On the end of institutions and the health benefits of broccoli

The US's funding freeze is both a symptom and catalyst of a broader trend. Many of the world's largest institutions no longer see investing in the media and information ecosystem as a priority.

Tuesday evening, I was attending an event in Brussels, discussing the finer points of international media funding when I suddenly felt very close to the violinist playing on the deck of the Titanic as the ship went down. What funding am I even talking about?

I'm sure many of you are painfully aware of what's happening around the independent media space, but for the happy few who have managed to miss it so far: either stop reading right now, or brace yourself for some very bad news.

Last week, the US government suspended all foreign assistance, and by Tuesday, every US-funded media support and development project across the globe ground to a halt. Marcin Gadziński, MDIF's European Program director, summed up the impact in CEE perfectly: it's primarily hitting medium-sized, independent, digital newsrooms working in difficult environments to improve their financial sustainability, along with the organizations supporting them. Whether this turns out to be a temporary suspension or permanent termination (my money is on the latter) hardly matters right now - people are already losing their jobs, and organizations are closing their doors.

While the US's funding freeze is devastating, it's both a symptom and catalyst of a broader trend that I believe will lead to drastically reduced funding for media and information spaces globally.

Just last week, Alex Soros, the Chairman of the Open Society Foundation, spoke with the FT, reiterating OSF's new direction and its pivot to US-focused efforts: "My father was more about how you get closed societies to become open, and my task within the foundation is how do you renew open societies from within." OSF has been gradually withdrawing from Europe and journalism support for some time, and now its new priorities are crystal clear. Add to this Meta's decision to end their third-party fact-checking program in the US (likely dismantling the entire ecosystem they built) and Google's withdrawal from the EU agreement on disinformation - it's all part of the same pattern.

Many of the world's largest institutions no longer see investing in the media and information ecosystem as a priority.

In Davenport, no one listens to Spider-Man

It’s tempting to explain it all away by saying this is MAGA. Their hostility toward journalism. A reductively transactional view of the world. Opportunistic billionaires trying to curry favor with the executive.

Neither of these are completely untrue, but I think all miss a much more important point: we're witnessing a broader crisis of institutions themselves, one that cuts deeper than the actions of partisan politics or individual actors.

Let me throw Martin Gurri at you again. His book, "The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority" predicted this moment with unnerving accuracy. Institutions across the board – from governments to health authorities, from financial institutions to mainstream media – have increasingly lost touch with the public they claim to serve. The COVID-19 pandemic, persistent economic mismanagement leading to periods of high inflation, and esoteric culture wars often disconnected from the daily realities of most people have only accelerated this divide. Mainstream media, perhaps more than many other institutions, has found itself caught in this crisis of legitimacy.

How do you justify to a single parent raising two children in Iowa why they should spend even a cent supporting local journalists in Moldova? In simpler times, depending on what comic books you grew up with, you might have quoted the Bible, Voltaire, or Spider-Man's wise uncle Ben saying something about great power and great responsibility (the great power being America's, not the single mom's in Davenport). You could also make abstract arguments about how public interest journalism fosters stability and growth, which in turn strengthens the free world with the US at its center.

But these arguments, always somewhat tenuous, have become even harder to defend in an era where individuals can and do create content at almost no cost, reach massive audiences, and monetize attention with unprecedented ease. When the new White House puts creators in the front row at press briefings, it's not just showing contempt for traditional newsrooms – it's acknowledging a fundamental shift. These creators often maintain more direct connections with their audiences, better understand their needs, and frequently generate greater impact than mainstream outlets. So when someone suggests there's no point in maintaining support for these old institutions, they're not entirely wrong.

The attention span of steamed broccoli

Part of this institutional crisis in the media and information space is about attention – how it's earned, directed, and maintained. In a recent conversation with Chris Hayes about his new book "The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource" Ezra Klein hit upon something crucial: some of mainstream media has lost its sense of curiosity.

Traditional newsrooms often approach public interest topics with the same enthusiasm as a parent insisting their child eat broccoli. "This is important, you should care about it" – delivered with all the charm of a lecture on dental hygiene.

Unsurprisingly, this approach works about as well as convincing a 10-year-old that brussels sprouts are better than pizza. While editors wring their hands wondering why audiences won't engage with what they "should" care about, creators and podcasters are demonstrating what genuine curiosity looks like. They're willing to engage with a broader range of voices, approaching conversations with authentic interest rather than treating every interaction as an opportunity for gotcha journalism or debate club theatrics.

Perhaps most tellingly, while these creators occasionally wade into politics or feature politicians as guests, they aren't primarily political – which aligns perfectly with how most people actually consume content. They understand that their audiences are complex human beings with varied interests, not just voters to be educated or citizens to be informed.

