Many news outlets in Latin American are managing to overcome challenges including censorship, exile, and the threats that come with operating in repressive or crisis-driven countries.
However, there is one perennial issue: sustainability. Media in Latin America, like the journalism industry worldwide, is not immune to economic pressures and the challenge of finding new ways to generate revenue.
To address this, the Florida-based nonprofit organization ARCCO, in collaboration with the international investigative network Connectas and its Invaluable Journalism initiative, has taken a step forward to connect U.S. donors with independent media outlets in Latin America.
According to Carlos Eduardo Huertas, director of Connectas and CEO of ARCCO, this will be achieved by launching fundraising campaigns to support independent news organizations in the region.
"We believe this mechanism is unprecedented and innovative, and it will allow us to find an alternative to address one of the region’s main needs: sustainability," Huertas told LatAm Journalism Review. "The challenge lies in establishing a connection with audiences who understand that the journalistic product they are receiving is valuable."
Connectas' Invaluable Journalism initiative emerged from the fund awarded to Huertas when he became one of the 2023 gold medalists of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the oldest international journalism awards in the world, at the Columbia Journalism School.
Support also comes from individuals including Janine Warner, executive director of the media incubator Sembramedia, and Martin Baron, former executive editor of The Washington Post, as well as organizations such as the Knight Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Center for News, Technology and Innovation, Huertas said.
"This initiative has no precedent" Huertas told LJR. "There have been many individual campaigns. But activating journalistic collaboration for the management and administration of funds is a capacity that didn’t exist in the region."
ARCCO will be responsible for collecting and managing the funds. ARCCO's website describes the organization as "a great connector" and lists its activities as fundraising campaign management, educational support, editorial strengthening, and content production.
The pilot fundraising campaign is being conducted with El Deber of Bolivia, a multiplatform media outlet with over 70 years of history. This decision takes into account the challenging moment journalism is facing in the country, marked by political crisis, continuous attacks on press workers, and general elections set for mid-2025.
"El Deber is committed to rising to this moment," Mónica Salvaterra, journalist and editor-in-chief of El Deber, told LJR. "As journalists, our desire is to have the ability to investigate and work on in-depth, high-quality journalism. That will be the purpose of the funds received through donations. This is the commitment we’ve made to the donors."
El Deber boasts an online platform with over two million monthly visits, more than 326,000 Instagram followers, and the newspaper with the largest circulation in the country.
There is no mandatory minimum or maximum donation amount, and supporters, according to Salvaterra, will support the production of in-depth reports, analysis, and events that provide access to local news. Donors will also have the ability to monitor how the resources are used.
The campaign is open until December 10 and aligns with a season when people are more inclined to make charitable donations: Thanksgiving, Giving Tuesday, and Christmas. According to its organizers, the idea is to connect the U.S. audience, where donation culture is more established, with Latin America.
"In Latin American countries, it’s very difficult for people to donate through websites," Arlén Pérez, the campaign’s operations coordinator, told LJR. "So this initiative allows people abroad, for example, Bolivians in the U.S., to contribute."
The campaign has a legal, tax, and technical structure that allows U.S. tax residents to receive a tax exemption certificate for their donations. Contributions can be made by individuals, private companies, or organizations.
Connectas’ Invaluable Journalism initiative has also supported other projects such as Nicaragua No Calla (Nicaragua Will Not Be Silenced in Spanish), a series of investigations that aimed to provide information about repression in Nicaragua and was a 2021 finalist for the Gabo Award, the most prestigious journalism award in the Spanish-speaking world.
Other projects include Fotopódcast, a multimedia experience that seeks to draw attention to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras, involving more than 43 reporters; and La Hora de Venezuela (Venezuela’s Hour in Spanish), a media alliance created to circumvent censorship, persecution, and increasing repression in Venezuela following the July 28 elections.
"We call it Invaluable Journalism not only because of the quality of journalism in these countries,” Huertas said, “but also because of the courage demonstrated by journalists who carry out their work under exceptional and adverse conditions.”
