Re:filtered #15: When 'independence' becomes clientelism, and how to genuinely reclaim it

Hi to the 15th edition of my monthly newsletter on civic media opportunities in a moment of systemic disruption.

I'm writing with a heavier heart but clearer mind running workshops in Taipei, reconnecting with former colleagues in Prague and friends in Vienna.

What I've witnessed in the fallout of the suspension of U.S. international media support isn't just concerning statistics — it's a devastating human reality that is still not fully visible because many don't share their stories in fear of consequences. 

On one day, I had back-to-back calls with four newsroom managers from three continents whose organizations are closing due to funding cuts.

On another day, I spent ten hours straight meeting former Radio Free Europe colleagues. Theirs are stories of personal uncertainty and the questioning of personal identities and career choices.

I could rage against these cuts, but it's futile. Nothing about this is surprising. I have no way of changing it.

My predominant reaction is disappointment with the current "journalism support" ecosystem that had largely funded and perpetuated this space – how it isn't ready for the moment.

There's a real risk this becomes a race to the bottom, when it could be a turning point. 

The first step is uncomfortable: recognize that the "journalism support" institutions that positioned themselves as champions of the work as a public service and a bulwark against authoritarianism have become self-serving echo chambers. 

I'm disappointed by what I've seen and personally been part of — a system where we repeatedly make passionate pleas for support while failing to build sustainable models.

We've spent years constructing elaborate abstract impact narratives based on fundamentally flawed data, not to genuinely evaluate our work, but to retroactively justify our continued existence.

This circular logic only perpetuates a dysfunctional system where preserving institutions has become more important than serving communities.

No wonder those institutions have largely become irrelevant.

We the gatekeepers have demonstrated rent-seeking behavior, increasing our own wealth as we secure funds without ever really confirming that we’re actually delivering a concrete benefit to the communities we purport to serve.

We are the same faces shuffling between different roles, armed with new buzzwords, distributing funds and promising dreams like enlightened aristocrats.

This needs to change.

This is also a selfish request. I want to contribute in my small ways to reversing the global shift toward tribalism and autocracy because it directly affects my future and that of my family and friends. I refuse to accept a world not just largely but possibly soon fully shaped by kleptocrats as inevitable.

Instead, I want to work towards societies built on accountability, fairness and equity – not out of abstract idealism, but because these principles create the conditions for lives worth living, and that enable thriving.

In this effort, journalism can play a vital role. Its power to expose wrongdoing, inform citizens, and hold authority accountable remains potent, even as the industry has largely lost its way. If you share these ambitions, you and I have agency and power to work toward these goals, in our small ways.

But recognize the conference crowds of the past decade (and in a few weeks at the International Journalism Festival) haven't delivered beyond artificially inflating narratives on journalism’s direct impact. Myself included.

Once that's cleared up, it's about rebuilding —focused on utility for real people, driven by realism and pragmatism, avoiding the traps of wishful thinking, and slowly rebuilding.

The Independence Illusion

Exhibit A of wishful thinking: Journalism for the sake of journalism.

By defining journalism as an inherent public good without articulating what specific service it performs, we've created a perverse system: It creates funding structures that aim simply to sustain existence, inspired by a vague idea that the practice of some form of storytelling can prevent autocracy.

I've tried to challenge newsrooms and funders in recent workshops with this visual:

You'll see that the realistic strategies for each of these (valid) objectives are very different from each other, and each would require completely different success metrics.

The core issue is that funders don't typically think in these terms at all. They don't deliberately commit to messaging, documentation, or any specific objective as a goal.

Instead, they operate under the much vaguer assumption that journalism—often as undefined content creation—can do it all and will somehow naturally serve as a social corrective.

This lack of a clear definition ultimately leads to funding based on the lowest common denominator: networks built on professional identity and personal sympathy rather than demonstrated impact or relevance.

This ambiguity creates the perfect breeding ground for the clientelism. Without clear objectives or metrics for success beyond continued existence, journalism organizations shape themselves to please funders rather than serve communities.

What emerges is a system where both sides engage in a ritualistic performance—journalists pretend to create meaningful change, while funders pretend to support it.

