Award-winning international correspondent launches a new journalism platform

NEW YORK (AP) — Jane Ferguson has won awards for unflinching reporting from dangerous lands including Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. So she was unlikely to be intimidated by seeking financing for a new journalism platform, despite tough times for the news industry.

“It’s very high pressure,” said Ferguson, founder of Noosphere. “I’m used to pressure in the field.”

Started this year, Noosphere offers journalists a place to showcase work to consumers who are attracted by a more personal style of reporting than they’d normally see on traditional outlets.

It’s similar to Substack, with a twist. Instead of paying for feeds of individual journalists — the Substack model — people who subscribe to Noosphere for $14.99 a month get access to all of its journalists. There are 20 so far, expected to increase to 24 with the site’s upcoming British launch.

Ferguson needed a change after 15 years on the road

Noosphere — named to reference a state of consciousness advanced by Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin — arrives at a time of flux in the news industry. Consumers are fleeing newspapers and television news and trying different approaches springing up in a new media world.

Ferguson raised $1 million to get Noosphere off the ground and is about to announce an additional round of investment.

Ferguson, 40, grew up in Northern Ireland, and was attracted to the high-stakes, high-risk world of international reporting. For CNN International and then PBS NewsHour, she worked largely alone, covering stories about famine and war crimes in South Sudan, the conflict in Syria and Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

The latter experience left her shell-shocked and heartbroken, wondering if she’d reached the end of that phase of her career. “I had been on the road for 15 years,” she said. “I was exhausted, and in some respects, burnt out.”

She settled in the United States, teaching — and learning — at Princeton. She took classes in entrepreneurship and built contacts in the business world. Ferguson knew how many of her former international colleagues had to hustle to find outlets for their work, and envisioned Noosphere as a landing spot. Her business partner, Seb Walker, worked at Vice Media, known for its strong international reporting before filing for bankruptcy in 2023.

“It’s gotten a lot harder to continue making a living doing this,” said Matthew Cassell, an international correspondent whose credits include Vice. A member of Noosphere’s inaugural class of journalists, Cassell has posted videos giving his perspectives on the Israel-Iran war, along with recent reporting from the West Bank.

Shrouq Al Aila contributed video from Gaza, showing efforts to distribute aid as the sound of gunfire is heard in the background. Oren Ziv reported from a missile strike in Israel, walking through a hospital’s shattered hallways to show the destruction.

“It feels like a really high-quality reporter is Face-Timing you from the field,” Ferguson said, “which is really cool.”

News consumers, particularly young ones, are souring on more stilted, conventional television news reporting, said veteran journalist Kate O’Brian, who is on Noosphere’s board of directors. “The stage has been set for an audience who wants to hear directly from the journalist,” O’Brian said.

Ferguson envisions a reporting staff that is roughly half international, half based in the United States. Former CNN journalist Chris Cillizza reports on Washington for Noosphere.

Chuck Todd signing is Noosphere’s biggest to date

Her biggest signing to date is former “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd. He started a Sunday night show in June, with “War Room” host Steve Bannon and Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council, as his first guests. Todd has hired the former producer for Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show, a clue to his ambitions for an eclectic show interviewing interesting people from politics and business.

“Jane’s hard to say no to,” Todd said. “Like any smart executive, she knows what she doesn’t know, and goes to find smart people who she thinks know more.”

Ferguson’s bet is that audiences can only afford so many Substack subscriptions to individual journalists, and that Noosphere will offer access to more at a set price. She’s also talked to news outlets interested in acquiring some of the reporters’ work.

The challenge to getting Noosphere established is an increasingly crowded marketplace, and several of her journalists aren’t household names.

Noosphere journalists are paid a percentage of subscription fees, and given a greater amount if a subscriber specifically cites that contributor’s work in signing on. Ferguson will not say how many subscribers she has yet.

“Substack created a market that did not exist before and I give them huge kudos for that,” O’Brian said. “This is just a different way of approaching it.”

To succeed, “you have to offer a lot,” Todd said. “You can’t just offer one or two things. Every hot spot around the world, Noosphere will have journalists on the ground. They have a reasonable chance to be very successful in their lane. The question is how big the lane can get.”

Todd said Noosphere’s advantage is that it has been created by reporters, a distinction from the lack of journalism experience found among executives in the business, he said.

Ferguson, too, has wondered whether journalism can survive the diminishment or death of news organizations. “The solution for the problems of the industry are going to come from journalists and not media executives,” she said.

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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.