News for young people by young people: How this new Spanish outlet aims to reach an elusive audience

Young people are the elusive audience many news outlets are vying for. They are moving away from traditional news brands and towards news influencers producing podcasts and short-form video. A new generation of news startups in Southern Europe is trying to change this, with a more informal tone and a focus on explainers and online formats. 

Italian news publisher Chora Media is focusing on podcasts but also on social media content through Will Media, a startup it bought in 2022. French news influencer Hugo Travers, known online as Hugo Décrypte, has millions of followers on YouTube and TikTok, with an average audience age of 27, Hugo’s own age. Spanish sports news site Relevo has been publishing ground-breaking scoops with a focus on women and Gen-Z audiences. 

Now, a new Spanish outlet has entered the chat. Its name is Watif, and it began publishing in October as a news brand focused on Substack-based newsletters and video podcasts. It was founded by Emilio Doménech, a popular journalist and newsletter writer in Spain with over 150,000 followers on X. As Domenéch wrote in an end-of-year post in December, Watif’s goal is to engage young Spaniards who have lost their attention span amid constant competition between algorithms, push notifications and all kinds of apps. 

Named after the English phrase ‘What if?’ spelt in a Spanish manner, this new outlet aims for a sparser publication schedule than most news organisations, with two newsletters and one video-podcast episode per week, focusing on one ‘big story’ on Tuesday and opinion and culture on Friday. 

I spoke to Watif cofounder Mar Manrique, a young journalist who has published her own newsletter about journalism and media since 2021 and who’s been involved in the new project from the ideation phase in December 2023. We spoke about how Watif aims to be different from other media outlets in Spain and how it plans to appeal to young people.

Q. How did you come up with the name?

A. Our co-founder Emilio also comes from a background in newsletters. He was writing La Wikly which is also an English word spelt like a Spanish one. We wanted to continue with that twist, like a wink to the audience he already had. 

But there’s another reason. When we started talking about this project, I had my own job and he had his. We were always talking about it on WhatsApp, coming up with ideas. And one day, he was on the train, I was coming back home from the gym, and we were talking about the focus that we wanted to have and the topics that we could cover. We were talking about [US journalist] Cleo Abram. She used to be in the Vox video team, and she is now a YouTuber who covers the future of technology with an optimistic spin. We wanted to do something similar to her. 

Abram sometimes frames her videos like: ‘What if this happens’? So we were ping-ponging ideas with the ‘What if?’ like, ‘What if Netflix starts doing something with artificial intelligence in their series?’ We wanted to start all our coverage with that ‘What if’ framing. It's something that came up in one WhatsApp conversation among a million. It was very organic.

Q. Were you inspired by other projects? 

A. Both of us came from our own previous projects, which was super helpful. In Spain, we have El Orden Mundial, which covers geopolitics and is also produced by a young team. That was an inspiration for us. But we were mostly inspired by YouTubers and new media in the United States because they’re always ahead of what's happening in Spain. Cleo Abram was a great example.

We were also inspired by 404 Media. They are just a team of four as we are, and they also cover technology. It's very niche, but we saw their articles and we found them interesting. We were also inspired by the fact they could survive with a subscription base. In Spain, it's not as common to have that kind of solid subscription base. But El Orden Mundial has 5,000 paid subscribers if I'm not mistaken, and that's really good. They’ve been working for around eight years, so it's not that long to be achieving that number.

Q. Did your own newsletter on media trends inform what you wanted to do with Watif?

A. Maybe. But what I think helped us a lot was trying to understand what the audience wants. I always think of my friend who is not interested in media, who works in the medical or the scientific field. What is that person going to read? What's interesting about Watif is that we always try to put ourselves in the user's shoes. I'm not going to write something I wouldn't read. I'm not going to use technical terms. 

The user perspective is very super helpful, not only in the coverage of the topics, but also in choosing the formats: video and podcasts are something that the young audiences like, and they are our target audience. Newsletters are a new format and we understand that young people in their 20s maybe don't read them. But we try to cover all the bases. People are developing new consumer habits.

Q. You also host events. How do you plan them?

A. We recently held one in a cinema in Madrid, so we gave away free popcorn and beers. We understand that creating that community is super important: being together, gathering all these people who come from different backgrounds, paid subscribers but also free subscribers or friends or family or people who are in the media. 

That was the third event that we held, and it's great to see the same faces coming back, so they like what we are doing. Emilio, with his previous project, had a discord channel where people were chatting about elections and political events that happened in the United States. There was also a layer of gamification. If you were interacting a lot, you could be like the ‘President of the United States’ on the channel. People were very eager to talk there. We wanted to use that online experience and move it to real life.

Q. How many people are coming to your events?

A. Right now, around 80 people. On 12 December, we had one in Barcelona, which I was super excited about because it's my home town.

We also have a WhatsApp community for our Watif paid subscribers. It’s not just a broadcast channel. Our audience can message us back. We can talk about the events that we are hosting. One time Emilio was trying a panettone he bought, and he was like, ‘This is delicious.’ So it can be informative, you can comment something like, ‘I'm super surprised about what happened today’. And then we can also establish more personal relationships.

Q. How do you divide responsibilities between your team of four? Do you work with external contributors?

A. Emilio is the founder, so he takes care of the financial aspect of the company. I'm the product director, so I control everything regarding the formats, like our newsletters, podcasts and social media. It's having that bird’s eye perspective to understand everything and to be sure that everything is cohesive. I'm always repeating that. 