The monarchists are over the firewall

Yet despite these shortcomings, some newsrooms are absolutely worth fighting for. There are people in independent media who are dead set on understanding and serving their audiences' needs to the best of their abilities. Many of these newsrooms – both print and digital, local and national – are already caught in the crossfire of this institutional retreat.

For our regular readers: I know I sound like a parrot on a broken record, but I still think what we need isn't the death of news organisations but convergence: traditional newsrooms must learn to be more authentic, relatable, and curious – to dismount from their high horses – while creators need to embrace principles of fairness and reliability. To me, the value of well-functioning media organizations remains undeniable. Good journalism is often collaborative, requiring resources and institutional backing that make it possible to hold power accountable in ways that individuals, working alone, simply cannot. Even creators often build their work on the foundation of reporting done by news organizations. For all these reasons, it would be catastrophic if the world gave up on them entirely.

There are encouraging signs that even the largest, most entrenched news organizations recognize the need for change. The New York Times' recent interview with Curtis Yarvin, the American monarchist, demonstrates this evolution. While identifying his ideas as fringe, they recognized his influence, especially on some of the most powerful people around the new administration – abandoning the outdated notion that you can maintain "firewalls" around certain people or ideas in an age where attention flows freely and audiences discover content through infinitely diverse channels.

CNN, perhaps the mainstream of the mainstream, seems to be coming to terms with this new reality as well. When CEO Mark Thomson announced plans to lay off 200 employees while hiring 100 new people, his words were telling:

"The changes we're announcing today are part of an ongoing response by this great news organization to profound and irreversible shifts in the way audiences in America and around the world consume news. (...) Our objective is a simple one: to shift CNN’s gravity towards the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, to secure CNN’s future as one of the world’s greatest news organizations. America and the world need high quality, fair-minded, trustworthy sources of news more than ever. "

Prepare for the worst

Adaptation alone won't solve the immediate funding crisis. Let's be clear: newsrooms should plan for US funding to be gone for good. This doesn't feel like a temporary suspension anymore. While I'll be overjoyed to be proven wrong, this is the moment for emergency budgets, revised forecasts, and planning for worst-case scenarios.

The competition for remaining funding sources will inevitably intensify. Yes, there are still opportunities: Civitates is about to issue their open call, significant EU grants around journalism and information integrity are active, and the EEA Grants are expected in the last quarter of 2025. While these won't come close to replacing what's been lost, they might provide crucial lifelines for some newsrooms.

If we ever talked about media funding for more than a minute, you probably know I have complicated feelings about some of the larger, Western-based intermediary organisations in the media and information space, but I think they absolutely have a role to play now. Consider an innovative local newsroom in southern Hungary – absolutely worthy of institutional support but lacking the resources or connections to advocate effectively at the European Commission for more funding, easier access, or bolder programs. This is precisely where initiatives like the Media Viability Manifesto can become crucial.

In fact, despite the doom and gloom, this week's Brussels event couldn't have happened at a better moment, DW’s timing was impeccable. Having the right crowd at the right moment in the room, acknowledging the gravity of the situation, and formulating concrete action plans feels like a crucial first step. There's no magic wand to wave this crisis away, but achieving common understanding about its implications is vital. We will certainly make a strong case at the Commission, in the Council and the Parliament and I know others are organising to do the same. (For a thoughtful counter argument about increased EU funding as a solution, I recommend Patrick Boehler's recent analysis. While we differ in our conclusions, his points are compelling and deserve serious consideration.)

Democracy steps on a piece of lego in darkness

We desperately need to get better at delivering and articulating value, and not in the abstract "Democracy Dies in Darkness" way. All the people we could convince with this argument are already on board, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that we need others in our corner too. The era of assuming journalism's inherent worth will speak for itself is over.

Not long ago, I was talking with a senior journalist at a major newsroom about what services people might actually pay for. When I brought up a wildly successful food-focused newsletter from the region, his immediate reaction was: "That's not journalism." But as we kept talking, he slowly began convincing himself that meaningful content isn't necessarily defined by topic or format but by how it serves and connects with its audience.

I'm not suggesting everyone pivot to covering the cultural significance of noodle soups, I’ll start something up on that eventually. What I am saying is this: in an age of limitless choices, having something unique that your audience genuinely wants – something that actually connects with their daily lives – isn't just important, it's everything. When newsrooms finally realign themselves to focus on their audience's real needs, something remarkable happens: suddenly, it becomes a lot easier to convince people that journalism is worth engaging with and even paying for. And once you've done that, convincing institutions that what we do matters – and sometimes needs external support – becomes a whole lot more straightforward.