Although each has its own particularities, digital native media in Brazil make up a “vibrant and dynamic ecosystem, with outlets that strive to adapt to the demands of a changing universe.” Most of them look to the future with confidence in the economic viability of their business, but they have small teams. Furthermore, due to their small structures and teams, these outlets are very vulnerable to lawsuits and threats in court.
These are some of the findings of the report by Project Oasis Brazil, a study on the sustainability and innovation of digital native media that previously published editions in Europe and North America. Under the international leadership of SembraMedia, the project seeks to identify factors that favor the sustainability of digital native media outlets, as well as point out regional particularities. With the support of Google News Initiative, the Digital Journalism Association (Ajor, for its initials in Portuguese) led the data collection in Brazil, carried out between 2023 and 2024 with 164 digital native journalism outlets.
The research coordinator in Brazil, Marcelo Fontoura, highlights as the most surprising finding of the study that most outlets are optimistic about their financial sustainability and the future of their business.
“I was surprised that there was a positive outlook overall. Most respondents said that they had a positive balance last year and that next year will be positive as well,” Fontoura told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “We asked what the financial outlook is for next year, whether they expected their income to increase by more than 20%, and most said yes.”
Another surprising factor, Fontoura said, is the degree of dependence on advertising among Brazilian digital native media outlets. Sixty-nine outlets have advertising as their main source of income, a percentage that the researcher considers high.
“We clearly see more reliance on advertising than elsewhere,” Fontoura said. “And when asked what other sources of revenue they had, a good proportion said they wanted to pursue more advertising.”
The dependence on advertising is consistent with what other research shows, said Sérgio Lüdtke, president of Brazil’s Institute for the Development of Journalism (Projor) and coordinator of the research team for the News Atlas. This creates vulnerabilities, especially among media outlets in small municipalities, which often depend on government advertising, Lüdtke said.
"Especially in smaller locations, outlets always run the risk of being held hostage by public authorities, which are the big advertisers," Lüdtke, who did not participate in the Project Oasis study, told LJR.
The second most common way of generating revenue, according to the Oasis survey, involves providing content services to other organizations. The importance of grants, that is, assistance through calls from governments, corporations or the third sector, also stands out.
A surprising finding reveals that “nonprofits reported median revenues more than three times higher than for-profits” – R$992,500 (about US$173,000) versus R$300,000 (about US$52,000). This is largely due to access to grants. Median annual gross revenues of all digital native media outlets were around R$270,000 (about US $47,000), with a quarter of outlets earning up to R$100,000 (about US$17,409) per year and 10% exceeding R$2 million (about US$350,000).
Reader support, whether through subscriptions or donations, is present in only 40% of media outlets, and in only 10% is it the main source of revenue. This “indicates the potential for growth of this pathway in Brazil,” the study says.
“But it’s not easy to get revenue from readers in Brazil,” Fontoura said. “Certainly the share of subscription money from reader revenue is higher in the Northern Hemisphere.”
In about 60% of the newsrooms surveyed by the Oasis study, there are no more than four employees. The teams focus on content production to the detriment of other areas, but this creates overlapping positions.
According to a still unpublished survey cited by Lüdtke that should be released by the middle of the year, there are outlets in Brazil where journalists also take care of the commercial sector, which generates potential conflicts of interest.
There is also a difficulty in expanding initiatives: according to the Oasis study, only around 30% of organizations have more than 10 employees, and 7% have more than 30.
With fewer resources and structure than larger media outlets, digital native media are vulnerable to legal harassment and online threats. Almost half of those interviewed have faced online attacks, and an almost identical proportion have faced threats in court. About a quarter of those interviewed said that these attacks have hindered the outlet’s ability to produce information, and 15% cited consequences for financial sustainability.
According to Lüdtke, legal fragility is a problem that has already been identified in other studies. The researcher and journalist states that future studies should analyze how many of the media outlets that closed down faced legal problems. In addition, it is necessary to think of ways to support these outlets, Lüdtke said, citing the Tornavoz Institute, which offers legal assistance in cases of threats to freedom of expression, as a positive example.
“There is a need for projects that support journalistic initiatives, whether by providing legal support or offering some kind of training so that people can be more resistant to these attacks,” Lüdtke said. “Often, small media outlets with few resources find themselves intimidated by actors with much larger legal apparatuses.”
Brazilian digital media outlets have a predominantly generalist focus (50%) with regional (42%) or national (40%) coverage, according to the Project Oasis study. Thematic coverage is diverse, with emphasis on politics (82% of outlets), followed by society and human rights, entertainment and culture, and the environment (all with 72%).
The emphasis on human rights and environmental issues, Fontoura said, is related to the areas of interest of the creators of the media outlets themselves. Digital natives are often created by journalists interested in filling gaps they feel exist.
“People leave a newsroom and think, ‘Oh, I used to take care of this a lot, I had the impression that no one else cared [about these topics], right?’ No one covers this anymore, someone needs to do it. So I go there and do it,” Fontoura said.
Regarding future challenges, Fontoura identifies three main ones for media: how to distribute content “in a post-distribution world on social networks”; how to achieve relevance in a context in which it is “increasingly difficult to differentiate oneself and be seen”; and, finally, how to monetize the content itself.
As for advice for those who want to create a digital media outlet, Fontoura says it is crucial to really understand the audience. It’s necessary to make an effort to understand the nature of this audience, how this audience already informs itself about the subject being addressed, and what matters to this audience. This can be done through online research or interviews with readers, the researcher explained.
"Journalists still do this very little," Fontoura said. "Users are governed by logics that we don't understand. And sometimes you imagine one thing for your audience and go to talk to them, but end up discovering that it's the opposite of what you intended. This is very common."
