How to choose an original media audience and design a funding formula: Peru and Brazil case studies

“While a magazine is normally used to communicate, it can become something more when it starts to solve a problem,” said Piero Che Piu, founder of Fútbol Femenino, on the second day of The Other: 2^nd Latin American Meeting of Entrepreneurial and Innovative Journalism

This publication has approached women soccer players, bringing them out of the isolation in which they practice their beloved sport. The initiative has a group on Facebook, “Camerino Perú,” with 260,000 likes and 1,100 members. In the group, players connect to put teams together and organize matches, for example.

Two strong features of Fútbol Femenino are its limited audience, i.e. soccer players aged 16 to 25, and the knowledge of their interests. Che Piu listed the three types of content consumed by the community: entertainment, inspirational stories and content that promotes technical soccer learning.

Little more than a year after the creation of Fútbol Femenino, Natalia Sánchez co-founded Malquerida. She and her team had a clear idea about their distinguishing feature: a writing staff composed only of women, as a response to the overwhelming majority of men in Peru’s print media. The difference in content is based on the reporting itself, in which interviewees, speaking from a more comfortable position, often share information with female reporters that they would normally not disclose to a man.

Sudor, for instance, was founded less than a year ago, and has treated sports as a cultural phenomenon, doing away with the score-based style of Lima’s sports newspapers and transcending the limited space that these left to reporting and investigative journalism, explained its co-founder Renzo Gómez.

The three ventures are still searching for funding methods to at least break even. They are aware that this is not a short-term task. Fútbol Femenino (active for 3 years) already generates a steady income by promoting soccer academies, which covers the website maintenance cost. Its founder explained that access to grants from international organizations is not usually an option, because they usually support initiatives aimed at strengthening democracy (political, economic, rights human issues, etc.); while Fútbol Femenino’s category is entertainment.

In the case of Sudor, the staff is generating revenue through the sale of Benditos, their first book (Magreb publishing house); and they are close to signing the contract for a second publication. Finally, Malquerida still relies on its founders’ funds and has tried crowdfunding campaigns and publication through partnerships.

In that sense, the level of progress of ventures in Brazil and their financing models are being analyzed as options that can teach valuable lessons to other countries of the region, including Peru.

These undertakings boomed in Brazil in 2015, the year after broadband availability reached 30% nationwide, and advertising in print media began to fall dramatically. This is a ratio known globally as the “30% rule,” as explained by Brazilian journalist Pedro Doria, founder of Canal Meio.

When funds dwindle, journalism budgets are cut, and some reporters decided to develop their own projects. Each has found their own funding formula, and below are some of the examples analyzed by Doria, during his presentation “The rise of entrepreneurial journalism in Brazil”:

Canal Meio. Year of creation: 2016. Areas: politics, culture, technology and lifestyle. Service: Weekdays newsletter. Funding: weekly sponsored advertisements and content. Their plan is to continue with the Monday to Friday freemium model, and create a paid weekend issue, where readers would have access to more in-depth reports.

Poder 360. Year of creation: 2015. Area: politics. Service: newsletter and news site. Funding: the web site is financed through newsletter subscriptions, and surveys will be produced in the near future.

Nexo Jornal. Year of creation: 2015. Areas: various sections (politics, culture, society, international, health, technology, etc.).  Service: they offer explanatory journalism on major current issues on their news site. Financing: founders’ funds, paywall model (monthly payment to access web content), courses.

Agencia Lupa. Year of creation: 2016. Areas: various sections (politics, culture, economy, sport, among others). Service: Fact-checking of information of public interest. Funding: funds from its sponsoring economic group and fact-checking services to other media and Facebook.

Aos-Fatos. Year of creation: 2016. Area: politics. Service: Technology-oriented fact-checking of information of public interest. Audience: Funding: crowdfunding and fact-checking services to other media and Facebook.

Thus, there are plenty of options to generate income: newsletters, paywalls, sponsored content, crowdfunding, fact-checking services, specialized courses. The elements to create a self-financing formula are available to all.

About The Other

The Other: 2^nd Latin-American Meeting of Entrepreneurial and Innovative Journalism was held on July 31 and August 1 in Lima, Peru, as an initiative by the Gabriel García Márquez Foundation for the New Ibero-American Journalism (FNPI), CAF and SembraMedia, with the support of the Peruvian University for Applied Science (UPC), John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships (JSK) and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).