Some post-RightsCon reflections on the dissident media space

As I'm leaving Taipei after RightsCon, I've been reflecting on the state of philanthropic media support, particularly in dissident diaspora spaces.

While external challenges remain significant, many obstacles are self-imposed through misaligned incentives. Here's what I observed and some potential paths forward.

• Paternalistic Funding: Professional identities and outdated assumptions continue to serve as strong unifying factors in funding relationships. These connections often form based on personal sympathy rather than effectiveness, prioritizing resource acquisition over audience service. As funding diminishes, we risk entrenching ever fewer well-connected individuals in non-functional models.
• Undefined Funding Objectives: Funding structures rarely extend beyond sustaining existence. Is a grant intended for self-expression, information provision, or documentation? Without clarity, funding merely rewards content mills.
• Talent Scarcity Paradox: The limited pool of journalists in this space makes funders hesitant about strategic shifts in support that could attract new talent.
• Research Implementation Gap: Research is viewed as a tactical tool rather than a strategic foundation, rarely informing service model rethinking.
• Self-Imposed Limitations: I consistently hear narratives claiming that serving audiences in technocratic autocracies is impossible, despite abundant contrary evidence that exists outside traditional media funders' networks or conceptualizations of journalism.

Here are some thoughts on what I think could help:

• Education: Now is not the time for journalism schools to teach students how to read from teleprompters. Journalism education needs to be grounded in connection to lived experiences, including product training and monetization approaches.
• Research and Venture Design: Investment in this area could be eye-opening for media workers determined to persist (as it has been for me) and help create independent revenue streams.
• Service-First Approach: We should identify individuals already delivering valuable information and enhance their work with journalistic capabilities.
• Interdisciplinary Collaboration: We need more opportunities for journalists and technologists to work together. Without this collaboration, we'll continue seeing reinvented wheels and more of the same-level VPNs, mirrors, and aggregator apps.

This work is too important to get wrong. There is amazingly smart and motivated talent in this space. We can build better systems.