Patrick Boehler

I help media organizations in challenging environments with audience research, product development, and innovation.

Email: patrick@gazzetta.xyz
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Short bio

I am the founder of Gazzetta, a Tallinn and New York-based firm supporting media and technology companies in advancing global internet freedom.

While our projects are diverse, they share these core themes:

Audience research
News product definition and development
Newsroom transformation and restructuring
Building anti-autocratic resilience

I previously led Radio Free Europe's digital transformation, establishing its audience research, marketing, and product departments, along with its journalism Academy and Innovation Lab. My experience spans executive newsroom roles, award-winning reporting for The New York Times and other publications in Asia and Europe, co-founding the Environmental Reporting Collective, and teaching at the University of Hong Kong. I hold a doctorate in political science and was a 2023 Sulzberger Fellow at Columbia University.

Why the magpie?

In the 1600s, some of Italy’s first newspapers were news sheets called gazeta, named after a small Venetian coin that matched its price. Some suggested that the word came from gazza, a chattering magpie—that would spread news.

Contrary to popular belief, the bird isn’t a collector of shiny objects but a discerning aggregator, attuned to cultural traits. It reminded me of media strategy, where success is rooted in the blend of insights from marketing, product, and audience research. But perhaps that’s too far down a rabbit hole.

The longer backstory

Autocratic environments make media numbingly dull and create a sameness that is deadening. But societies are anything but. They’re rich in diverse experiences that can inform, inspire, and expand horizons.

I’m obsessed with transcending these limitations to inform the public—silence or noise, bias or lies—with stories well reported and told.

I have reported from, worked with, and led newsrooms in some of the world’s most hostile places for journalists, including China, Myanmar, Iran, Afghanistan, and Russia. While I started out looking for good stories, I have learned along the way that impactful reporting means writing not just about communities but for them.

That’s when great journalism can, in an instant, assume its own momentum and get shared, on and on, until the stories told become part of the shared narratives that are the foundations of collective identity.

How media organizations have navigated these challenges offers lessons for media everywhere on how to render them more resilient to silencing and more intentional in overcoming any disconnect from the people they are aspiring to serve.

I now work on building and supporting newsrooms, maturing their digital strategies through audience research, remote reporting, digital security, and real-world iterative product development. It’s my mission to help news leaders address their challenges related to media irrelevance and disconnection.

In these projects, I’ve failed often and have seen many projects and newsrooms fail. The challenges are not just external (lack of access, surveillance, harassment, intimidation, and violence). They’re much more often internal due to a lack of clarity on questions like “Who do we serve?” “What is our sustainable competitive advantage?” and “How do we measure success?”.

Success stories have been very intentional in what they were trying to do, willing to test, iterate, and sometimes discard approaches that didn’t work in pursuit of their overarching theory of change.

Recent Coverage: How Western News Is Getting Around Putin’s Digital Iron Curtain, The Atlantic | A New Iron Curtain Is Descending on Russia’s Internet, The Washington Post | U.S. and Ukrainian Groups Pierce Putin’s Propaganda Bubble, The New York Times How can Russians access uncensored news? The Times of London | News media uses digital back doors to reach Russians, Axios | Researchers find Israeli-made spyware deployed across Armenia, Reuters

Projects Reports: Ten lessons in media innovation, The Fix | The Illusion of Openness, Advocacy Assembly course on mitigating internet censorship, How a narrative podcast from Radio Svaboda helped counter news fatigue in Belarus, The Fix | How a large global newsroom is building trust using video, surveys, Facebook and more Trusting News | Global Investigative Journalism Network 10 Lessons from Our Global Collaboration on Pangolin Trafficking Multilingual Journalism Could Make a Comeback. Here Are Some Tools That Might Help | IJNet Journalists in Africa and Asia collaborate to shed light on illicit wildlife trade Collaborative journalism predictions for 2020 | SWI swissinfo.ch We want to hear about your expertise and experiences

Selected Reporting: The New York Times After Edward Snowden Fled U.S., Asylum Seekers in Hong Kong Took Him In | A Greyhound Racetrack Meets Its Demise | Jim Rogers, Intrepid Investor, Finds Bumpy Road to North Korea | Tianjin Blasts Expose the Dangerous Proximity of Toxic Chemicals in China | The South China Morning Post The forgotten Chinese army of the first world war | Voices from Tiananmen | Dragon at the doorstep: Myanmar’s changing ties with China | Post Magazine The first overseas branch of a Chinese university opens in Laos. The Caravan Maldives – Whatever the Distance The Irrawaddy Training the next generation of Kachin rebels | Burmese refugees face tough times in Japan | Displaced and Distressed | Did a Golden Triangle Leader Fall for a UN Peace Prize Hoax? | TIME Vietnam’s Blogosphere: The battleground for rival factions of the ruling Communists | Foreign Policy Burma’s web-savvy rebels | WSJ China Venture Investing, Driven by Mobile, Soars | NZZ Ein chinesischer Banker auf Mission in Zürich | Le Monde Diplomatique Fils de princes, affaires et corruption | Malaysiakini The media in a post-BN Malaysia | 时代周报 3-part series on a Chinese official’s family fortune | 金三角往事:那些大毒枭们 (the Chinese-Burmese guerrilla leader Lei Yutian’s last interview) | SWI How Switzerland reacted to Tiananmen Square | Environmental Reporting Collective The Pangolin Reports: Trafficked to Extinction