The journalism crisis and how to fix it. Why is an independent quality media vital for a healthy society? It can provide us with necessary information to make informed decisions. It can create space for public debate on important issues affecting our society. It can hold the powerful to account and prevent the abuse of power. However, producing this kind of news is extremely expensive. It costs both to gather information and to distribute it. News organisations need to pay for print and broadcasting and of course for professional journalists. Traditionally this was paid for through advertising and sales. Companies would pay to have their ads in the paper or on TV, while citizens would buy papers or subscribe to TV channels. The digital revolution and financial crisis shook the foundations of this model. Suddenly, much of the content became available online for free. Readers no longer paid with money but with their data. While news organisations made money from clicks that could be converted into ad revenue, meanwhile companies were forced to cut their budgets and advertising spend. In central and eastern Europe media has lost between 30 and 60% of their income. In America between 2008 and 2018, news paper revenues tumbled by 62%. For many of us, the front page or TV is no longer our main source of news. Instead we have smartphones and news comes via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Audiences are now fragmented with information of varying quality flowing from every direction. This is bad news for those who want a public sphere in which there is a common understanding of what is going on. It's also bad news for those traditional media organisations that can no longer rely on sales of copies or ad revenue. Many journalists have lost their jobs, and news outlets have closed down. The content itself is also changing. In a bid to increase audiences and ad revenue that comes with them, outlets focus on entertainment and clickbait. Some outlets are increasingly dependent on political and business entities. Fears competition in the news means that being first is often more valued than being right. Misinformation, propaganda, partigen news stories and tablizization all result in a growing lack of trust in the news itself. The crisis affects everyone. Some of us no longer have ready access to information we need to make decisions. We do not hear about corruption or how our taxes are being spent to appropriate it. In the absence of oversight, states become less efficient. The COVID-19 crisis in particular highlighted how a lack of trusted credible information could cost lives. Societies under threat without well-functioning news media. What hope is there for independent news media? Some innovative business models do exist, mostly based on money earned directly from the audience. The basic models are crowdfunding. Donations, membership, subscriptions. Crowdfunding and donations tend to be time limited, so are unlikely to be the most sustainable models. Organizations need a recurring source of income to survive. The membership model gives the audience different levels of access, as well as a sense of allegiance to a news outlet. If you have a sufficiently large audience, subscriptions may be the most sustainable model. Some news outlets now introduce what is called a paywall, meaning restraining access to certain content to those who do not pay. The bottom line is, independent quality media will not survive without the support of its audience. They need us. Here is some ways you can support independent media, the basic element of democratic societies.