The starting point: ownership as the product

The Guardian was founded just over 200 years ago as The Manchester Guardian, a local UK paper. It’s now the fifth most visited news site in the world, pulling in roughly a billion page views a month. Its US team is small, about six people, working alongside a much larger marketing and reader revenue team of around 90 people at the London HQ.

The organization’s value proposition, as Harkin frames it, comes down to three words: global, independent, free. The independence part is structural, not just marketing language. The Guardian has no billionaire owner. It’s owned by the Scott Trust, established 90 years ago with a single purpose: ensure The Guardian can keep publishing in perpetuity. The Trust isn’t built to generate returns for shareholders. It exists to keep funding journalism.

That structure becomes the actual product sold to readers, not just backstory.

Ownership isn’t just a backstory

In the lead-up to the 2024 US election, both The Washington Post and the LA Times pulled their presidential endorsements, reportedly at the direction of their billionaire owners. Inside The Guardian, an editor suggested sending readers a simple message: we published our endorsement, and we always will, because no billionaire can tell us not to.

That email went out to The Guardian’s list. It generated two million dollars.

Harkin described it as one of those moments where you assume your analytics dashboard is broken, because the spike looks impossible for a normal day. What it confirmed for her team was that US readers are far more media-literate about ownership structures than publishers often give them credit for. People understood exactly what billionaire ownership can do to editorial decisions, because they’d just watched it happen at two major outlets, and they responded to a publication that structurally couldn’t be pressured the same way.

What people say when you ask them why they paid

The Guardian surveys readers immediately after they support the organization, while the motivation is still fresh. The consistent, top-ranked answers: protect the free press, protect editorial independence, protect the journalism itself. Further down the list, at roughly position six, is a motivation specific to The Guardian’s model: keeping the journalism free and open for everyone, not paywalled.

Further down still, in positions eleven through fourteen, is a newer and growing motivation: dissatisfaction with other media sources. Harkin ties this directly to visible cases of ownership interference, citing Jeff Bezos later restricting which topics The Washington Post’s opinion pages were authorized to cover. Readers notice, and it shows up in what they tell you when they give.

How this research becomes the actual email copy

The endorsement email wasn’t written as an abstract mission statement. It was built, deliberately, around the specific motivations the research had already surfaced, worded so it read as natural rather than like a fundraising checklist:

• Dissatisfied with other media: named exactly what The Washington Post and LA Times did, and what The Guardian did instead
• Wants editorial independence protected: explained the Scott Trust ownership model in plain terms
• Wants work that holds power to account: made clear that only the editor-in-chief, never a business owner, decides what gets published
• Wants to protect the free press: the direct ask

Harkin’s point in walking through this line by line: the research isn’t a slide you present once internally and then forget. It’s the literal structure of the copy you send.

The revenue mechanics underneath it

Readers who want to support The Guardian financially see three recurring options: a five-dollar monthly contribution, a fifteen-dollar tier called Supporter Plus that comes with added benefits, and a higher Digital Plus tier with more on top. There’s also a one-time support option and a recently launched student discount.

Alongside the main organization sits theguardian.org, a registered nonprofit. Harkin pointed to US philanthropic culture, Americans give roughly half a trillion dollars a year to causes, ranging from small one-off donations to major gifts, as a real reason this structure matters specifically in the US market, even though The Guardian itself isn’t a nonprofit. The motivations that drive nonprofit giving (mission alignment, wanting to sustain something you believe should exist) map closely onto why people choose to pay The Guardian.

The Guardian currently has 1.4 million digital subscribers. The UK has the largest paid supporter base, but North America, US and Canada combined, is the fastest-growing region, now at 14% of the base.

The takeaway

Her closing point applies well beyond publications without a paywall: figure out the full range of motivations and emotional connections your audience has with your organization, not just the functional value proposition of “you get access to the app.” Then keep telling that story, deliberately and repeatedly, across your marketing rather than assuming people already know it.

For The Guardian, that story is ownership. For another publication, it might be something else entirely, a specific beat, a founding mission, a community it serves. The method Harkin described, survey people right after they convert while the reason is still fresh, then build your actual marketing copy around what they tell you, works regardless of what that story turns out to be.

Membership Growth Manager, Yana Zhuryk,  spoke at Audiencers’ Festival in Hamburg to share some of the relationship-building strategies that the Kyiv Independent uses to build a loyal, high-growth membership community.