This has led to deep, and now hurting, dependencies. Newsrooms risk becoming perennial grant-seeking operations, haunted by an ever-widening aspirations gap between what they promise and what they can deliver.

This cycle only exacerbates a race to the bottom in terms of competition and an unhealthy industry culture shaped by a scarcity mindset.

But most damningly, it has led to widespread irrelevance. We live in echo chambers where the same assumptions circulate between funders and similarly-socialized grantees, while actual information needs remain unaddressed.

In stark terms: If you give grants for generic content generation, you may be acting in good faith, but know that you may well be perpetuating clientelism. (I have, too.)

If you give a grant on "advancing climate change reporting", or "solutions", or "democratic values" or "disinformation literacy," or what have you, I know that you are acting in good faith.

But you're also causing some harm in the long run by distracting resource-strapped journalists from grasping opportunities of offering a useful service, and thus be relevant.

The sad truth is that in my work over the past year, I have encountered few newsrooms that are truly (not just narratively) defined by a theory of service to real people.

In many cases, we believe (because we were told by people of authority and means) that our existence and generic coverage of news in general is what will eventually trigger social change.

I've come to realize that it doesn't, at least in current information ecosystems.

I don't blame the journalists just trying to exist, pay rent and send their kids to good schools. I blame the funders, and their trusted gatekeepers, for keeping illusions alive for too long – to their own benefit.

Breaking the Cycle

This crisis offers a chance to rethink fundamentals rather than patch a broken system. (Much like rescuing some of these organizations is not going to help.) 

Some thoughts on what a path forward might include:

Clear intent on service

Funders and newsrooms could agree on how the service is going to be useful, not in abstract terms but concretely, and define a publishing strategy from there.

This means moving beyond vague promises to specific, measurable impacts that matter to real people.

What problem are we solving? Who's experiencing it? How exactly will our work make their lives better?

These questions could drive both funding decisions and editorial strategies, creating alignment between resources and actual needs.

Here's what that could look like:

• Not: Funding generic climate change reporting
• Instead: Funding reporting to "help me feed my family nutritious meals we can afford"

Direct benefit: Price comparisons across local markets, inspirational profiles of great cooks, reporting on affordable food options, investigations into price fluctuations, and experiences of any shared food initiatives;

Indirect societal benefit: Creates transparency in food pricing while perhaps even advancing awareness of climate change impacts on food systems and promoting sustainable consumption patterns;

• Not: Funding generic education reporting
• Instead: Funding reporting to "help me make informed decisions about my child's education journey"

Direct benefit: Parents access reported stories comparing local schools' approaches to different learning styles, first-person accounts from families navigating special needs education, and investigations into curriculum implementation successes and failures;

Indirect societal benefit: Strengthens educational system accountability and promotes educational equity by documenting disparities and highlighting effective interventions;

• Not: Funding generic healthcare reporting
• Instead: Funding reporting to "help me navigate healthcare options for my aging parents"

Direct benefit: Families read documented experiences of patients with similar conditions, investigations into local provider performance, and guides to common insurance denial patterns and successful appeals;

Indirect societal benefit: Drives healthcare system improvements by exposing inequities, inefficiencies, and price gouging while promoting patient-centered care models;

• Not: Funding generic economic reporting
• Instead: Funding reporting to "help me anticipate how economic changes might affect my job security"

Direct benefit: Workers read documented experiences of others in their industry facing similar disruptions, investigations into companies' labor practices during downturns, and reporting on successful career transitions;

Indirect societal benefit: Promotes economic resilience and addresses income inequality by highlighting labor market failures and documenting effective economic mobility pathways;

• Not: Funding mental health awareness reporting
• Instead: Funding reporting to "help me when I'm struggling emotionally"

Direct benefit: Individuals access reported experiences of people with similar challenges, investigations into treatment quality at local providers, and documented success patterns in community support programs;

Indirect societal benefit: Reduces mental health stigma and addresses systemic gaps in care by normalizing help-seeking behavior and highlighting effective intervention models;

• Not: Funding generic local government reporting
• Instead: Funding reporting to "help me understand how city decisions will affect my life in my neighborhood"

Direct benefit: Residents access comparative reporting on how similar policy changes affected other neighborhoods, interviews with impacted neighborhood residents, and investigations into developer influence on zoning decisions;

Indirect societal benefit: Strengthens democratic governance by increasing transparency in decision-making processes and promoting inclusive civic participation;

Consider the difference between these two headlines: "City Council Approves Budget Amendment" versus "Here's How the New City Budget Will Affect Your Neighborhood."

