By Chelsea Moreno*
Cuban digital media site 14ymedio is betting on a new membership program for readers to ensure its independence and increase engagement.
“We wanted to use the membership as an opportunity to have more conversations with our members and we wanted to do it in a way that allows us to preserve our independence as an outlet,” Alejandro González, who leads development and innovation efforts at the media outlet, told the Knight Center.
Independence is at the core of 14ymedio's objectives. The site was founded in 2014 by Yoani Sánchez and Reinaldo Escobar with the hope of redefining what independent journalism means in Cuba, a country where communication is heavily controlled by the government – so much so that 14ymedio’s website is blocked in the country.
The idea of developing the membership model came from the need to develop an additional revenue source.
Memberships, launched in November, include a choice between a friend plan for U.S. $5.99 a month, or U.S. $60 per year, and a family plan at a rate of U.S. $10.99 per month or U.S. $115 per year.
As the price for memberships would be costly for Cubans, the majority of whom live on modest monthly salaries, the program is intended for people living outside the island.
“The membership is an opportunity for the Cuban diaspora and other supporters to directly participate in the transformation of independent journalism in Cuba,” explained Gónzalez, who confirmed that all site content will continue to be free to all. Membership just comes with additional perks.
Both membership plans include invitations to video conferences and online conversations with the site's reporters and a quarterly newsletter about 14ymedio's activities.
The family plan does include an extra feature as well: a photograph by a Cuban photographer as a gift for joining.
“Our hope is that our membership model is one of the main, if not the main, sources of income for 14ymedio so that we have complete freedom in our editorial work to…be as open and transparent as we are with everything that we do,” González said in a phone interview. “It’s Cuban stories told by Cuban voices – not Cuban stories told by voices who are international outlets.”
González said this approach fits perfectly with the site’s newly developed membership opportunity.
“We have not accepted any type of funding from the government or political parties or from aid organizations,” he said.
González also said the site’s journalists have been arrested and that their work has been confiscated in the past, but that it is a risk the team is willing to take.
Cubans can access the site using a proxy, which means that readers sign in to their site through registering an IP address outside of the country. The site also distributes its content through social media and email newsletters in which the journalists publish the whole text instead of links. Addtionally, they create a weekly PDF version of the top stories of the week and distribute it on the island through USB drives.
González said that, in the past, money to fund the site’s work came from grants, university partnerships, individual donations, advertisements and partnerships with other news outlets. He explained that finding innovative ways to fund the site is what he has tried to focus on since joining 14ymedio in September 2014, and that it is what has carried the organization thus far.
Partners have included the University of Miami, Georgetown University, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), El Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald.
“The goal of that is to say that we want to be a part of the conversation about independent media and the role that it plays around the world,” González said.
The most recent of its partnerships was with the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, in which González helped lead the creation of 14ymedio’s membership model as an RJI fellow.
González said he spent one academic year working with a team of students, learning about how journalism outlets all over the world structure their memberships. They looked at media outlets such as the Voice of San Diego, the Main Post, The Guardian and Spanish newspaper Eldiario.es. 14ymedio staff also studied how Nómada, a journalism outlet in Guatemala, does its crowdfunding.
“We really relied on a lot of the expertise of the professors and staff,” González explained. “We found out things that we thought would work for us and that would not work for us.”
They then focused internally, he said, and asked their readers directly what they would like through surveys and on a one-on-one basis. One thing consumers asked for were souvenir gifts from Cuba, something that he said would be more difficult to execute than some may think.
“We just don’t have the manpower,” he said, explaining that the entire staff is comprised of 15 people, some of whom are unpaid. “We came up with a model that we believe is doable and it may not be the model we use forever, but it is a minimum viable product.”
One of González’ main responsibilities at 14ymedio is to develop resources to help improve the team’s work, which includes attending the Knight Center’s International Symposium for Online Journalism (ISOJ) at the University of Texas at Austin. In terms of improvement, the team has been working on telling stories – including video, data and investigative journalism – that have a greater impact on their audience, González said.
It is not always about just the journalism, though. González said 14ymedio’s journalists face a number of challenges when reporting, including censorship from the government.
In addition to 14ymedio’s site being blocked in Cuba, internet access is limited and expensive.
“We’re competing with the fact that news is not everybody’s number one priority, especially in a country where news has not been viewed as objective and independent,” González said.
Another challenge is that the site’s journalists are young and not highly experienced. The upshot is that 14ymedio is putting part of the money generated from the membership program toward professional development opportunities for the team, González said.
The constant effort to improve the journalists’ work does show. González said 14ymedio staff members are working on a mobile app that would allow consumers in Cuba to share information offline through Bluetooth connectivity, from one phone to another. There is no word yet, however, on when this will be launched. Either way, González said the site fulfills an important need.
“There’s a legitimate interest to empower the work that you do,” González said, adding that it’s what inspires them to continue. “You’re really opening up to a whole set of readers who will support you because of your work.”
He also said the 14ymedio team welcomes support from its audience and welcomes anyone to participate in the site’s efforts to improve.
*Chelsea Moreno is a journalism student at the Moody College of Communication School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. This story was produced as part of the class Reporting Latin America.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