You can access Yana’s full presentation at the bottom of this article.

> The Kyiv Independent launched in November 2021, three months before Russia's full-scale invasion, and now has 27,000 paying members and 3 million monthly readers, with monthly churn at 1.64%

> They tested a polished promotional acquisition email against a personal one written by a team member. The personal version drove three times the conversions

> Membership is positioned as keeping journalism free for everyone rather than unlocking a paywall. Members submit questions the newsroom answers in articles, and the team replies to member emails within 24 hours

> Geotargeted appeals turn a global audience into neighbourhoods. One campaign challenged Swedish readers to overtake Danish ones as top per-capita supporters, and paying members can add a pin to a public map

> As membership growth manager Yana Zhuryk puts it: "Retention is not only about content. It is about responsiveness and presence"

1. Humanizing the newsroom

Instead of hiding behind a corporate brand, the Kyiv Independent puts its journalists at the center of its marketing. They understand that in an era of disinformation, trust is built between people, not institutions.

The “Authenticity Wins” email strategy: In late 2025, the team tested two types of acquisition emails. A polished, promotional version was pitted against a personal, storytelling email written by a team member. The personal version drove 3x more conversions and saw significantly higher open and click-through rates.

Visible experts: Field reporters like Francis Farrell are the “faces” of the brand, appearing in trench-side YouTube videos and personal newsletters that provide a “behind the scenes” look at reporting under fire.

2. Radical transparency and participation

The Kyiv Independent invites its members into the newsroom’s journey, making them feel like stakeholders in the mission of independent journalism.

Participatory content: Through their “Our readers’ questions” series, members can submit questions that the editorial team then answers in dedicated articles.

A “No-Paywall” community mission: They position membership not as a key to a locked door, but as a way to keep information free for everyone. This value-aligned positioning resonates deeply with their core audience. However, the team doesn’t shy away from campaigns to acquire new members

Direct interaction: The team maintains a Discord community for real-time engagement and commits to answering member emails within 24 hours.

3. Hyper-local geotargeting

Rather than a one-size-fits-all global appeal, they use geotargeted campaigns to create a “neighborhood” feel within their global audience.

Customized appeals: They create country-specific CTAs, such as challenging Swedes to overtake Danes as the top per-capita supporters.

Some of these are built in the Poool Dashboard and targeted based on the user’s location and level of engagement.

Interactive community maps: Paying members can add a pin to a digital map, visually demonstrating the global scale of the collective effort.

Relationships at the heart of the business model

The success of the Kyiv Independent offers a powerful blueprint for the future of sustainable publishing. By achieving a 25,000-member milestone by the end of 2025, they proved that even in a climate of “news fatigue,” audiences will show up for a brand that shows up for them. Their journey suggests that the most valuable metric isn’t just how many people read a story, but how many feel a personal stake in the newsroom’s survival. 

As Yana notes: “Retention is not only about content. It is about responsiveness and presence”. For publishers looking to thrive in 2026 and beyond, the lesson is clear: building a loyal community isn’t a marketing side-project, it’s the foundation of the business itself.

Find Yana’s slides (39-49), part of the “Community-building” panel, from our Hamburg Festival here:

To share our insights beyond the Festival, here are eight common misconceptions about donations, debunked.

Misconception #1: “There’s no framework, nor advantage to a donation model.”

This is, of course, false. While donations have long been seen as a source of revenue that only works in countries with a strong philanthropic culture, this is no longer true today, and the French legal framework has contributed greatly to this change.

Since 2015, the “Charb amendment,” a provision adopted after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, has allowed political and general news media companies to receive tax-exempt donations through associations dedicated to press pluralism. In concrete terms, individuals can deduct 66% of their donation (up to a limit of 20% of taxable income); the organizations Presse & Pluralisme and J’aime l’info are responsible for collecting and tracking donations. This is a strong argument that puts France in an advantageous position compared to its European counterparts.

Misconception #2: “In France, donations are limited.”

This is no longer the case. As documented by La Revue des médias de l’INA, the J’aime l’info platform raised more than €7 million in 2024, compared to €5.1 million in 2023 and €1.8 million in 2020, with a trajectory that could exceed €10 million in 2025 or 2026.

