Revenue diversification is crucial for independent newsrooms in today’s media landscape. Report for the World (RFW) in partnership with the International Press Institute (IPI) are working with RFW newsrooms to help public-interest media design innovative strategies for revenue diversification and sustainability.This program, designed by Preethi Nallu, Executive Director at RFW, aims at supporting the sustainability and viability of local media organizations to adapt and thrive in an constantly changing media environment.

As part of this program, Ryan Powell, Head of Innovation and Media Business at IPI is currently offering personalised revenue diversification workshops to RFW’s newsrooms, where their leaders can test their transformative ideas and turn them into practical sustainable solutions.

In a conversation with Powell, we discussed the importance of newsrooms having multiple sources of revenue. He elaborated on practical models, offering insights particularly for hyper-local media seeking resilience and growth. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Report for the World: How would you describe the role of revenue diversification in local media landscapes across the globe?

Ryan Powell:  The journalism industry currently is facing enormous change, risks, and threats. Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen the advertising model for journalism shift massively to big tech companies . More recently, OpenAI has opened up fears of disappearing search traffic and copyright concerns. In addition, legal, physical and digital threats to journalists are on the rise. How can media companies think about some of these big-picture challenges and reconcile immediate questions about financial survival and investing in ways to move beyond  philanthropic or donor-based revenue strategies?

Media organizations in different parts of the world are responding to a variety of different market failures in the industry of journalism. These include audience fragmentation, such as polarization, cost-benefit calculus of high quality reporting, and access inequalities where not everyone can pay for journalism or has the bandwidth to load a weighty page online or even just download content. Regulatory challenges, like cybercrime and foreign agent laws also get in the way of journalism and freedom of speech online. High production costs and the ultimate struggle for high-quality public interest investigative journalism to compete with low-cost, viral, and oftentimes misinformation online. And ultimately, of course, ownership concentration. These really challenging factors are really where and how we at IPI and our innovation department, in collaboration with Report for the World, start thinking about the imperative of diversification.

Diversification is understanding that every media company today will typically require more than one revenue stream to make up their overall revenue pie. This will allow them to not just depend on one philanthropic source or one grant but to have other resources to fall back on if they face challenges or if one donor pulls out.

RFW: How can local newsrooms, especially those with limited resources, diversify their revenue streams and adapt to the current challenges in the media industry?

Powell: Local news is one of the areas with the greatest demand for experimentation and innovation in the news business today. People want to know what’s going on in their community, and they’re increasingly not getting that from national publishers or social media. They’re unsure what information to trust, which creates an incredible opportunity for innovation.

If you’re a news creator, even as a one-person team or without technical or business expertise, the barriers to entry for modern journalism have never been lower. Payment gateways, for example, like Stripe and Braintree, now offer off-the-shelf solutions for managing subscriptions and donations—things that were costly and complex to build just a decade ago.

The question is often: “I have a great idea. How do I start serving users and creating opportunities?” People consume content in diverse ways—via video, podcasts, mobile, or even MP3 on basic phones. It’s essential to understand how and where they consume information. When designing the revenue roadmap, we focus on user research and product design, asking: Who is this for? How do they consume information? How do you reach them where they are?

These processes ensure you’re creating content that resonates with your audience and becomes a part of their daily routine.

RFW: What are some innovative audience engagement strategies that newsrooms can implement to effectively retain users and foster ongoing interaction?

Powell: Audience engagement can be challenging; it takes a lot of involvement from both editorial and technical teams within your newsroom, but it is precisely the method of retaining users.

In my last answer, I mentioned the importance of making sure that your content is part of a consumer’s daily routine. This is how you keep users. If you have a subscription business, this is how you keep them coming back and paying their recurring monthly or annual subscription. The same goes for donation models, newsletter models, or even free content that is sponsored or has ads placed in it. But at the end of the day, you need to have users there, and you need to have them involved in that process as much as possible.

There are different strategies. For example, on social media, you could host forums or groups on Facebook, Discord, or other digital platforms where people can discuss a specific video or piece of content. You can engage in comment feeds, host polls and surveys online and moderate conversations through text-based or other platform engagement. But even beyond social media, many newsrooms are innovating with other formats to foster conversations.

