Memberships go off-platform

In the past few years, we’ve witnessed two interesting phenomena challenging the status quo of the media industry.

On one hand, several publications have tried to move beyond the dichotomy between subscription-based and advertisement-funded ways to make journalism financially sustainable. This small but growing group of news brands opted for membership schemes to fund their journalism, building on the idea that “subscribers pay their money and get access to a product, but members join the cause and participate because they believe in it,” as Emily Goligoski, former research director at the NYU’s Membership Puzzle Project, put it. We’ve seen a variety of publications trying to monetize through membership schemes, mostly outlets focusing on long reads, investigations, and underserved local communities — except for The Guardian in the U.K., one celebrated but isolated example of a national, mainstream newspaper opting for a membership model instead of subscriptions.

On the other hand, a new wave of platform-based news brands has attempted to bring journalism to a place where people seem to access journalism more than ever: social media. The 2023 Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism reported that 30% of respondents to their questionnaire across 46 markets said social media is their primary source of news (up from 23% in 2018), while 22% seek news directly on news websites (down from 33% in 2018).

Thus, it is no surprise that news outlets such as The News Movement in the U.K., Hugo Décrypte in France, Impact in the U.S., Ac2ality in Spain, and Will Media in Italy have managed to build online communities worth millions of followers on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Many platform-based outlets, following the example of the creator economy, have so far monetized their work through paid partnerships with brands and donations. That’s mainly due to two factors: We’re all used to getting free content on social media, and there is no solid solution to give exclusive access to content posted on platforms. However, I would argue the membership model could be the next step for such publications.

A report published by the Media Insight Project earlier this year on Gen Z and millennials’ attitudes to paying for news gave us a new perspective on what could come next for membership models. The report found that 60% of Americans aged 16 to 40 pay for or donate to news and that millennials and Gen Z are more than twice as likely to pay for news from independent creators. The Media Insight Project also reports that 54% of Gen Z and Millennials who pay for or donate to news “bump” into news through social media more than seek it out.

I found this data encouraging as I worked on the launch of the membership scheme at Will Media, an Italian news brand for millennials and Gen Z, which is currently the first platform-based publication in Italy offering people the opportunity to support its journalism to keep content free for all, while getting special access to events and direct access to its team and newsroom. Since launching the membership scheme at the end of September, we’ve launched dedicated products for our members, including Closer, an evening daily podcast on current affairs, and two newsletters: Bella Domanda (literally, Good Question), where we dive into an issue to answer a question from our community (e.g., “Will I ever have a pension?” and “Are Italian cities becoming more dangerous?”); and Radar, a daily digest of news and interesting conversions happening on social media platforms that we used to produce for internal use and that we now send to our members too. We’re also working on special spin-offs of our most popular podcasts.

But launching a membership scheme is not just about new editorial products. We are also experimenting with new ways to involve our community in Will Media’s editorial process. For example, members who are paying for the highest tier of our membership scheme can join the Closer WhatsApp group, where podcast host Francesco Oggiano and others on our editorial team discuss topics for upcoming episodes with paying members.

But we’re not just working to engage them better online. Every month we organize in-real-life activities, including networking drinks in our newsroom where members can join us and have a chat, share feedback, and get to know how we work; a book club where we interview insightful authors; and public screenings of our documentaries, with Q&A sessions with authors and directors. We even had a swap party where staff and members could bring clothes they no longer use and take others in exchange — everything that wasn’t taken during the evening was then donated to a charity fighting homelessness.

Don’t get me wrong: Launching a membership scheme is no easy game. Membership models can be an uphill climb for many media organizations, as they are forced to rethink their relationship with the audience. But I think platform-born news brands could prove better equipped than traditional organizations to leverage their relationships with online communities to build a more sustainable future for journalism.