak Zdovc suggests, "Legacy media should include content for children's benefit. Not only would this help them with their business but also help children gain reading and literacy skills."
◾️ The initiative addresses a crucial gap identified by EU authorities: the scarcity of quality online content for children, who primarily consume information through unregulated social media platforms. "Nobody addresses children as future voters or consumers. Children will not jump from TikTok to serious newspapers by themselves," notes Merljak Zdovc.
📍 Learn more about Časoris in the full article.
Redkollegia is an independent media award dedicated to recognizing high-quality Russian journalism. But how does it operate in wartime? Veronica Snoj explores in her latest article for The Fix.
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AI didn't replace journalists at Il Foglio – it revealed how some journalism has become so predictable it no longer needs humans. Read Alberto Puliafito's analysis.
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The media industry is navigating storms, but our community is steering toward solutions. Join The Fix and Jnomics Media for a refreshing morning walk through historic Perugia during the International Journalism Festival. Let’s shake off formalities and connect in person!
🗓 April 11th | 8:00-9:00 AM
📍 Meeting point: Fontana Maggiore, Piazza IV Novembre
☑️ Apply to participate 👉 https://forms.gle/1SfGggfzNc6nFb9F6
N.B.– We're inviting media managers, donors and decision makers to enroll, but the slots are limited, so we'll follow up with everyone to notify.
In his latest article for The Fix, Romain Chauvet explores how three European newsrooms are filtering the Trump information deluge while keeping readers informed.
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As AI tools become a growing part in media consumption, publishers face a new challenge: optimising content not just for traditional search engines, but for AI platforms like ChatGPT and SearchGPT, SEO expert Olga Odarchenko writes in her guest column for The Fix.
◾️ While some publishers view AI chatbots as competitors, they can actually serve as quality traffic sources. These tools act as content curators, directing readers to authoritative sources for in-depth information after providing initial answers.
◾️ SearchGPT, launched in July 2024, represents a new generation of search engines that combines AI capabilities with traditional search functions. Unlike ChatGPT, which generates content, SearchGPT focuses on searching and summarising existing content while providing direct answers and source links.
◾️ The opportunity lies in ChatGPT's March 2024 update, which began including source citations in responses, potentially driving traffic to credible news websites. However, publishers must first allow AI crawlers to access their content rather than blocking them.
◾️ A comprehensive AI SEO strategy should focus on original, expert-driven content that adds unique value beyond what AI can generate. This includes expert commentary, thorough research, and diverse content formats including video, which can increase organic traffic by 70%.
◾️ Technical optimisation remains crucial, with Schema markup helping AI tools understand content context and relevance. Publishers should also conduct detailed keyword research and optimise for clear, concise queries.
◾️ The threat isn't just about losing traffic to AI platforms – it's about the proliferation of AI-generated content flooding the internet. With current search engines unable to reliably detect AI-written articles, quality journalism becomes even more critical.
◾️ Publishers need to maintain high editorial standards while monitoring traffic patterns and adapting to AI platform updates. The focus should be on creating trustworthy, authoritative content that both human readers and AI systems recognise as valuable.
📍 Learn more in the full article.
In his latest article for The Fix, David Tvrdon offers an in-depth look at Denník N’s successful subscriber recruitment campaign that brought 24,000 new subscribers and continues to impress with early retention rates.
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From singing in meetings to one media manager’s biggest mistake, this is what Christoph Schwaiger filled his notebook with during the International Journalism Festival in Perugia this year.
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“Despite the doom and gloom of the funding cuts, I left Perugia more optimistic than I arrived – mainly because of some of the less obvious ways in which the industry has changed”, Jakub Parusinski writes. Here are his 10 thoughts coming out of the International Journalism Festival.
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Many organisations hesitate to launch their paid products, waiting for the perfect moment. Sometimes timing matters more than perfection – and you can improve as you go, said Zakhar Protsiuk, the COO of The Kyiv Independent, when asked for advice for other outlets.
Learn more about their experience in the full article.
The International Journalism Festival just wrapped up another inspiring chapter in Perugia where we unveiled our very first print edition packed with fresh revenue stream ideas.
Shoutout to our partners The Fourth Estate, whose CMS helps publishers boost reader revenue with membership options, donations, and smart SEO tools.
If you didn't get a chance to grab your physical copy of our newspaper, feel free to request a digital one from us!
Remember the magic of a crisp, freshly printed newspaper?