In practice, donations can finance an entire model: for example, Reporterre, a pioneering media outlet in France, claims to be 98% donation-funded in 2024, up 30%. As detailed in their impact report, this represents €3.5 million, the result of donations from 45,821 donors, with 2 million unique visitors to its website and more than 180,000 subscribers to its newsletters. Another example is Vert, a new environmental media outlet launched in 2020, which announced that 90% of its revenue in 2024 would be funded by donations, with more than 12,000 financial supporters, more than 120,000 newsletter subscribers, and 340,000 followers on Instagram.

And they aren’t alone: on the investigative side, StreetPress, a media outlet specializing in the far right, reports 36% of its revenue coming from donations in 2023 and 77% growth in 2024. Disclose is approaching 60%, while Brittany-based Splann! has reached 75%.

Misconception #3: “Only activists are interested in donation models.”

The Guardian has been building its counterexample for the past decade. Without restricting access to its content, the publication is based on a clear vision: “Open to all, funded by many, beholden to no one.” The audience that supports it is not a self-perpetuating circle of activists, but a broad group of readers who defend the common good because they see its value. The nuance is essential: support does not come from a sense of belonging to a particular camp, but from a promise of public interest and a contract of trust.

The motivations put forward are consistent: protecting press freedom, preserving editorial independence, supporting investigation, recognizing the reliability and quality of the work, and holding the powerful to account.

The results speak for themselves: in ten years, revenue from digital readers has grown from around £5 million to £107 million. Now, 72% of the publication’s total revenue comes from digital sources (readers, advertisers, and other sources)—proof that a civic contract can become an economic pillar.

The base of regular supporters has reached approximately 1.3 million people, including more than 182,000 in Europe, with growth of around 20% over one year.

> Read about The Guardian’s reader revenue growth and proposition development

Misconception #4: “Donations cannibalize subscriptions.”

La Croix proves the opposite. The daily newspaper has opened a tax-exempt donation channel via Presse & Pluralisme, alongside its subscription offer.

• Subscriptions sell a service—convenience, apps, frictionless reading.
• Donations fund a mission—pluralism, solidarity formats, tool improvements, investigations.

At La Croix, 90% of donors are also subscribers: donations do not cancel out subscriptions, they add to them. Presented in this way, coexistence becomes natural and editorial balance clearer.

Since 2022, the Catholic daily newspaper has internalized fundraising and reworked its campaigns (targeting, media, messages). The model is gaining momentum and becoming established with a philanthropic approach, leading to the creation of a Philanthropy Manager position in 2024.

As a result, donations now account for 2% of revenue, with around 3,400 donors, most of whom give less than €500.

Misconception #5: “Donations only concern older audiences.”

This is changing thanks to the internet. While the median age of donors in France is 62, a growing number of young people aged 15 to 35 are now contributing financially to the media. Supporting content is part of their habits: online tips, support subscriptions, live fundraising. In other words, the gesture of “I support because it has social value” already exists; the media are getting better and better at activating it.

StreetPress, a free-access investigative media outlet celebrating its fifteenth anniversary, now derives more than a third of its revenue from donations. In its best months, its content reaches around six million people on social media and through newsletters, and nearly three-quarters of this audience is under 35. This requires campaigns to be designed differently: embodying faces and stories, linking donations to a specific format or project, and showing the impact in concrete terms.

The result? After an initial campaign in 2021 that raised €75,000 to launch a newsletter dedicated to the far right, followed by €185,000 in 2023 to develop a collaborative platform on the same subject, StreetPress had gathered more than 6,000 regular donors within a club by 2025.

Misconception #6: “It’s just another source of funding.”

That would be a lot, but if donations work, it’s not just about money. It requires a clear editorial model, a coherent marketing strategy, and rigorous governance.

Vert is proof of this. The media outlet has turned donations into a clear editorial contract, funding open-access environmental journalism, and has translated this into a controlled conversion and loyalty process. The inserts are easy to understand, recurring donations are offered by default, and tax exemptions are explained without jargon. Conversion and follow-up messages are tailored to profiles and synchronized with current events. The relationship is maintained over time through concrete expressions of gratitude, behind-the-scenes insights, and impact reports.

This rigor pays off. In 2024, Vert finances 90% of its budget through donations, with more than 12,000 supporters. On the governance side, transparency is not just for show: reports are public and objectives are clearly stated. In other words, at Vert, donations do not simply add to the revenue stream: they guide the way we produce, explain, and report.

Misconception #7: “Donations are only small amounts.”

Editorial philanthropy exists, and it mainly finances time, which is the lifeblood of production.

