Many smaller independent media outlets in Europe are struggling to grow due to the limited size of the local market while political division in many countries further deteriorates the financially challenging situation. The question for those outlets is how to build trust with potential readers outside of their bubble and how to reach new and hardly approachable audiences?

This is not a well-defined body of knowledge and very few ready-to-use answers are available. „Local audience, conditions and problems are always differ, and you always need to adapt to local possibilities and contexts,” says Zoltán Sipos, the editor-in-chief of Átlátszó Erdély who shared some of his experience and lessons learnt what worked in the case of the investigative portal operating in a conservative and rural area of Romania, publishing in Hungarian, a minority language in the country.

The online outlet editorial team is small, 6 people produce the content. The portal does not have ads because the potential income from the limited advertising market might be too low and, according to the editor-in-chief, would not match with the efforts needed to manage those ads, so their revenues come from international grants and donations of their readers. They run a weekly newsletter with around 3,000 subscribers and the portal has some. 135,000 readers annually. Some of the loyal readers — around 300 people – donate monthly, not counting those who pitch in occasionally.

Find the story

Media outlets in Central Europe face many challenges, including deep polarisation of political life and strong presence of Russian, Kremlin-led disinformation narratives and propaganda. These factors, along with others, undermine democracy and the rule of law, and strengthen the pre-existing „good old” prejudices. According to Sipos, outlets, in order to be successful in the media business, need to know the specific problems the audience living in a certain area face and need to be able to tailor the content that meets the needs of the community.

“Approximately 1 million people live in the region [of Romania that we cover] and most of them are fans of the Hungarian strongman, PM Orbán,” says Sipos who believes that local outlets should focus on the elements of everyday life that can build trust inside the community and not on those which divide further. He believes that instead of deepening the gaps, they should build bridges: find topics and story ideas that bring people together instead of pushing them apart. Confronting people does not work as it leads to further polarisation, he added.

It is not so easy and obvious to find stories that bridge the gaps and unite the community. How do they find stories that matter? According to Sipos, they review comments and talk to the readers online or sometimes in person, listen to them and ask if there was anything important they might have missed. Looking for undercovered stories or stories that might seem obvious at the first sight could be one way, the other is to understand people’s pain and how this could lead to a story. „If people complain about low wages, journalists can investigate whether local companies formed a cartel, keeping the wages down’, an example given by Zoltán Sipos.

The story ideas mostly come from their loyal readers, he admits, but these attract readers outside of their bubble too. How do they know that? From comments they receive and from the higher number of visitors.

“The ‘word of mouth’ has a role in smaller communities. If people tell their neighbours that a local but important issue is covered by us, they might visit our site, even if they have preconceptions or strong opinions about our investigative journalistic work.”

One example of such a story was a feature, published in April this year, about small urban forests (Miyawaki forests) in Romania. Sipos’s favorite comment, however, was connected to another story: they received it after a story was published about a road built on a landslide that collapsed shortly after it was open to traffic in 2021. “I still don’t agree with you on many things, yet I also see that your work is valuable to the community.”

One of the lessons learnt is that positive examples can further strengthen the ties, instead of emphasizing the differences. Solution journalism could be a very effective journalistic method in the present divided political climate to reach new and hardly achievable audiences in many countries. Feedback – e.g. low number of negative comments – might show that the media outlet is on the right track. One example from Átlátszó Erdély is the piece on how people wandering in the woods can live together with aggressive shepherd dogs that sometimes attack people in Szeklerland.

Building trust

Building trust in a distrustful community is challenging but again, it is not impossible. In the case of Átlátszó Erdély, the characteristics of the location and the audience include low internet usage skills, lack of tradition of free speech and public debates about issues affecting people’s life and the very centralised power structure. Local and regional news outlets are usually financed by political actors, the disinformation narratives and propaganda in the Hungarian-speaking part of Romania is financed by the Hungarian government, and the audience deeply distrust those who criticise the official narratives.

Many people believe the goal is to divide the community and those who question the traditional structures of power might have a hidden agenda. But according to Zoltán Sipos, listening and asking questions is still one effective way to reach new and hardly achievable audiences, despite all these challenges.

“We tried to reach our regular human trolls and asked them to sit with us for a discussion. Even the most diehard trolls can turn out to be reasonable – and sometimes even nice – people in real life”

says Sipos who admits that these persons did not become their regular supporters but the communication helped to understand them better.

And even in the new era of AI, nothing can replace personal interactions. The journalists working for Átlátszó Erdély often go to pubs and other public places where they speak to people who are definitely not their loyal readers. Last year they organised pop-up events in a few small villages where they were waiting for locals to go and talk to them about their problems and ask questions about the work of the portal.

They learned a lot about how local public spaces work: for example, in some of the locations they found it impossible to find a neutral place for public debates. All possible venues were somehow politically connected, and because of this, they had to deal with a very low turnout. On the other hand, people were more than happy to talk to them privately, and this is what they eventually did – and collected some story ideas from these conversations.

Locals meet locals

The smaller outlets in rural areas face plenty of questions that are difficult to answer. What kind of stories are these local communities interested in? How do they consume media? And what would be the best format to provide the content? What is their perception of the past work of the local outlet and journalism in general? And most importantly: are they willing to offer something in return for the free content?

The solution Átlátszó Erdély was to deliver a number of reader surveys where they asked all these questions. After a few surveys completed by 268 people and the answers were evaluated by the team, in 2023 they decided to work with sociologists with considerable experience in research and audience analysis. The approach was complex: first the team analyzed the Google Analytics data from the previous five years, showing some very interesting and clear patterns: e.g. a visible increase in the readership from a certain county where one of their journalists lived and covered the local issues in the neighbourhood.

In 2025, the portal repeated the survey. It was completed by about 160 persons and had a two fold approach: on one hand, they wanted to ask the same questions they already asked in their surveys earlier. This part was important to observe shifts in the needs, priorities and perceptions of their readers. On the other hand, the goal was to explore whether the readers are willing to give something – their email addresses, their expertise or even their free time – in return for the freely available content? Based on the responses, the outlet decided to work on a membership model while the content is still free to access to everyone. The data collected by this latest survey and the lessons learnt from readers who volunteered to provide their feedback in a focus group concluded in a very interesting result: readers of this specific independent media outlet do not want merchandising products or presents in return for their potential support. They only want the journalists to continue doing their job – well.

While other small independent media outlets might have a different audience with different needs and demands, the tools, the experience and some lessons learnt could be taken from the example of Átlátszó Erdély. „Feedback is good but data are even better," says Zoltán Sipos, adding that according to their experience, the amount of donations from a particular community increases after they publish a story about that community.

Small local media outlets in rural areas of Central Europe are in a challenging financial situation: their survival depends more and more on getting to know their audience better, while publishing local stories – stories that are not covered by the mainstream and nationwide media outlets at all. “There are people in these areas too who are open minded to the world, interested, and able to pay, you just have to find them and the stories that make a difference in their life”, concluded the editor-in-chief of Átlátszó Erdély.

Source of the cover photo: Samuel Scrimshaw via Unsplash

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Átlátszó Erdély

How to build trust and reach new and hard audiences?

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