Viability
how you generate income and fund your journalism
Viability is how a newsroom generates income and funds its journalism: subscriptions, advertising, grants, events, or a mix. For a media organization, the funding model quietly shapes what work is possible. A team might pause here to look at how the money comes in and what it depends on.
Questions to explore
- Where does most of our income come from today?
- How would our work change if our largest source of funding dropped away?
- Which parts of our journalism pay for themselves, and which are carried by the rest?
- What are we assuming about our funding that we have not checked recently?
- How might our funding model shape what we can and cannot cover?
Expert voices
“Zero-click search is here: AI-generated answers replace website visits. AI Overviews challenge media houses and disrupt their business models.”
“Many AI projects in developing countries fail when pilot funding ends. Plan for financial sustainability beyond the pilot from the start.”
“Casual web traffic is vanishing and publishers are unsure what to do. The portals where people now get news are more corrupted than the web ever was, with no hail mary for smaller publishers.”
“Know who funds you and what dependencies that money creates. Funding can compromise impartiality before any claim is even examined.”
Things to consider
- A single large funding source is convenient until the day it shifts.
- How you are funded can quietly steer what you choose to cover.
- Cost savings are only real if they do not erode the work readers pay for.
Pull Viability when it is relevant and set it aside when it is not. Pair it with the other Organisation cards, lay them out on a table, and use the questions above to get everyone on the same page. Capture what you discuss on sticky notes or in a shared doc.
More Organisation cards
