As legacy media organizations struggle with declining revenue and vanishing audiences, award-winning journalist Jane Ferguson is betting on something new: a social-styled creator platform tailored for news and journalists.
Ferguson, a former PBS NewsHour foreign correspondent and contributor to The New Yorker, launched Noosphere in beta this spring with a simple question: “What if journalism’s business model served journalists first?”
“What we’re really doing is disrupting the distribution model,” Ferguson told E&P. “I want to take the behemoth costs of running a cable or network news organization or newspaper and put those savings in the pockets of reporters.”
The platform, a mobile news app currently only available on iOS, bundles independent creators' content in multiple formats, including articles, video, photo essays and audio. Its homepage reads: “Get news direct from reporters you trust.”
Noosphere launched with 15 contributors, with plans to expand to 50 in the coming months. Unlike Substack, where users pay for individual newsletters, a Noosphere subscription, currently priced at $14.99 per month, gives subscribers access to reporting from all the journalists on the platform. And journalists keep 50% of the revenue from each subscription they bring in.
Chris Cillizza, a former political reporter at The Washington Post and analyst for CNN, is now an independent with a presence on Substack and YouTube. He’s also a Noosphere contributor. “One of the biggest challenges for the emerging world of independent journalism is that we are all siloed,” he said. “Noosphere is attempting to bundle lots of independent journalism under a single umbrella — and for a single price. I think it’s how independent journalism can sustain itself and its audience going forward.”
Joyce Koh, an independent journalist and former Washington Post video correspondent, joined Noosphere earlier this year. She’s currently covering the Sean “Diddy” Combs criminal trial and said the platform offers creative and financial freedom she hadn’t experienced in a traditional newsroom.
“I spent more than six years at The Washington Post, covering the biggest political stories in the country and the world,” Koh said. “The work felt increasingly lost to an audience.”
Her reporting from Ukraine in 2022 drove home the disconnect. “I was doing polished, professional stories for The Post’s site, but the social videos I made on the side for TikTok and Instagram reached far more people,” Koh explained. “That’s when I first truly understood the news business disconnect between the side of news that pays us yet yields abstract impact vs. the side that drives real audience connection but no revenue.”
She said Noosphere offers a middle path — reporting that connects with contemporary audiences. “What I love is how I can use whichever medium best tells the story,” she said. “We are doing actual journalism on Noosphere — not just using it as a tool for promotion.”
Ferguson said Noosphere is preparing to enter its seed funding round after bringing in $1 million during a pre-seed round from undisclosed investors. She said the next stage of growth includes updating the app with more features, expanding to more global regions and launching an Android app.
Ferguson also sees Noosphere as a bulwark against the rise of generative AI in newsrooms. “AI can replace an anchor, an HR department, a proofreader. But it can’t go to the hospital and confirm casualty figures. It can’t photograph what’s happening on the ground,” she said. “And the consumer doesn’t want a mismatch of scraped social media videos. They want the reporter they know and trust.”
Ultimately, Ferguson believes the key to saving journalism isn’t nostalgia — it’s a new model built with the journalist at its center.
“I want to make real journalism a viable, lucrative career,” she said. “An entirely new, disruptive distribution model for actual journalism — but the end goal is for journalists to make a decent living.”
Diane Sylvester is an award-winning 30-year multimedia news veteran. She works as a reporter, editor, and newsroom strategist. She can be reached at diane.povcreative@gmail.com
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