Often the most effective ventures don't meet functional needs, but psychological and social ones. Some thriving media organizations are already doing this, just perhaps not with this perspective as a starting point to strategy.

An editorial strategy could well be a blend of a multitude of these, on various levels.

Redefining the market

Perhaps counterintuitively, one additional path forward requires abandoning the competition for attention on a strategic level, relegating it to a tactical challenge.

When we describe journalism as a market failure, we're really talking about the commodified content market — a space now almost irreversibly captured.

Yet some opportunity remains for information services that genuinely help people navigate their lives.

The challenge is competing in the right market — and not for fleeting attention, but for lasting utility. This requires both commercial innovation and thoughtfully structured public funding that prioritizes service.

Identifying existing service

Rather than starting with often struggling newsrooms and seeking to help them find an audience for whatever (well-intentioned) work they're doing, funders could also seek and identify individuals already delivering valuable information in communities and enhance their work with journalistic capabilities.

There are some real superpowers in the mindset of journalism that have universal value and validity.

Changing journalism education

Journalism education needs radical reinvention — so much less focus on broadcasting techniques, more on understanding lived experiences, product thinking, and sustainable business models.

Since I posted some thoughts on this on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, I've learned about some entrepreneurial initiatives that give me some hope. We need more!

But the capital J journalism schools often still sell vague dreams of becoming foreign correspondents or documentary filmmakers to elite offspring and a few lucky scholarship awardees.

It's depressing that the same is happening in the exile media communities because many are looking at that elite space for inspiration (and funding), like I did, and emulating those examples.

Interdisciplinary collaboration

The walls between journalists and technologists must come down.

Especially in the exile media space, the persistent reinvention of solutions (more VPNs, mirror sites, aggregator apps) speaks to siloed thinking when we need integrated approaches.

How? I don't know, but I'd love to work on this more. (My friend Vini had some good thoughts on this in the conversation in these comments. Ben Werdmuller's newsletter is always interesting. I’m grateful for NPA and SRCCON.)

Toward a New Definition of Independence

True editorial independence isn't the freedom to publish whatever we deem important — it's the unburdened expression of new information that improves someone's ability to navigate their life better.

Just imagine if both sides – the few funders and journalists left – could agree to that and measure against that.

It requires a radical shift in focus that I've visualized in this way in workshops:

The talent exists to build these better systems. I've met countless passionate, creative individuals across the global media landscape who see possibilities where others see problems.

What we need is the collective will of individuals tired of the stale structures and willing to channel their talent toward reimagined purposes, even at the cost of less shiny narratives.

The most infuriating thing about this moment is that there is so much opportunity.

The more research we do at Gazzetta, the more opportunity for service I see that the craft of journalism could deliver on, even in places I won't be able to visit again.

The challenge is that there’s no guarantee in service design that it works. And there is no way to compete against the artificial narratives we have created.

My colleague Rebecca has started to write about some of our research learnings:

• You may think you understand your readers, but there's always a disconnect (and that’s ok);
• Confidence levels over data points: Our approach to understanding information needs;
• How research reviews can lead to new insights, even in challenging contexts;
• From function to fulfillment: A practical guide to information need models;

If you find any of this helpful, or silly, please let us know (just hit reply) or message me on Signal (patrickb.01). We have a few more posts in the works on our research work on gazzetta.xyz under Work Notes.

Our focus has since largely moved on to experiment with systemic information gathering based on identified functional needs, and I hope we get to write about that soon too.

I've intentionally called this little venture Gazzetta because I've found a lot of inspiration in the first gazette publishers in terms of how they gathered information despite severe restrictions on their access to sources and to audiences, and in how they had to build audiences from scratch with arguments of utility.

