As grant funding dries up, exiled newsrooms are finding hope in new revenue strategies

In autumn 2025, Meduza, the largest exiled Russian-language media outlet, published an alarm call to its audience: “Meduza is in trouble – we’re running out of funding. We’ve already cut salaries and laid off staff, but it’s not enough.”

Journalists called on more people to sign up as monthly supporters: without donations, Meduza cannot survive.

Having been declared illegal in Russia, Meduza could only rely on crowdfunding and support from international organisations. But the latter shrank significantly, particularly with the demise of USAID. In early 2025, the Trump administration froze billions of dollars in global aid projects, including around $270 million allocated to support “independent media and the free flow of information.”

This move shook the global nonprofit sector infrastructure and hit media organisations all over the world. USAID programmes had supported independent media in more than 30 countries.

Many of those independent media organisations had been declared illegal in their home countries, and this had destroyed their advertising business models, as local companies were not willing to take the risk of working with these outlets. Even receiving donations from people in their home countries became impossible in many cases, as that put both citizens and organisations at risk of persecution.

In these extreme circumstances, many outlets had to cut staff and reduce coverage, as well as face uncertainty around their longer-term viability. I spoke with exiled journalists from Russia, Myanmar, and Cuba about how they deal with funding cuts now and where they still see opportunities to raise money. 

A VPN as a new revenue stream

Paper is a local news outlet founded in St. Petersburg in 2012. Its team relocated to Georgia after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as the website was blocked by Russian authorities for its anti-war publications, and later labelled a "foreign agent." As a result, Paper lost much of its audience and commercial advertising contracts. For more than a decade, the outlet had combined journalism with a sustainable business model, earning money through advertising, marketing surveys, and popular science events — but in 2022, that model collapsed.

“At that moment, we put all our money into saving the team and not firing anyone,” said Maria Rzaeva, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Paper. The outlet also launched a reader donation campaign, but it was immediately clear that this money would not be enough to sustain the newsroom. 

At first, the main source of funding for Paper, as for many other newsrooms in exile, was grant support. But it was the website being blocked in Russia that brought the outlet a new — and ultimately its main — source of funding. 

Paper’s IT developers began thinking about how to restore access for their readers in Russia and came up with the idea of creating their own VPN service. “We didn’t intend to build some kind of large-scale service that many people would use. We just wanted to give our community a tool so they could access our blocked website,” Rzaeva said.

At first, the outlet offered access to the VPN service to a small circle of readers, and when it became clear that it worked, it launched a paid subscription for a wider audience — and discovered there was huge demand. In Russia, not only are independent media blocked, but also a large number of foreign websites and social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram. As a result, tools for bypassing restrictions are widely used. 

“The situation in Russia is not unique, but it’s quite specific,” Rzaeva said. “We needed a VPN that would not only guarantee data security but also function in a totalitarian state with extensive censorship. Since the government is constantly breaking the Internet, our service, like others on the market, has to adapt [to new conditions] all the time.”

Paper’s VPN service began to grow rapidly and generate profit. The outlet does not disclose exact figures, citing security concerns. But they said that this product now it’s their main revenue stream and has allowed Paper to increase its staff from 50 to 80 people.

“We initially had a structure well-suited for survival. We were never just an editorial team — we also organised events and produced advertising. Around 30% of our people work on content, and 70% are involved in completely different areas such as development, sales, design, and everything else,” said Maria Rzaeva, who stressed that journalism today can be sustained by creating products not directly related to journalism. 

While based in Russia, Paper earned revenue by organising popular science events and conducting marketing research for companies. After leaving the country, the newsroom followed a similar path: the team launched a local city outlet in Georgia — Paper Kartuli — and also opened a co-working space to host events. Among its plans is the launch of a new digital product providing guidance for immigrants.

According to Paper’s management, around 70% of the company’s turnover now comes from commercial revenue, while up to 30% comes from grants. The company expects to achieve full financial sustainability within two to three years.

Other Russian independent newsrooms and exiled outlets are following a similar approach. Small outlets such as Astra and To Be Continued have also launched their own VPN services. In addition to the now familiar sales of merchandise and tickets for offline interviews and lectures, newsrooms are also turning to book publishing. Independent media such as Meduza and Echo have established their own publishing houses.

A paid subscription to financial data on Cuba 

Established over a decade ago, the Cuban independent news outlet El Toque has operated from exile since 2019. The team of 20 people is dispersed across nine countries, including Spain and the United States. 

Initially, El Toque relied entirely on American and European grants, steadily decreasing this dependency to 80% of its budget. The remaining 20% came from advertising revenue and commercial projects. One of these projects is a content agency offering external clients services such as web development, graphic design, news monitoring, and social media management.