Kometa, a media outlet dedicated to literary journalism, photo essays, and debates, is a prime example of this: beyond the fundraising that enabled the media outlet to launch in 2023, raising €760,000 from six investors, grants of €12,000 finance a year of work by authors in difficult fields, with a net cost to the patron of around €4,000 after tax relief. The mechanism is straightforward: a clear offer, symbolic rewards, follow-up, and often a round-table approach where one donor leads to others. It is therefore not just a matter of scattered micro-contributions, but also of major donations that can structure ambitious projects.

Result: in less than two years, the company collected €300,000 in donations, including individual donations, support from foundations, and a crowdfunding campaign.

Transparency note: Médianes, the studio, supported Kometa in its fundraising campaign in 2023.

Misconception #8: “Donations are a one-time thing.”

Recurring donations are becoming commonplace on both sides of the Channel, and even across the Atlantic. At Vert, the club requires a monthly donation for membership; most of its budget now comes from these recurring donations, which give the editorial team visibility.

At The Guardian, transforming one-off donators into regular supporters has become a discipline – “We thank donors, we explain, we give them a behind-the-scenes look, we follow up with substantive reasons, and we build a relationship.” This shift changes everything: cash flow is smoothed out, editorial planning becomes possible, and independence is better protected than it would be with sporadic donations.

Now what?

These cases prove it: donations work when you honestly say what they fund, when you show what they change, and when you agree to be accountable for them. They don’t replace subscriptions, they don’t conflict with advertising: they balance the whole by making it more readable. Guardian, La Croix, Vert, StreetPress, Kometa: they all tell the same story—a contract of trust forged with an audience that chooses to support a common good.

One requirement remains: consistency over time. A clear mission, genuine transparency, regular recurrence, and regular proof of public utility. This is the price that must be paid for donations to definitively move from prejudice to model.

Would you like to learn more about Médianes’ expertise in fundraising campaigns? Visit our website.

Keeping membership acquisition high

“We’ve come to the conclusion that, at least in our case, the engine slows every 6 months, and something new or different is needed to reignite conversion rates.

Support pushes are placed around the website using Poool Engage, often targeted to different audiences, such as the banner for US readers above. Visibility of their membership product is high thanks to the large homepage banners, smaller banners on articles, mid- and end-of-article modules and button in the top menu.

“In spring 2022, we were at around 6,000 members. We ran a number of big  campaigns and grew in less than a year to 10,000 members. That was when we built our own system to move away from Patreon, allowing us to bring membership to our own website and reintroduce one-time donations . 

We also stopped relying on GoFundMe as a main source of donations – it was perfect for getting off the ground but we knew that we needed to build a centralized solution that would combine both membership and donations. We needed access to first-party data and more control over the infrastructure.

After growth plateaued again, we started doing bigger campaigns around our anniversary with a public counter on new members and a shared target. The banners for this campaign last year had significantly higher click-through rate and we went beyond the target, gaining over 1600 new members in a month.

Today, in January 2025, we’re at 14,500 members. 

We also have great retention rates – our LTV is much longer than a year and our average churn rate in 2024 is at 1.8%.“

The key to all of the above, and foundation of their strategy: a strong mission, trust and emotional connection

“We have a unique, niche proposition – for English speakers to understand what’s happening in Ukraine, from people on-the-ground – and a mission that has an emotional appeal, making readers value our journalism. 

Of course, member benefits are useful and help with retention, but they’re not the primary reason why someone supports us. It’s the overall brand trust, emotional connection, belief in independent journalism. I think this is maybe why we have such interest from American readers, where trust in the media is very low.”

Putting this mission into membership

“We don’t shy away from telling people that we need support, and that membership allows us to exist and grow. We don’t go into desperate mode, this is probably a one-time thing so we’ll save it for a rainy day! 

When we work on new banners or new messaging we try to find a balance between showing readers the unique context of running a newsroom during the war and not sounding too desperate or undermining. For example, we would share with our readers behind the scenes of living in Kyiv during war or how it feels when Russia launches ICBM at your country but we would never shame our readers into asking for support or say that we would close shop if they won’t support us. We want to convey real emotions but don’t want to be tone deaf or “go nuclear” (pun intended) in our messaging. 

This translates into our email marketing too, which is more of a letter, an editorial piece in itself – it has a lot of value whilst also asking for support. 

