In 2018, as Brazilians prepared to elect a new president, reporter Maurício Ferro set out to counter one of the country’s first major waves of misinformation on social media.
Ferro launched Correio Sabiá — roughly meaning Bird Mail in English — distributing fact-checked news through WhatsApp, the same platform where falsehoods were spreading at scale.
Since then, Correio Sabiá has grown into a digital newsroom with a website, newsletters and courses. It has also expanded its business model. Revenue comes from paid subscriptions — from 9.90 reais ($1.80 USD) to 39.90 reais ($7.30 USD) a month — grants and, since last year, a communications consulting arm that serves clients in education and finance.
Maurício Ferro launched Correio Sabiá, distributing fact-checked news through WhatsApp, the same platform where falsehoods were spreading at scale. (Photo: Courtesy Maurício Ferro)
“When you are providing a service to another company, you can charge much more than you would for a newspaper subscription, which is a very low average ticket,” founder Maurício Ferro told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR).
Launching a news outlet takes a sharp idea, reliable funding and relentless work. The bigger challenge, entrepreneurs told LJR, comes later: finding steady revenue to keep the venture alive. For many across Latin America, the answer has been diversification.
“It’s not just a financial strategy,” Naimid Cirelli, operations director at SembraMedia, a nonprofit that supports digital media in the region, told LJR. “It’s a safeguard for editorial independence and a pillar for long-term viability.”
Correio Sabiá has drawn recognition, with its founder Ferro named an Emerging Media Leader by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in 2020. But he says everyday obstacles, such as canceled credit cards, can disrupt subscription revenue. To stabilize cash flow, Correio Sabiá expanded into consulting on content and communications, recently signing clients seeking to use AI tools to streamline production.
The case of Correio Sabiá fits into trends SembraMedia has found of news organizations fighting for survival.
SembraMedia has mapped more than 3,000 independent outlets in 68 countries across the Americas and Europe. The mapping project, known as Global Project Oasis, found more outlets closed in Latin America from 2023 to 2024 than in the previous nine years.
Among the reasons for so many closures are economic and political instability in the region and shrinking support from grant-making organizations. On average, according to the Global Project Oasis report, more than half of the region’s independent digital outlets reported annual revenue of $20,000 or less.
Independent media organizations are aware of the crisis — and taking action.
“What we detected in the past year is a broader awareness of the need to look for diversified business models in the face of changing scenarios,” Cirelli said.
Still, he acknowledged that advertising and grants remain the main sources of revenue. He said entrepreneurs have developed more than 30 funding sources.
“Alternative sources come up like services, consultancies, trainings, product development or partnerships with other organizations,” he said.
Francesco Tabacci, presidential candidate in the 2025 Ecuadoran elections, interviewed by Martina Vera, host of the GK elections special program. (Photo: Courtesy GK)
In Ecuador, the staff at independent media outlet GK understood that expanding the business model was the best way forward. Founded in Quito in 2011, GK produces journalism focused on human rights with emphasis on gender, the environment and transparency. The team publishes factual and investigative reporting, and is one of the most widely read outlets in the country, according to RSF.
In 2021, GK won the Ortega y Gasset Award from El País for best reporting or investigative journalism. It was the first time an Ecuadorian outlet received such recognition.
Funding for the news operation comes from a wide range of services offered by GK, including translations, courses, and a strategic communications agency, GK Studio, which has operated since 2015.
Cofounder and editorial director Isabela Ponce said GK Studio now accounts for 50 percent of the group’s revenue. The newsroom and the studio operate together.
“They are like brothers, sisters,” she told LJR. “They share the team, not all of it, but part of the team. So everything that goes to GK Studio is part of GK as a whole, GK Media.”
Ponce said that in 2015 the team carried out an exercise to think of solutions to increase revenue. The idea of the agency emerged from that effort, “by being creative, by realizing that we had quality content in storytelling, high-quality storytelling that other brands or companies or third parties wanted us to create for them.”
One of the agency’s first clients, in 2015, was Bosch, the German technology and engineering company.
“They asked us, we want your quality, we want content to look like that, text content and multimedia content. And so we started like that,” she said.
Today, GK offers communications campaigns in “any format that you will need to tell your story better and right,” Ponce said. Prices run from $5,000 to $50,000, far above the outlet’s $12 monthly subscription. For media entrepreneurs, there is no single fix for survival. But Ponce argues that one approach stands out: “Diversification is everything.”