They also had to navigate the religious/aristocratic predecessors of today's technological broligarchs who equally controlled the top of the funnel, just physically not digitally.

We have far greater opportunities now to disrupt their grip on information than we had back then.

Looking Back

RightsCon was sobering. Prague was sobering. But even as funding cuts cast shadows over almost all my conversations, the hunger for new approaches was palpable.

If you're struggling and want to talk, my usual slots are open. This moment demands both honest reflection and meaningful solidarity. If you can afford it, I encourage you to be generous with your time.

One inspiring insight: I spent a wonderful afternoon in Taipei with a chef who had left behind a restaurant business in New York to occasionally host people at his home. Any parallels in journalism? And I met so many journalists who are transitioning into hospitality.

I got to present our work with the staff of a traditional international broadcaster that with new leadership later this year has an opportunity to decide on whether it wants to be part of the solution (a lived example of unencumbered provision of relevant information/inspiration) or the problem (rent-seeking through performative moralistic messaging).

I've also started talking to people who asked about bringing some of our research work to social activism in the United States and Europe, which was unexpected. While I've spent much of my adult life in China and Hong Kong, thinking about the Communist Party's grip, are there learnings in this for Europe or the United States?

As promised in my last newsletter, here are my slides from Taipei on our audience research.

I never tire of saying: there is enormous promise in identifying opportunities for journalism (not just optimization of messaging and distribution), if approached with the right conceptual clarity and flexibility on format.

Fabienne Meijer and I discussed the difference between strategic and tactical research for her Dutch-language newsletter De Durfredactie. Reese Oxner kindly interviewed me for News Product Alliance's Product Notes newsletter on my work. I had already known about Reese's great work at the Texas Tribune by religiously reading the NPA's resource library.

And I just got to speak at the NewsWhip Publisher Summit in New York about emerging opportunities in news gathering.

My main point there: Social discourse analysis needs be reclaimed from closed APIs so that the public can stay informed, not just the monied few. (We looked into this in China, more on this in another edition.)

Looking Forward

You'll find me in Perugia for the International Journalism Festival. I was meant to co-launch a training program there. It got cancelled after I had already booked my ticket.

I dread this Davos-like gathering somewhat because it feels a bit like being on the Titanic. While that orchestra keeps playing, I chose to be among those thinking about lifeboats and will focus on meeting like-minded people. If you're there and want to meet, let me know.

Finally, I get to talk about the utility of AI in our audience research at the Hacks/Hackers AI x Journalism Summit in Baltimore in May (and some cool tools like Yazi), and at the Rosenfeld Designing with AI conference in June.

The latter has an amazing presentation review process with feedback, so that you get to iterate and learn from others as you prepare.

If you're in journalism and struggling, know that you have value. It's ok to try and fail. That's how we figure this out. Also, we don't need to sacrifice ourselves in this.

My friend Yan in the latest edition of his newsletter, "Living with Shoggoths," pointed to Adam Mastroianni's list of underrated ways of making positive change.

Rather than aiming for extremes — gaining great wealth/power or making personal sacrifices — he suggests these alternatives:

• Be the second-bravest person: Support whistleblowers by joining them in speaking up about wrongdoing;
• Make a scene: Build communities that nurture positive change;
• Switch-boarding: Use your unique network to connect people with helpful information or contacts;
• Crack your knuckles: Pursue personal experiments that formal institutions can't or won't undertake;
• Post good: Shape culture positively through constructive engagement;
• Go to a nondescript government building and do a good job: Create impact from unglamorous but essential positions;
• Build your RUNK: Develop reliable, useful, neutral knowledge that others can depend on over time;

RUNK is our fast-track to independence, to getting out of this mess, and to rebuilding journalism as a genuinely meaningful service.

Subscribe to Yan's newsletter. You won't regret it.

And thank you for reading my thoughts. I hope I've convinced you that what I'm proposing isn't retreat, but rather a smarter, more realistic offensive.

If you want to connect, discuss, or brainstorm, I'm only an email (hit reply) or a Signal message (patrickb.01) away.

Until next month!