The texture of the pages, the subtle ink smell, the quiet ritual of flipping through sharp headlines and bold ideas.
We’re bringing that feeling to Perugia.
We’re thrilled to join the International Journalism Festival and unveil our debut print edition.
Crafted in collaboration with our partners at The Fourth Estate—whose CMS fittingly supports reader revenue strategies through membership tools, donations, and SEO—this compact newspaper is more than a keepsake.
Inside, you’ll find actionable strategies to slash costs and unlock new revenue streams.
Join us in Perugia on April 9–13 to claim your copy — and let’s chat about the future of independent media.
The Kyiv Independent built a community of 17,000 paying members without a paywall. COO Zakhar Protsiuk shares their secrets to 1.8% churn and ambitious plans for 50,000 members.
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📰 Last week, we looked at how AI image manipulation challenges journalism’s core verification methods, and how the work of independent Russian reporters is recognised.
📍 Read our newsletter in full for industry news, story recommendations, and fresh opportunities.
📍 Sign up to get the latest media-related news in your mailbox every Monday!
What do the latest advances tell us about the future of AI in the news business? Let’s note down five predictions and thoughts media leaders should keep in mind.
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AI image manipulation now challenges journalism’s core verification methods. In his latest article for The Fix, Alberto Puliafito offers tips for publishers – and a wider call for the industry.
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📰 This week, we look at how European newsrooms are strategising to keep readers informed about Donald Trump's return to the spotlight without overwhelming them, bring back our series on media careers with the editorial director at Romania's PressOne, and dive into Il Foglio’s AI-generated newspaper experiment.
📍 Read our newsletter in full for industry news, story recommendations, and fresh opportunities.
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For our series on media careers, we spoke with PressOne’s Ioana Epure about her job as Editorial Director and insights into transitioning from reporting to management.
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At an annual innovation award ceremony, Meinolf Ellers noticed a disconnect: while newspapers were winning awards for digital innovation, real transformation remained elusive. Print subscriptions continued declining, and digital advertising revenue wasn't sufficient to sustain newsrooms.
◾️ This realisation led to the creation of the Digital Revenue Initiative (DRIVE) in 2020, spearheaded by Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (dpa), Germany's largest news agency. DRIVE helps regional publishers pool their data to find joint solutions using AI and analytics to gain more subscribers.
◾️ The initiative currently serves 30 publishers across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, charging €4,500 monthly for data analytics – equivalent to one data analyst's salary but offering broader insights and peer learning opportunities.
◾️ DRIVE's success stems from two key factors: publishers' trust in dpa and their recognition that digital transformation through AI and analytics was difficult to achieve alone. The initiative faced minimal resistance because dpa could bring different publishers to common ground, neutralising competition among participants.
◾️ One crucial insight was shifting the focus from quantity to quality media time. "The key problem of digital transformation in newspapers is culture. Many people still have print DNA," notes Ellers. DRIVE's data showed that readers who spent more time with content were more likely to purchase subscriptions.
◾️ This approach has proven successful globally – The Guardian and Le Monde increased subscribers despite reducing content volume by one-third and one-fourth respectively. The New York Times reached its 10-million subscriber goal ahead of schedule by focusing on reader-preferred content.
◾️ DRIVE implemented Dmitry Shishkin's User Needs model, originally developed at the BBC, to help newsrooms deliver more value. The initiative developed algorithms to help editors identify these needs and trained them to analyse data effectively.
◾️ The strategy helps eliminate "ghost articles" – content that consumes resources but generates negligible reader engagement or subscriptions. The Post and Courier demonstrated this approach's effectiveness, gaining 250% more digital subscribers after reducing daily output from 50-65 articles to 30 in-depth pieces.
◾️ For regional media houses, survival depends on modernising the user experience. As Ellers states, "Our only chance to survive is to bring to local journalism a user experience that is as cool and convenient as the user experience of Spotify and TikTok."
📍 Find more insights in the full article by Priyal Shah.
📰 Last week, we looked at how Berlin’s beloved left-wing daily taz seems to have cracked the code on reader revenue without locking away a single article on the website and what’s happening with US-funded broadcasters and their future prospects in Eastern Europe.
In another piece, we reveal how media outlets both inside Russia and in exile struggle to maintain operations.
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Donald Trump's latest executive order has put Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in jeopardy, halting crucial reporting in increasingly authoritarian environments. As European leaders search for solutions, press freedom is at stake, Irina Matchavariani writes in her latest article for The Fix.
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