By the beginning of 2025, El Toque had reached relative sustainability and increased its team to 32 people. But then the newsroom faced an abrupt reduction in its funding as the Trump administration stopped many of the grant programmes they relied on. 

“We did not receive support from USAID. But we got money from other branches of the US government — for example, the US Embassy in Havana, the Department of State itself, and the National Endowment for Democracy,” said editor-in-chief José Jasán Nieves Cárdenas. In 2024, El Toque’s budget was $970,000, 80% of which came from grants, with half coming from US sources. Losing this support forced the newsroom to lay off 50% of its staff.

This situation led the outlet to completely rethink its approach to funding and to focus more on other sources of income, such as advertising, sponsorships, and the development of specific products. 

“Since then, every Monday at our editorial meeting, we also talk about money — how much we earned last week on different platforms, and how we can optimise our content and formats to make better use of monetisation strategies across those platforms,” Nieves said.

The management of El Toque decided to make better use of the resources it already had — its expertise and its audience. The outlet has long specialised in financial information, publishing an exchange rate tracker open to all users. Building on this, the team decided to develop a separate product — a paid subscription to financial information on Cuba, aimed at businesspeople and foreign investors.

“We are getting a huge amount of data we weren’t using in these publications,” said Nieves. “So we are transforming all that data into a package of information for businesspeople, giving them early access to critical insights about Cuba’s finances so they can make better-informed decisions.” The newsroom plans to offer several payment options, and the team is currently testing the product.

Regarding its audience, the newsroom decided to launch another product — an outlet for the diaspora. In various countries, particularly the United States and Spain, there is a large Cuban community which needs information about integration, migration rules, local laws, and civic engagement with different institutions. 

The team believes that this product could open access to new funding sources, such as advertising or sponsorships from local businesses. Moreover, the diaspora has far greater opportunities to donate compared with those living in Cuba.

Nieves’ advice to other exiled media outlets is to review their resources and identify any pain points of their audiences to respond to their needs.

Covering Myanmar from afar

Founded more than a decade ago, Frontier Myanmar now operates from exile in Southeast Asia. The outlet delivers in-depth reporting and analysis on the country, where the military junta seized power in a coup in 2021. Frontier Myanmar initially relied on advertising revenue, but this model proved unsustainable, especially after the coup, when independent media effectively became illegal and the country’s economy collapsed.

Across Southeast Asia, Burmese outlets have been hit the hardest by the cut-off of US aid. Myanmar’s Independent Press Council estimates that around 200 journalists in exile have felt a “sudden impact” from Trump’s decision. Frontier Myanmar had relied heavily on grants and, like many other exiled media organisations, was severely affected by the global non-profit crisis.

“It will lead to funding shortfalls in the coming months. The situation is quite serious, but we are hoping for the best scenario and working towards it. We cannot cut costs further, as we are already operating on a skeleton format,” said editor-in-chief Thu Thu Aung, alumna of the Reuters Institute’s fellowship programme. 

To attract new funds, the outlet plans to strengthen its membership programme, launched in 2020, the first of its kind in Myanmar’s media industry. Unlike a paywall, the current programme does not restrict access to the main publications but offers members exclusive content. 

Benefits include access to English-language articles, curated newsletters, and monthly events. Packages priced at $120, $225, or $350per year were developed after focus groups and one-on-one meetings with readers to reflect their needs.

“As a member, you don’t just receive information – you become part of a community. Memberships support our independent, unbiased reporting that keeps the world informed about the crisis in Myanmar,” explained Aung. “In return, members gain exclusive insights and analysis on key events shaping the country’s future, as well as invitations to special discussions, opportunities to connect with journalists and experts, and a chance to help shape Frontier’s work through their input.”

Today, Frontier Myanmar has around 15,000 members who contribute about one-third of its budget. The rest previously came from grants. To address the reduction in financial aid, the team is reinforcing its membership programme by adding more multimedia elements to the product and expanding events. For instance, upcoming plans include a photo exhibition. 

Frontier is also exploring additional funding options, recognising that while memberships can grow, they are unlikely to cover all operating costs.

“This is a critical moment. We need both member support and donor support to survive,” Aung said.

The situation for independent media is not getting any easier, and the grant crisis of 2025 has shown just how vulnerable journalists are, especially those working in exile. It’s not enough for them to cover events. They also have to think about their own safety, face political persecution, and face the end of many public and private grants. 

But many of these newsrooms are developing innovative ideas to replace some of this lost funding and even developing news products aimed at different audiences in the diaspora or elsewhere. 

“The grant environment is definitely dying,” said Nieves, from El Toque. “It’s no longer possible to return to the time when there were plenty of resources for independent journalism. We need to pivot from the grant-based model towards a self-sustaining business.”