A significant space that has grown for engagement is WhatsApp and other messaging platforms. Newsrooms are taking advantage of these environments because they are often very culture- or community-specific. Telegram, for example, doesn’t have a cap on the number of users, while  WhatsApp does have a cap on groups. These platforms allow you to post content, have conversations, send updates, and get people involved in debates, which is a strategy for engagement.

RFW: How can newsrooms balance the need for paid subscriptions with the public’s expectation that news should be free, while still maintaining access to quality journalism?

Powell: This is a really tough question. Free access to journalism is both a public good and a way to grow awareness of your brand, yet the media still need to pay their reporters.

Whether a subscription strategy will succeed often depends on the location of the market that you’re in. In urban markets, there’s usually a higher propensity to subscribe to news content and willingness to pay, while building community and reach across rural communities demands a different strategy.

This is where diversification becomes really important. It might be that consumer revenue from your subscription membership is not always a viable revenue stream for every media organization and in every market context.

Of course, we would love to encourage recurring revenue where possible, but ultimately, there might be diversified strategies through which you can draw money into your organization to pay for the journalism. So you’re creating free content. Maybe you’re serving a newsletter for free. You should be certainly professionalizing that and making sure that it’s high quality so that you have users, but you can also, you know, have advertising, sponsorships, and brand partnerships. There are many different ways either through the content, through your users, or even through your skill sets. This is really a critical part of the revenue roadmap. It analyzes three pillars of revenue strategies, each earned income that are about different parts of your organization in media.

RFW: The Revenue Roadmap discusses the NABC ; Needs, Approach, Benefit, and Competition approach. How can newsrooms apply the NABC approach to develop a strong value proposition that resonates with their audience?

Powell: The NABC approach offers a structured way for newsrooms to clearly define their value proposition and distinguish themselves in an increasingly crowded market. By focusing on these four critical areas, newsrooms can strategically align their offerings to meet audience demands while remaining competitive.

• Needs: The first step is identifying the gap in the market. What unmet needs do your audiences have that your content or services can fulfill? This might involve offering unique local news coverage or tackling niche topics that larger outlets overlook. For instance, a newsroom focused on environmental reporting could fill the need for in-depth, sustainable news coverage that mainstream outlets might miss.
• Approach: Once the need is identified, the next step is crafting a unique approach. How does your newsroom deliver its content differently? Perhaps it’s through interactive features, unique storytelling methods, or a hyper-local focus. Think of it as the “secret sauce” that makes your content compelling, setting you apart from others.
• Benefit: This is where you justify why your audience should engage with your content. What value does it provide relative to the cost? For subscription models, it could be a high-quality, ad-free experience or exclusive access to investigative journalism. The key is to highlight the tangible benefits users will get in return for their investment—whether that’s time or money.
• Competition: Finally, understanding the competitive landscape is crucial. Who else is offering similar content, and how is your product more appealing? It’s not just about competing with other newsrooms; the competition may also include platforms like Facebook, YouTube, or even newer technologies like OpenAI that compete for your audience’s attention.

By methodically working through each component of NABC, newsrooms can create a clear, targeted strategy that resonates with their audience while effectively differentiating themselves in the media space.

RFW: How do you envision the future of the revenue roadmap, and how will it evolve to address the shifting challenges and needs of newsrooms in the face of changing market dynamics?

Powell: To define the future of the revenue roadmap, I would distinguish between the near and medium term. Who knows what the long term might bring? It’s hard plan too far ahead in journalism because the industry shifts and consumer behavior changes so often. However, in the immediate term, we aim to get the newsrooms integrating the roadmap into their processes, strategic questions, and decision-making.

In the medium term, we will expand the roadmap to respond to changes in the market, technology, and consumer behavior, identifying which revenue types we want to focus on. A big part of this is continuously surveying the media we work with to understand how challenges are evolving—what’s working, what’s not, and where we need to pivot. It’s about helping these organizations identify opportunities for experimentation and adaptation in real time.

Ultimately, we need to be ready to adapt quickly to the evolving challenges these organizations face, including changes in technology, consumer behavior, and politics.