Draft Four: Solo or solo-ish?
On finding new ways to work together.
Here’s a recurring string of thoughts I’ve been having. They were there even when I was running a newsroom of more than 25 people, and they are still here, arguably louder.
It’s obvious by now that much of our media consumption – journalism included – is largely personal brand driven. As trust in institutions has declined, so has trust in journalism and its stalwart brands. Everyone has written about this, and we’ll keep writing about how it happened, and what solutions are available (I wrote a whole project on doing more human-scale work).
But most of us have to put our trust in something or someone eventually, and the most likely candidates are individuals. The journalist as a brand has been an ongoing conversation for a decade, and many have joined the ranks of creator class spawned by social media. (For a comprehensive history of how we got here, read Taylor Lorenz’s Extremely Online.)
I’m not going to go into whether it’s good or bad for society that we look to individuals – be they journalists, influencers, content creators, propagandists of all sorts – to get our information, our takes, our education, our perspectives, and our practical solutions. It’s just how it happens. (And yes, it comes with dangers of all kinds).
I’ve been living in this paradigm shift for 25 years.
In 2000, I started my first alternative media project together with a friend from college. Those were the idealist early days of the Romanian internet, and the fact that we could build our own media seemed wild: it meant freedom from the constraints of the newsrooms that were to be our boring future employers. (It also meant no money. I remember us trying to get Red Bull to give us some energy drinks – we said we worked at night, and we were cool; I forgot if they ever replied.) We did the design on bootleg software, some minimal HTML, and it was enormous work to put a few hundred words and some pictures online, but it would only get easier.
In a few years I had my own blogs – two I started and abandoned because it was a lonely job –, and then, in 2009, together with a bunch of crazy peers, we started DoR. It would have turned 15 this past Friday. Its premise was similar to my earlier endeavors: be an alternative to the predominant model of story selection, packaging, and distribution. (This time, eventually, we also made some money – more than 1 million Euros a year at our peak.)
What I liked and miss most about our college satirical website and DoR was the camaraderie. The fact that we could build an institution, or an umbrella if your will, that can gather a number of media misfits or voices or types of journalism that didn’t make the cut in places that got the traffic, the mainstream recognition, and – yes –, often the immediate social or political impact.
By 2014 the financial crisis was in the rearview mirror, and I started to notice more people starting their own little endeavors – from coffee shops, to tech start-ups, to craft studios, to other things that fit the solopreneur lifestyle. Some had money from years of working in large multinationals, others had their own or their family’s resources and wanted to give something they enjoyed a shot. (Caveat 1: I’m talking here about Romania – these trends had been happening for a good few years in other places. Caveat 2: There’s a separate discussion about the consumer class it created, and how it amplified a form of division based on cultural signifiers and the likes, but it certainly further enabled the individual-as-brand model.)
This slowly crept into media, with journalists adopting the creator-mindset, especially as it became clear there was also money in this game. A good rule of thumb on today’s internet is that the platforms who create stars are those that also give these people ways to monetize their work. (And survive by upping the ante, see YouTube).
Most journalists remained under an institutional umbrella, but some got more visible than the brand itself. Some had verticals built around them. Others became event MCs. Brand or NGO ambassadors. Fundraisers. Influencers. They got so loud and vocal on some issues in social media, that one had to wonder what that meant for the institution that paid their salaries, or for the reporting they did.
We saw this coming at DoR, and we had some early attempts at making room for it: giving some of our staff their own shows and podcasts, their newsletter, encouraging a pivot to their topic of interest, fundraising for content verticals etc.
The early tensions, especially for journalists with strong personal brands, were around freedom and autonomy – how much do I do of what I want, and what do I owe the organization, and what does the organization owe me. In many places, this created all sorts of hybrid work-agreements: you get more autonomy, but we move to a part-time contract, where you build your own brand and business on the side. The organization can then be your primary buyer and give you a guaranteed amount to start from. And so on.
The pandemic accelerated the shift to media solopreneurship, both with the now expected work-from-anywhere dynamic, and then the further layoffs and crashing of the industry and its already meager resources. (Grants started to be given for one-person operations).
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I’m intimately familiar with this tug of war. I’m not an easy person to employ, because I’m not a big fan of doing things I don’t want to do. I can be a great follower if I have the right leader, and I will overdeliver on most projects. But I work best and hardest on the things I am personally interested in, and with people I don’t have to pester to do their share.
When I was 26, I got what I thought was my dream job, working for the Romanian edition of Esquire. But I quit and moved into a freelancing role (a truly crazy idea in late 2008), because I had more autonomy over what I did and when I did it. In my next magazine job I set boundaries: I’ll only write and edit features. I’ll do this well, I’ll bring you stories you didn’t have before, but I’m not editing the beauty pages or proofreading the fashion spreads. The blogs I started and abandoned were born out of a similar instinct: I want to explore something, and I need autonomy to do it. This Substack, same need.
At the same time, I’m also an institutionalist. I believe in the power of teams to come together and make change. It’s why I also believe in the state as an actor, and procedures as guidelines for groups of people to develop quality services (it’s also why restaurants, hotels and events are eternally fascinating to me). When large institutions fail, I don’t see it as proof everything needs to be broken apart and disintermediated – I see it as opportunities to find the problems and create better systems.
Anyway, back to media solopreneurs.
In the age we live in, people listen to personalities to get their perspectives on the world. It’s easier to trust a dude with a podcast then an institution. (Joe Rogan anyone?). Even Romanian presidential hopefuls have caught on to this, and they are choosing content creators to get their message out.
