We have great stories to tell.

If you are reading this, you are probably keenly aware: media is in crisis. Traditional media lost its revenues and is finding itself on an unsustainable path to irrelevance. Local media are dying at an alarming rate, with an already visible toll on our democracies: local authorities face less scrutiny in daily dealings, people are less engaged but more partisan, corruption goes undetected and unpunished. National outlets can’t avoid this trend either.

The media crisis in the US is widely publicized, analyzed and reasonably well understood. Yet a similar crisis taking place in Europe is often overlooked – extremely fragmented media markets don’t attract the same attention. The reasons are many: language barriers, the many unique characteristics of all the large and small markets, the players and the speed of change are all wildly different. Moreover, Europe is going through its own story.

The Fix humbly comes forward to try to bridge these barriers and offer an understanding of European media: the crisis we’re facing and the sources of our problems. But instead of just describing the current state of affairs, we’re trying something different: we’re looking for solutions. Expect The Fix to present you with successes large and small, industry developments as well as the trends media professionals are watching to adapt in our constantly evolving trade. 

The Fix wants to understand what makes successes possible, and what we can learn from the failures. A book of recipes for staying relevant in an increasingly competitive market for people’s attention. Of course, as tastes (and contexts) differ, not every success story can be replicated. But there is real value in exchanging ideas and experiences.

We live the idea that success in today’s media landscape demands constant testing and innovation. Expect us to play around with the site, format, schedule etc. especially over the coming months. This is a bootstrap effort – leaning on our own resources instead of external investors or venture capital – so we need to run a lean operation and a tight ship. Using readymade third party building blocks (like the WordPress platform) is what enables incredible new journalism to come to life every day – and we hope to join the fray.

We aim for The Fix to be a trade publication for media professionals by media professionals. Our contributors are people who know and understand the daily grind in all the walks of the media industry – not just editorial but also analytics, product management, media development and many others. We hope that you will join us!

About our business model: as a non-profit initiative we hope to attract some grants to sustain The Fix in the short-term. But we plan to experiment with the different models that we explore in our coverage, to find the one right for us. So bookmark us, subscribe to our RSS feeds (those are still a thing!) and follow us on social media. 

We have great stories to tell.