Reinventing Revenue: El Toque
elTOQUE was originally created in the Netherlands by the former Radio Nederland team [now RNW Media]. At the end of 2017, the management of the project was transferred to a Cuban team, which has been the official owner of the brand since 2018. The outlet covers everyday life in Cuba, with a particular focus on the economy, public services, and practical information for citizens navigating crisis conditions. Its widely used informal currency exchange tracker has become a key reference point for millions of Cubans.
In this conversation, we speak with José Jasán Nieves about how utility-driven journalism, data tools, and audience trust can evolve into sustainable revenue models.
Your work combines reporting with data collection and analysis in a highly restricted information environment. How did elTOQUE begin developing data-driven tools and services for Cuban audiences, and what needs were you trying to address?
Our first data-driven experiment came during Cuba’s 2018 constitutional reform. We realized that using data journalism and digital tools could solve a very concrete problem we were identifying in our audience: people did not understand the differences between the proposed new constitution and the existing one. We created constitución.eltoque.com, an interactive tool that allowed users to compare both texts article by article, together with other analytic resources. It became a highly used public service and won the Online Journalism Award for explanatory reporting from the Online News Association in 2019.
That experience showed us that combining data, technology, and design could help citizens navigate complex issues with ease. A few years later, when an informal currency market emerged and was being negotiated in scattered social media groups, we applied similar thinking. Using scraping and natural language processing technologies (AI), we started transforming those conversations into structured data and calculating a reference value in real-time. That was the origin of our exchange currency tracker.
How do the needs and expectations of audiences inside Cuba and in the diaspora differ – and how has that shaped your editorial and revenue strategies?
Audiences inside Cuba are primarily focused on survival and immediate impact. They look for reliable information on inflation, exchange rates, food and fuel prices, legal changes, and migration pathways. Our informal currency tracker and economic explainers respond directly to those urgent needs.
The diaspora shares an interest in Cuba’s political situation—protests, human rights, and U.S.–Cuba relations – but also needs guidance for life in their new countries: jobs, documentation, schooling, local rights, and ways to support relatives back home.
Editorially, this has led us to design different products: services and explainers centered on economic and legal resilience for people in Cuba, and guides, community coverage, and analysis tailored to Cubans in the U.S. and Spain.
On the revenue side, we accept that audiences in Cuba cannot realistically pay, nor can local advertisers safely support us. So operations aimed at Cuba are sustained mainly by grants and contributions from Cubans abroad, while diaspora-focused products are designed to be relevant for advertisers, local philanthropy, and membership-style small contributions.
How do you balance specialized information services with your broader public-interest journalism mission?
Our comparative advantage is a deep understanding of our country. That knowledge is valuable not only for the general public but also for embassies, NGOs, and foreign policy actors who need regular and contextualized briefings. We decided to turn that know-how into tailored services, while protecting our core public mission.
To do this, we maintain a clear “church–state” separation between our commercial and editorial operations. A dedicated team produces content and services for clients; the newsroom does not manage those relationships and retains full autonomy over coverage.
In practice, this means two things. First, we are transparent with clients that editorial independence is non‑negotiable. Second, we have demonstrated it: we have published critical coverage of policies and governments that are, at the same time, clients of our specialized services.
So, revenue from briefings and similar products helps sustain our public-interest journalism, but it does not dictate our agenda. The brand we are selling is precisely our credibility and rigor on Cuba, and undermining that would destroy the value of the service itself.
Which revenue streams or experiments have been most promising in reducing dependency on grants?
Due to U.S. sanctions and platforms’ over‑compliance, web traffic from Cuba is either not monetized or pays absurdly low rates. We therefore focus on revenue streams that leverage our brand, trust, and technical capabilities.
First, direct advertising and sponsorships targeted at diaspora communities, especially in the U.S. and Spain. Once you build a strong, recognized brand in a community, you can offer advertisers something more valuable than generic impressions: a trusted relationship with a clearly defined audience.
Second, we created an agency that sells our internal strengths – web development, newsletter strategy, social media management, audience research, and data visualization – to external clients.
Third, we are building subscription-based products around our unique financial data. Our elTOQUE.Markets platform offers structured access to indicators on informal exchange rates, food and fuel prices, remittances, and crypto flows, all derived from AI-powered data extraction. These B2B services are promising avenues to diversify away from purely grant-funded journalism.
What is one lesson about media innovation that other independent media operating under pressure could learn from elTOQUE?
One key lesson is that you cannot innovate sustainably with only a heroic newsroom. Exiled and independent outlets often pour all their energy into editorial work and political struggle, while neglecting organizational design. That is not sustainable.
In our experience, two roles have been critical: product/project managers and financial managers. They bring experimentation discipline, business thinking, and human‑resources strategy into the organization. This is especially important when teams are scattered across countries and legal frameworks.
At the same time, we work to “infect” the entire staff – especially journalists – with a basic understanding of how the organization survives: where money comes from, what impact looks like, and how different products contribute to sustainability.
Innovation is about building internal capacities and incentives so that the whole organization, not only the commercial unit, feels responsible for resilience and revenue, without sacrificing editorial integrity.