For instance, we might explain what an air siren is, or how people from the office are told to react if we hear one. We explain, but also share how it impacts people’s lives.”

Breaking through the trust wall

“Getting a certain Joe from let’s say Texas to read a young publication in Ukraine rather than simply get information from Fox News isn’t easy – we need a lot of validation to build trust and go beyond that to convince a reader that we are a high-quality source of objective news . It’s this mission-led, impactful, human journalism that does this. 

We don’t shy away from going to conferences, accepting interviews, and sharing our story – our editor-in-chief was even the first female Ukrainian to appear on the cover of Time!… all this, alongside all the classic distribution, builds up trust.”

Building a community that’s dispersed around the world

“It’s tough mixing an online and offline community, with members in so many different countries. So we just launched this new community map. 

As a member, you can place yourself on the map! It means members actually see themselves as part of the community. 

We also get our journalists involved in the community, regularly being updated on what’s happening by the community manager, we talk to people on discord, plus user research and non-Ukrainians being represented within the company. We actually have 35 foreigners in the team, including Brits, Americans, Japanese, an Australian…

We run community events, in-person and online, we went on a road show with our war crime investigation documentaries, including in the US to meet members along the way. So we make sure to connect in real life whenever possible. Our goal for this year is to help fellow members connect, especially those within the same city. 

Some even come and visit us in the office in Ukraine! We have a top-tier member called Brad who has visited a few times and always brings food to the office! He’s met the team and built that all-important relationship that’s essential for membership.”

Thanks so much Zakhar for the interview, and congratulations to the team at The Kyiv Independent for this important, and very impressive, work.

The Guardian report card: 
1990s = 8th biggest UK paper
2024 = 350m site visits, #7 global news site
Free & open model = no paywall
£88m in digital reader revenues in 23/24
57% digital reader revenues = outside of UK
Guardian Support = voluntary payment 
(includes legacy products: membership, subscriptions and contributions)

Introducing a key acquisitions channel

Traditionally reserved for advertising, the end of an article is perhaps the most lucrative real estate, and a place that The Guardian has really made their own, making it deeply complementary to the journalism.

Today, the famous Guardian ‘Epic’ is their primary acquisition channel.

Running over 1500 A/B test variants in the last few years, the team have made the most of their high traffic, and free, open model to experiment.

Optimizing message copy

‘Supporter motivations’ are a critical building block for driving acquisition and creating a two-way dialogue with readers and supporters. These are largely global, product agnostic, and stable over time.  

1. Editorial independence  
2. Protect the free press  
3. Investigative journalism  
4. Trustworthy, factual, high quality  
5. Holds power to account  
6. Open for all, no paywall  
7. International perspective 
8. Financial challenges in media  
9. Better understand world events  
10. It’s only fair to pay

And translate these motivations into impactful copy:

Whilst A/B testing small aspects of the copy takes time, it really isolates the learning and helps the team better understand where readers see value.

Leaning into news cycles, and speaking to events:

Testing different ways to speak to the news:

Having fun along the way with some tongue and cheek:

Being sure to carry wins across:

And learning from failures:

Optimizing everything else

The famous Guardian article count: a fitbit for news

And testing integrating the payment flow directly into the ask:

• Optimize for recurring revenues via choice
• Push people where you want them to go
• Suggested price points anchor people in but give options for every price point

Whilst continuing to listen to readers: over half of one-time contributors said they were willing to be reminded to give again in the future, under certain conditions. 

Piecing it all together

It’s of course note been a straight trajectory, and there’s always room for development, but this work has paid off in building a world renowned support model.

It’s also been fundamental in allowing them to scale growth alongside their global reach, as well as reshape the existing choice architecture with 3 clearly defined levels of support:

£4 /month – Support

“Our most popular route to support – providing a low barrier to entry and creating a large base of paying readers. They get little in return (Supporter Newsletter) but offer a commercial opportunity to upsell.”

Supporter+ – Subscribe

“Our hero product, which will be maintained at a fixed price point. This will be the best way for readers to support us, it gives Supporters full access to our suite of digital products.”

Supporter Premium – Subscribe

“The premium experience of the Guardian, if Supporter+ gains full digital access, the premium experience offers the same but with as little friction as possible and with the option of bundling with print products.”

So, they shifted from a fundraising mindset to a more traditional subscription….but maintaining the option to give as and when a reader wishes to.