Bosco Bárcena is the content director and Marina Enrich, who works part-time, leads our strategy on social media. Sometimes, though, official titles are too much for a four-person team. It's really small, so everyone does everything. We also have an external collaborator, Carles Planas Bou. He comes from El Periódico and covers technology. And then we have Olga Llorente, our student intern. We work remotely: Emilio and Marina are in Madrid, Bosco is in Pamplona, and I'm in Barcelona. So we are always messaging each other.

Q. Are you planning on hiring more people?

A. The first step would be to have someone who could help us with the commercial side. It would be useful to have someone with that knowledge, especially when talking with brands because right now we are the ones doing it. At some point, we could have more collaborators, not only Carles but other people who specialise in topics we don't cover.

Q. How did you choose which topics to focus on?

A. We try to stay out of the things traditional media are covering and we try to put a different point of view on the table. When we choose the topics that we are covering, it's really important to put ourselves in the user’s shoes. It must be something that we are curious about and interested in. Something we want to understand. 

People are tired of the political news cycle in Spain. It's non-stop. It's four big things a day. It's crazy. And that's something that doesn't benefit news consumption. People are overwhelmed. 

We are in a very uncertain moment. No one knows what is going to happen, but we have to make decisions, and it's hard. So having this new outlet that covers the future, and we try to do it in a positive way, is something that we thought was necessary and that we didn't see in the Spanish media landscape. For me, it's really important to also emphasise that we are young people and that we are covering things that matter to us as well.

Q. Some new media companies have recently experienced issues after investing too much into social media only to have algorithms change and shift away from news. How will you protect yourselves from something similar happening to you?

A. That's why we are in so many places. We are doing live events. We have a newsletter. We also have a podcast. And yes, we are on social media. We try to benefit from social media in terms of traffic and visibility. But right now we are not worried about this. And I don't know if there is a time when we will be worried about it. For example, people are now going like crazy from X to Bluesky. For us, that's okay: if people are migrating to Bluesky, they'll be able to find us there.

Q. Which is your main platform right now? 

A. Our most successful platform is the newsletter. That’s because, when we started, we used the audience that came from La Wikly. So we have 16,000 subscribers there and that is working well. The YouTube and Spotify channels for video podcasts are new. We’ve published 10 episodes, and those are growing more progressively. We are excited because companies are starting to see Watif as a platform to share future-minded news. 

Social media is gaining traction. We see the number of followers growing every week, and several clips have gone viral. In January we will reevaluate our strategy and see if we are okay with what we are doing. We are in the mindset of trying things, seeing how they work, and then recalculating if this is the correct path, or if we should change it.

Q. What would your pitch be to a young Spanish person who doesn't know what to read and thinks that news is irrelevant? 

A. We would say what we say in our About page: we explore trends that are happening now, and we want to understand how they can impact our future. I would also mention the topics we have been talking about, like the differences in the internet bubbles of girls and boys. That's something that everyone can relate to because it's something that happens any time you are scrolling on Instagram. We also talk about science, on issues like artificial organs.

I would talk to this person about the variety of topics that we cover. The most important thing is that we try to understand them. If I'm pitching to a young audience, it’s because I'm also a young person who knows what they are consuming and what they’re worried about. The essence is something we share with them: the uncertainty, the problems that we all are facing. Marina and I are 26, Emilio is 34. Bosco is 36. Olga is 21.

Q. Can you explain how you’ve structured your subscription model and why? For example, all your content is free to consume, and subscribers pay for extras, right?

A. It didn't make sense to charge for more content because people don't have time to read it. I also hear people saying, ‘Oh my god, I can't keep up with all the newsletters that I have.’ It didn't make sense to add another layer to that. So we are trying to create other benefits in our subscription model, and those benefits have to do with the community.

We have three tiers. The first one is free: you can receive our newsletters but don't have any extra benefits and you have to pay for the entire amount for the events. For the second tier, which is €6 a month or €60 per year, you get a discount and prioritised entry for our live events, access to our WhatsApp community and the chance to  participate in El Club, which are online events with Emilio and a guest speaker. With the third tier, which is €120 per year, you have free access to our live events, as well as regular meetings with the team and a yearly gift.

The focus of all those benefits is on the community and not on the content because people are overwhelmed. They don't want more content, so it didn't make sense. We understand the community is something a bit more private, something exclusive, and we want to keep it that way.

Q. How many paid subscribers do you have?

A. In the first two months since launching our new newsletter project, we’ve added 2,000 new free readers to our newsletters, growing from 14,000 to 16,000 free subscribers. What stands out is the high conversion rate among these 2,000 new readers, which has been a key focus, resulting in a significant portion of our 270 paid subscribers. While some of our paid subscribers also come from Emilio’s loyal audience, the strong performance among new readers highlights the success of our approach in converting a fresh audience.

We also understand that we have to diversify our income streams. We started with a financial investment. We raised a round, like a startup. We are also trying to collaborate with brands aligned with our values. For example, we are recording our video podcast in a Spanish sustainable restaurant, where all the dishes are sustainable. They liked our message about the future, so they allowed us to record there. And we plan to start consulting, and try to organise other events with brands. 

Q. Are you foreseeing publishing sponsored content as well?

A. Emilio had some partnerships for La Wikly, and we wanted to do something like that. We are in conversations with brands. We are interested in anything related to culture, streaming platforms, travel, and maybe technology.

Q. Are you using AI in any capacity, or do you have any plans to do so?

A. At first, we didn't want to do it, but it's something helpful to reduce costs. Right now, we are producing all the images that go with the newsletter with artificial intelligence. We are also in conversations with an illustrator, and we wanted her to do the illustrations for every newsletter. But we still don't have the budget, so we are keeping it small, and then trying to change that so that someone human can do the illustrations for us. We’re also using NotebookLM as a tool for the research of our articles.