The media landscape has undergone significant changes in recent years, with many prominent news organizations facing layoffs and restructuring. However, this upheaval has also created opportunities for new journalist-owned publications to emerge and thrive using modern content management systems (CMS) and funding models. Let’s explore how WordPress and other platforms are shaping the future of digital journalism.
The Shift to Subscriber-Funded Models
Traditional ad-funded journalism models have been declining, with many publications now turning to subscriber-based approaches. This shift brings both challenges and opportunities:
- Paywalls are becoming more common, even for smaller independent publishers
- Readers are increasingly willing to directly support creators they value
- There’s a growing distinction between paying for large media conglomerates vs. supporting small, focused publications
As Ryan Singel, co-founder of Outpost Publishers Cooperative, notes:
There’s been a cultural shift where we’re just more willing to hand over money to people whose stuff we kind of like, we just want them to be out in the world, right? We want their stuff to exist. We want them to be able to do what they’re doing and make a decent living doing it.
Tools Empowering Independent Publishers
Several platforms and tools have emerged to support this new generation of digital publishers:
WordPress-based Solutions
- Newspack: An Automattic-backed project that bundles vetted plugins for news publishers, offering features like advertising, analytics, and newsletter capabilities.
- Memberful: A membership and subscription plugin (now owned by Patreon) that integrates with WordPress sites.
Other Platforms
- Ghost: An open-source publishing system with built-in membership and newsletter functionality.
- Tiny News Collective: An organization that helps new publishers launch using Ghost, providing technical and strategic support.
The Importance of User-Friendly CMSs
A key factor in the success of these new publishing models is the ease of use for writers and editors. As Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, recently highlighted:
“Boy, I’d like the reporters who work here to write for us in the text box that pays us money instead of over there in the text box that extracts value.”
This sentiment echoes Ryan Singel’s experience at Wired, where switching to WordPress allowed for more experimentation and faster publishing:
When we moved to WordPress… we could just do fun, quick posts. We could, you know, and one of my favorite ones we did back in the day is we—I remember when the Homeland Security had its threat level color-coded things, and every once in a while we would just make a fake version of that… And, you know, we could just write that, send it out, it was fun, right?
The Future of Sustainable Journalism
While challenges remain, particularly in scaling these new models to support larger newsrooms, there are reasons for optimism:
- Smaller teams can experiment more freely with content and distribution
- Publishers are exploring ways to own more of their content ecosystem, including creating their own social media instances
- Organizations like the Knight Foundation are investing heavily in revitalizing local journalism
As Ryan Singel suggests:
I would love to see more of, you know, even when you do sort of like share out there doing that sort of like “POSSE” thing, you know, the “publish once, syndicate everywhere” idea from the IndieWeb, where even if you do share your stuff out there, it’s still live somewhere on your own site, right?
The landscape of digital journalism continues to evolve, with WordPress and other modern CMSs playing a crucial role in empowering independent publishers. While challenges remain, the combination of user-friendly tools, new funding models, and a willingness from readers to directly support quality content offers hope for a sustainable future for journalism.