Coalition – not consolidation – is the key to independent media’s survival

Media consolidation is nothing new. The late-2010s and early-pandemic years were a period of massive scale for the digital and legacy media industry, with many players filling out their portfolios in hopes of going public.

We all know what happened next: sold assets, slimmer portfolios, and a cycle of seemingly, never-ending layoffs. But against all odds, the race to consolidate has only picked up steam and is escalating more dramatically than ever before.

We’re seeing this play out with Warner Bros. Discovery’s potential merger/acquisition with either Netflix or Paramount — not to mention Paramount’s earlier merger with Skydance which officially closed this year — and it’s clear that there will only be three to five major players dominating the media landscape and in turn defining the information ecosystem.

This threatens editorial independence by further accelerating the shrinking media landscape — a development that is deeply troubling for our democracy.

Yes, this sounds all doom and gloom, but there is a way forward: more collaboration.

In order to survive, it’s time for independent publications, especially those with mission alignment and similar coverage areas, to see each other less as competitors and more as collaborators to build scale and engagement with shared audiences.

In practice, what could this look like?

Organizations such as News Revenue Hub, URL Media and the Institute for Nonprofit News are early examples of this coalition-first mindset that is needed. By encouraging resource-sharing and developing curated forums for collaboration, they are fostering more communication across their partner newsrooms. All of this is crucial to strengthen our muscles around transparency, that will in turn foster shared growth.

On a more modest scale, we should remove the stigma that republishing each other’s work dilutes our own. On the contrary, republishing trusted newsrooms’ work encourages audiences to explore fresh news sources. Additionally, republishing can be seen as a first step towards tapping other newsrooms for specific reporting expertise and can even lead to co-published pieces and investigations.

As journalists, we often operate in a scarcity mindset, wary of working with others who scoop us or whom we deem as competitors, but coalition also means transparency in other areas too. Most notably in learning about what worked (and didn’t work) when it comes to revenue models, diversification or organizational structure.

If independent media is truly to survive this latest wave of consolidation, we’ll need to work together as a coalition to weather the storm.