Some of these solopreneurs are making money, choosing what they get to do, and living the life. Even some journalists have reached that point. Some are really happy to not have to answer to anyone. They believe institutions are the past, and pray they’ll keep their public interested and paying for as long as possible.
Personally, I’m torn.
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More than 3,000 people get this newsletter (I am beyond grateful). About 1% have pledged to pay some money for it – right now that would amount to around 3,000 Euros a year if I turned on payments. That’s close to a quarter of what it’d need annually for this to look like a serious professional plan. So, not impossible.
My friend Sorana, who writes about health care policy, has more than 8,000 readers. Andreea, who covers sports and gender, more than 3,000. Anca, who’s been wrestling with resuming her writing on conservation, has 4,000+ subscribers. Arguably, if we do work that’s good, we might all find a business model for at least a few years. (Like our former colleague Jo did with her meal-planning newsletter, but certainly not as successful).
The freedom to focus on your interests and to plan your work-life were great drivers for most journalists going solo, as they were for many other creators. Most of the early questions were around “who needs this?”, “are these enough people?”, “would they ever pay?”
Some got the answers they were looking for and are rocking.
For many journalists turned solopreneurs, some of a few things happened. Maybe they were so successful they now need extra help: a sidekick, a small team etc. Soon enough, the solopreneurs who did this to have freedom, find themselves needing to redefine the meaning of the word. (Take it from someone who started a magazine because he wanted to write more).
Also, when you grow, you start replicating the organizational model which you turned away from. Uh-oh. Two potential issues here: that’s not what you wanted, and people don’t like institutions, so once you become one, they might move on to another, more “authentic” voice.
Or maybe what was fun is now stressful. It’s one thing for an organization to collect money and then give you a contract, it’s another to get money directly, for yourself. From people with a name, a face, who are in your DMs. I have heard many say it makes them feel enormously responsible. I have even heard some pondering stopping subscriptions or giving money back when they feel the need to take a break or feel they can’t deliver for a while.
And it can get lonely. A few of us were chatting this week, and Anca said she loves the idea of having her own product and not answering to a boss, but also misses the some of the predictability, the support network of an organization, the accountability you feel towards an editor or a group of peers that is sometimes just enough fuel to power you through doubts and procrastination.
I’m in a similar place. I’ve always enjoyed the freedom to make new things, but if I’m alone, I’ll build little to nothing. I need a support network – sometimes just to egg me on by telling me it won’t work, which would make me try it. I need peers to solve complex problems with. I need partners to join up with on projects – stories, workshops, events – and deliver something greater together. I need cheerleaders that pick me up when I stop believing the work has meaning. (And it happens often).
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The best two things that happened this week were the last of our three Oamenii Dreptății shows, which packed a Bucharest theater: a sold-out house of more than 500 people for a blend of stories, essays, dance, music, stand-up, all tackling the idea of a building a more just society.
Then, on Thursday, we announced the first speakers for the 2025 edition of The Power of Storytelling, and close to 100 have people registered since, which is 1/5 of the capacity of the hall. The conference always sold out by the time it started, but it might happen sooner than ever now.
Both of these events are tough endeavors that require a capable and committed team: the speaker and story selection can’t be done alone, the production can’t be done alone, communication can’t be done alone, hosting can’t be done alone. And both create precisely this communal feeling that “together we can do more” – which was expressed in the feedback we got for OD.
In keeping with the ideas of this letter, the theme of next year’s The Power of Storytelling is Connect, and it’s for this same reason: to build things, to make change, there needs to be more of us. For teams and groups to work, we need to get back some of the trust in one another that we’ve been losing. And before trust, comes connecting and listening to one another.
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I know the above are realities and questions on the minds of other solopreneurs or freelancers, many outside of media: the cook with a small bistro that’s only open two days a week because it’s all she can do largely by herself. The YouTube creator putting out an essay once every few months to stay away from the temptation of scaling up. The illustrator overbooking herself with freelance gigs. The trainer that gets an adrenaline spike when a new project comes up, but otherwise works alone in coffee shops.
Some go through ups and down, but love this, and want to stay solo.
Some not so much. And, after a few years, it’s not just because they don’t have a handle on the money (although that’s part of it).
For us in journalism it’s also because we’re worried a fragmented ecosystem will hurt institutions even more – and guess what, it’s largely institutional media that does the journalism that content creators or newsletter writers then interpret and distill and ask us to pay for. It’s also because we need peers and editors to be better, and to get us past bad days. It’s because some days we want to do something ambitious, and don’t know where to start, because in a country where only 12% of people say they trust others, do you think anyone has taught us about collaboration or co-creation?
I don’t have a solution. What I have is an idea: outside solopreneurship and jobs in institutions, what is a third, or fourth way, or fifth way? What are some forms of solo-ish? Help me figure this out:
If you’re solo, what’s working and not working for you?
What models have you seen that combine freedom with camaraderie?
What new forms of collectives, umbrellas, networks have you seen, and what do you think are their secret ingredients to making it work?
How would you build an ecosystem out of a group of independent creators without creating an organization or a new brand to swallow them up?
How do we teach collaboration and teamwork?
SIDE DISHES:
One third of the Rome live album by The National is out. Serves a great soundtrack for an early winter.
Just to close the loop of the American elections that I opened last week – this episode of This American Life is brilliant at showing what it feels like for actual people, from all side, not just parties.