Leaning into the feedback, they’ve clarified the choice and highlighted the value that you’ll get back in exchange for this payment whilst still maintaining the ‘support’ option. It’s about balancing support language, getting people to the point of acquisition, but also getting the most value out of them with flexible options.

And establishing premium experiences as something to pay for.

Knowing that app readers are highly engaged, The Guardian team recently developed the premium Feast app, a cooking companion, and the news app where they introduced the first paywall style format last year. App users can access 20 articles for free before being asked to subscribe.

Thank you so much to Jim and Julia for sharing their insights!

Q: Hi Florence! La Presse is a free media, but also asks its readers to “subscribe” to read online. Can you explain what La Presse’s revenue model is?   

A: La Presse is a 100% free model. However, we have what we call an “authentication readerwall”. We ask desktop users to create an account to read more than 3 stories online a month. 80% of articles read on line are read in an authenticated manner. We had a very rapid conversion rate when we implemented this wall. We do not plan, at this point, to be more aggressive on our platforms. 

Q: What’s the mindset behind this “authentication readerwall”? 

A: Creating reader accounts helps us recognize readers, personalize advertising, and personalize our relationship with our donors. The readerwall allows us to obtain data: it also allows us to better know our audience if we want to personalize our content or identify potential donors. We can also personalize our solicitation. The majority of our philanthropy is based on data segmentation: we do a personalized campaign, based on the donation, and what type of readers our donors are. 

Q: I looked into your annual report. Philanthropy generates revenue, but most of your revenue still comes from advertising.

A: Indeed, but we don’t want to be dependent on a single source of income – advertising or donation. Diversifying revenue ensures that we don’t have only one source of income. The vast majority of our advertising revenues come from our iPad app. The reason is simple: the ads are much more engaging, interactive, and playful. Our readers also have exceptional time spent in the iPad app, so it is attractive for advertisers. 

Q: Let’s talk about time spent. I’ll throw in some numbers: every day, 240,000 readers open the tablet app and spend an average of 40 minutes reading it. This is very high, especially if we compare it with the time spent on a mobile app. 

A: Absolutely. Engagement makes all the difference even for our business model. The vast majority of our advertising revenues come from our iPad app. The reason is simple: the ads are much more engaging, interactive, and playful. Our iPad app is still our most important platform because the level of engagement is exceptional. 

Q: Who is your audience on La Presse+, the tablet app?

A: It’s a mix of former print subscribers who migrated to the tablet: those readers will read every section in the app. They are highly engaged and they also are mainly our donors. Those readers are very valuable. In the iPad app, we put a lot of effort into graphics and visuals. There is a playful aspect, in the content and in the ads. It is not just text. 

Q: Do you plan on replicating this very high time spent on your other platforms? 

A: Absolutely. We want to work on engagement in 2024 to see if we can bring La Presse+’s success to our other platforms, desktop and mobile. We know these are short sessions. That raises many questions, including: is there a loyalty issue for the brand?

Q: La Presse launched several newsletters and now notifies its users of all kinds of news. Can you tell me more about the rationale behind those changes?

A: We realized that people used to go to news media to get informed in the past. But now, they expect us to come to them. It forced us to ask ourselves, how are we going to reach them? For us, it has been notifications and newsletters, which are expanding. We have over 950,000 subscribers to our newsletters, and it works well. It’s a way to reach out to readers to bring them back to us.

Q: Finally, the question of advertising revenue earned by Meta, Google, is also at the heart of many discussions in Canada about the future of local media. How do you stand out, what revenue growth (or decline) do you anticipate? 

A: Our goal has always been for people to come directly to our platforms. When Meta banned news links from its platforms in Canada, we saw a decrease on our site, but it wasn’t drastic – and we found our users back on our platforms after a few months. In terms of revenue, we also ensured that we developed data tools to “compete” with US tech giants. But we can offer advertisers products based on ethically collected data, and that’s why our advertising revenue has increased. We recently launched a new platform; the goal was not to compete with web giants but to offer small businesses the possibility to buy advertising in La Presse. 

Q: So what’s next for La Presse? 

A: Since we are in good health, we want to develop and invest in journalism in Quebec. We want to expand our coverage in health. We also plan to have an office in Washington DC for the upcoming elections. The other thing we talk a lot about is getting closer to our readers. We talked about engagement, and how we at La Presse can make sure to get closer and respond in content to their needs.

This interview has been translated from French to English and edited for clarity. Author used AI tools for copyediting (Grammarly).