JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile

By now it is clear that the shock of the 2025 US funding cuts has not faded. Its effects continue to shape independent and exiled media in 2026. Europe was briefly seen as a buffer, but budgets kept tightening here too, and as a result support for journalism is shrinking at the very moment it is needed most.

For exiled media, this funding shock is not a temporary setback. It reorganizes the field. 

It shifts what newsrooms can sustain. Larger outlets may absorb a hit, while smaller ones quickly reach a breaking point, with staffing, formats, and coverage cut back until some outlets can no longer continue.

That leaves organizations like ours with an uncomfortable question: How do we distribute less funding without shrinking the diverse field to a handful of surviving exiled media outlets and risking a quiet desertification of exiled media landscapes? Spreading the same support thinner just postpones the break rather than preventing it.

Our answer is to sharpen one part of our support around entrepreneurship.

By this we mean something unglamorous but decisive: the practical work on the business side of journalism. Entrepreneurship, in our understanding, is not about chasing profit. It is about developing strategies that keep publishing possible under pressure: with a clearer audience focus, improved product decisions, and diversified revenue streams that reduce the all-or-nothing dependence on the next grant cycle.

This builds on what already worked in 2025. In our pilot formats and entrepreneurship grants, small, tightly earmarked implementation budgets produced already measurable positive results in audience retention and revenue mix.

This only works if newsrooms can keep stable relationships with audiences across borders. For exiled media, publishing does not stop at production. Core audiences often remain in the country of origin, while diaspora communities form an additional and distinct readership. Whether these relationships hold depends on reliable access and a degree of safety for readers. Where access is inconsistent or controlled, distribution weakens and audience relationships become harder to maintain.

We therefore pair the entrepreneurship program with several projects focused on the development and implementation of secure technological solutions that enable safe publishing in exile for audiences in countries of origin – because the relationship between exiled media outlets and their audiences increasingly depends on tools that allow media to operate across borders under constraint.

Our AI Resilience Programme complements this by strengthening how newsrooms use AI in security-aware ways, supporting translation, editorial workflows, and audience understanding, under explicit safeguards for independence and data protection.

At the same time, we need to be clear about what this entrepreneurial approach can and cannot do, and how it fits into the wider discourse on media support. Some of the most important reporting will remain hard to monetize, and we should not build a system that rewards what sells over what matters. Entrepreneurship must widen options, not become a gate that decides who gets to survive.

That is also why public-interest funding remains essential. Markets alone do not reliably sustain the media plurality democracies need, and the value of public-interest media in exile extends well beyond paying subscribers. Many audiences cannot pay because of financial precarity, or cannot pay safely because payments can leave a trail. Furthermore, the advertising model that once subsidized watchdog reporting is weakening as platforms capture attention and ad spend. The RSF World Press Freedom Index 2025 highlights economic fragility as a major threat to press freedom.

So while 2025 has reshaped the field, the effects unfolding in 2026 and 2027 may be more drastic: a narrowing of what can still be questioned, understood, and imagined in public.

When only fragments of the exiled media landscape remain, the range of voices shrinks and parts of the conversation disappear. As perspective narrows, journalism risks losing its connective role: linking different experiences and realities across societies. Exiled media then might drift towards audiences already closest to them, not by editorial choice, but by economic gravity. This development is not inevitable, but depends on what is sustained.

That is why investment in public-interest media remains essential. Where markets fall short, public funding is the condition that keeps journalism alive. Our entrepreneurial support is designed to complement this foundation, not replace it. It can reduce dependency, stabilize operations, and widen options where conditions allow. To avoid the quiet desertification of media landscapes, we focus on fit rather than scale. We prioritize tailored support that reflects different starting conditions, including audience location, market realities, and whether target publics can pay at all or pay safely. We then develop and test formats accordingly, so some newsrooms can stabilize, others can grow, and those further along can share what they have learned across borders.

Each program component we run this year is therefore both a tool and a test: a practical attempt to rebuild the conditions for independent reporting, outlet by outlet, across different audience sizes and geographic realities. The aim is to build durability beyond political cycles and to anchor public-interest infrastructure in practice rather than political timing.

The lesson is clear: press freedom cannot rest on political goodwill, nor can it be secured through a single budget line, a friendly administration, or the temporary alignment of an election cycle. The funding shock of 2025 showed how quickly fragile ecosystems unravel once that support is withdrawn.

Preventing this from happening again requires more than emergency measures or improvised stopgaps: it calls for investment models and support structures designed to endure over time, so that independent journalism does not have to rebuild itself from the ground up whenever political priorities shift.