News organizations of this region have struggled to build independent businesses because of a self-perpetuating cycle where pay-for-coverage has undermined public trust. Journalists make most of their income in payments from the newsmakers they write about. Interested parties make large payments to influence coverage. Stories are single-sourced, untrustworthy, and lacking the voices of impacted people. Issues impacting the greatest number of citizens are not covered. Critical voices are disappearing.

Newsrooms of the region have had limited access to training in new digital tools that will allow them to find information, verify facts and make stories more compelling and accessible. Disinformation has overwhelmed social media. State actors are sowing dissent in organized campaigns designed to undermine the emerging democracies of the region.

Building financially independent newsrooms will be key to protecting two decades of democratic progress.

New Narratives, with support from the Swedish government, has partnered with InOldNews, a consultancy led by Manon Verchot and Sanshey Biswas, to transform our news partners’ businesses to take advantage of new sources of independent revenue. Manon and Sanshey are helping partners adapt content to social media formats to make it accessible for more audiences. And they are helping them better understand their audiences to create new products such as newsletters, YouTube channels and digital subscription models that will help them build their financial independence.

“This project is an extraordinary opportunity for our partner newsrooms. Newsrooms from the New York Times to Premium Times in Nigeria and the Daily Maverick in South Africa have shown that there are robust revenue streams available for newsmedia that understand their audiences and meet their needs,” said Prue Clarke, executive director of New Narratives. “We are grateful to the Swedish Embassy in Liberia for giving us this chance to help our partners experiment and take advantage of the hard work they have done in gaining audience trust over the years, to build financial resilience.”

To kick things off, Sanshey and Manon are working closely with New Narratives’ partner FrontPage Africa (FPA). As Liberia’s leading newspaper, FPA reaches broad and influential audiences in print in Liberia every weekday. And an online audience of over 200,000 via its website and social media platforms.

In addition to its devoted Liberian audience, FPA has a significant reach in the U.S., especially among the Liberian diaspora.

Over the course of six months, Sanshey and Manon will work with the team at FPA to explore their audience’s interest in new formats like shortform vertical videos and newsletters. Based on audience feedback, they will help the team develop strategies and implement systems to monetize the formats the audience is most interested in. The lessons learned from this work will also help inform FPA’s editorial efforts.

“Newsrooms have an incredible wealth of stories and reporting that is valuable to the lives of their audiences, but because the daily news cycle is so demanding, it can be challenging to take the time to set up systems that would make it possible to earn more revenue for this work,” said Manon.

Sometimes, monetizing the work that a newsroom is doing is about finding a way to repurpose the work in a way that the audience would be willing to pay for. Or advertisers would be willing to pay a premium for. It’s also about building trust with the audience, and helping the audience understand the importance of keeping journalism free for consumption. “Our hope is that we can help make it easier for newsrooms like FrontPage Africa to make revenue online so that they can keep doing the crucial work that they’re doing in Liberia and beyond,” said Sanshey.