Valorizing Credibility: Trust as Paradigm and Revenue Repair in South African News Organizations 2012–2022

Several South African news organizations emerged in the 2010s determined to provide public journalism in more durable, accessible, and credible ways. Partly responding to the disruption of the news industry’s business models by platform companies, and sustained attempts to delegitimize journalism by populist political parties, these organizations articulated the case for evidence-based, verified journalism, and pioneered more transparent and multidimensional funding models. They also embraced communal copyright license regimes to ensure wider dissemination and reach for their stories and were able to reconstitute a portion of their audiences into communities of interest, committed to supporting their journalism work, sometimes through direct financial contributions. By paying more attention to these organizations’ contractual relationships with audiences, distribution partners, and philanthropic donors, we can better understand how they were able to generate more sustainable revenue streams to create both viable levels of income and greater levels of trust in their news products. This will likely remain key to the survival of public interest journalism in South Africa if laws such as Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code are inimitable in other national contexts.