NEW YORKJane Ferguson has received recognition for her fearless reporting from perilous places like Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Therefore, even if the news industry was going through a difficult moment, she was unlikely to be daunted by the prospect of obtaining funding for a new media platform.
According to Ferguson, the founder of Noosphere, the pressure is really strong. In the field, I’m accustomed to pressure.
Noosphere, which launched this year, gives journalists a platform to present their work to readers who are drawn to more intimate reporting than they typically find on traditional media.
It’s like Substack, but different. With the Substack model, users who pay $14.99 a month to subscribe to Noosphere gain access to all of its journalists rather than paying for feeds of individual journalists. There are currently twenty, and with the site’s impending British launch, that number is anticipated to rise to twenty-four.
After fifteen years of driving, Ferguson craved a change.
The term “Noosphere,” which alludes to a state of consciousness proposed by Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, comes at a time when the news industry is undergoing change. Customers are avoiding newspapers and television news in favor of new strategies that are emerging in the area of digital media.
Ferguson is set to announce another round of funding after raising $1 million to launch Noosphere.
Ferguson, 40, was drawn to the high-stakes, high-risk field of international reporting after growing up in Northern Ireland. She worked mostly alone for CNN International and later PBS NewsHour, reporting on war crimes and famine in South Sudan, as well as the conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan after the U.S. pullout in 2021.
She was crushed and shell-shocked by the latter encounter, leaving her to question whether she had reached the end of that stage of her career. She claimed that I had been traveling for fifteen years. I was worn out and, in a way, burned out.
After relocating to the US, she taught and studied at Princeton. She attended entrepreneurship workshops and made business relationships. Ferguson envisioned Noosphere as a landing place since she was aware of how many of her previous international colleagues had to work hard to find outlets for their work. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2023, her business partner, Seb Walker, was employed at Vice Media, a company renowned for its robust worldwide reporting.
According to international correspondent Matthew Cassell, whose credentials include Vice, it’s become far more difficult to continue earning a living doing this. In addition to recent reporting from the West Bank, Cassell, who was part of Noosphere’s first class of journalists, has shared films in which he offers his thoughts on the Israel-Iran conflict.
Shrouq Al Aila provided footage from Gaza that depicts aid distribution attempts while gunfire reverberates in the background.Oren Zivre reported from a missile strike in Israel, demonstrating the devastation by strolling through the broken corridors of a hospital.
Ferguson stated, “It’s really cool, like a really good reporter is Face-Timing you from the field.”
According to experienced journalist Kate O’Brian, who is on the board of directors of Noosphere, news consumers, especially young ones, are growing disenchanted with more stiff, traditional television news reporting. According to O’Brian, the setting is prepared for an audience that wants to hear straight from the journalist.
About half of the reporting personnel will be based in the United States, according to Ferguson’s proposal. Chris Cillizza, a former CNN reporter, covers Washington for Noosphere.
Noosphere’s largest signing to date is Chuck Todd.
Chuck Todd, the former moderator of Meet the Press, is her biggest signing to date. Trita Parsi, the founder of the National Iranian American Council, and Steve Bannon, host of War Room, were his first guests when he launched a Sunday night show in June. A hint of Todd’s plans for a varied show with fascinating people from business and politics is the fact that he hired the former producer of Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show.
“It’s difficult to say no to Jane,” Todd stated. Like any astute executive, she is aware of her ignorance and seeks out intelligent others who she believes possess greater knowledge.
Ferguson is betting that Noosphere will provide access to more Substack memberships at a fixed cost because audiences can only afford so many subscriptions to individual journalists. Additionally, she has spoken with news organizations that are interested in purchasing some of the reporters’ work.
Establishing Noosphere is difficult because the market is becoming more and more saturated and some of her journalists aren’t well-known.
Noosphere journalists receive a portion of membership payments; if a subscriber particularly mentions that contributor’s work when joining up, they will receive a larger payment. Ferguson has yet to disclose the number of her subscribers.
“I give Substack a lot of credit for creating a market that didn’t exist before,” O’Brian remarked. This is merely an alternative method of doing it.
“You have to offer a lot to succeed,” Todd added. One or two things won’t enough. Noosphere will have reporters on the ground in all of the world’s hot spots. They stand a fair chance of becoming extremely successful in their lane. How large the lane can get is the question.
The benefit of Noosphere, according to Todd, is that it was founded by reporters, which sets it apart from the company’s executives, who often lack journalism experience.
Ferguson has also questioned if journalism can endure news companies’ demise or decline. According to her, journalists, not media executives, will be the ones to solve the industry’s issues.
___
For the AP, David Bauder writes on the relationship between entertainment and media. Visit http://x.com/dbauderand to follow him.https://dbauder.bsky.social/bsky.app/profile.
