Reinventing Revenue: Echo
In March 2022, the independent radio station Echo of Moscow was taken off the air during a live broadcast after more than 30 years of independent reporting. As wartime censorship in Russia grew stronger, many journalists continued their work from exile, launching new projects and rebuilding their audience across different digital platforms.
One of such projects, the Berlin-based Echo, reaches audiences among Russian-speaking communities across the world while developing new ways to sustain independent journalism in exile. Alongside its reporting, the project has built a growing portfolio of revenue streams, including live events, books, and merchandise. Its “Echo Meetings” – public discussions on politics, history, literature, and culture held in cities around the world – have become both a source of income and a way to reconnect dispersed Russian-speaking communities.
In this conversation, we explore how Echo rebuilt its audience after exile, how offline encounters can support sustainable journalism, and what lessons its experience offers for independent media seeking new models of sustainability, engagement, and growth.
Echo was created after one of Russia’s best-known independent radio stations was forced off the air. How has exile changed your understanding of what a media organization should be?
Leaving Russia presented challenges on several fronts: journalism, editorial management, finance, and even identity. That last point raises a real question: what role should Russian-language media play today?
If we focus on management and financial issues, the main problem here is that the majority of our audience remains in Russia, and no matter how large your audience is, it’s practically impossible to monetize it. Our task was to find sources of revenue where our audience is not as large – that is, outside of Russia.
Of the different formats we’ve experimented with, public events have turned out to be the most promising and have really decreased our dependency on grants. Such events provide additional opportunities for selling our books and merchandise offline.
Echo now reaches audiences through YouTube, Telegram, podcasts, a radio app, live events, books, and merchandise – and is currently also developing a newsletter. How do these different products reinforce one another rather than competing for your audience’s attention?
People are different; they have different media consumption habits and different capabilities (including, at times, simply being blocked from mobile internet or certain platforms), so we make it our mission to be accessible on various platforms and to develop our own.
On the one hand, censorship by the Russian authorities and internet restrictions, and on the other, negative experiences with Big Tech, are forcing us to devote significant resources to developing our own platforms. This includes our own app, website and radio broadcasting in Estonia. So far, we are not monetizing these platforms except for sometimes selling advertisement space. However it’s not a particularly impressive source of income.
Developing our own platforms takes a lot of resources, but we get great feedback from our audience.
Your events often combine current affairs with history, literature, or culture rather than focusing exclusively on the news. Why was it important for Echo to broaden the conversation beyond journalism?
One of our main goals is education. We run several different projects across various platforms that can be classified as educational or enlightening. At our events, we try to add some extra value to these conversations – so that people can also learn something new for themselves. Moreover, discussions on political topics viewed through the lens of literature or history tend to be less emotional and more profound, although, of course, at some point they go beyond the scope of historical lectures.
Since we have a large audience, we can save up resources on advertisement – we almost don’t need to do it outside of our own platforms. This promotes our position on the events market. On one hand, we try to work mostly with our show hosts (known by our audience), on the other – we aim not to hold ordinary ‘meet and greet’ events, but to provide our audience with cultural or educational experiences.
During our workshop in Perugia, you mentioned that some of your biggest successes came in cities where you did not even realize you had an audience. What have these events taught you about the geography of the Russian-speaking diaspora?
It came as a surprise to us that in European and American cities, we would serve as a source of support for many Russian-speaking people – especially those who left Russia quite some time ago and disagree with the policies of Putin’s regime – since, within their information bubble, most are either apolitical or support Vladimir Putin.
It’s very important for them to attend our events and see that there are so many people in their city – sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands – who come to these events just like they do. They get to know one another, form communities, or join communities they may not have known about before our gatherings. This effect was largely unexpected for us, but over time we realized how important it is.
Looking back, what is one lesson about media innovation that other independent media operating under pressure could learn from Echo?
Don’t be afraid to collaborate with other media outlets and bloggers, and be open to experimentation.
If you see a business opportunity for your media, start it early, before the market gets saturated. When planning events in new locations, contact the locals, who know this area better than you. Even tiny nuances may bring a much better result.