There’s never been a better time to innovate in media, so it’s good to be back to EurActiv.

Eight years ago I helped launch BlogActiv, before leaving for the world of EU communications agencies. Give or take a month or two, my short stint fell in the middle of EurActiv’s 15 years of life so far. It’s good to be back, albeit part-time, to help the Media Innovation team with the next stage in EurActiv’s evolution.

Because once you look back, it’s actually quite a story.

Not fitting the mould

Personally I think EurActiv gets a raw deal from some in Brussels, a city where most people find it much easier to criticise someone else than actually do something themselves.

After all, for any observer of online media or EU affairs these past 15 years, EurActiv just doesn’t fit. Consider:

• it’s that rarest of objects: an EC-funded project that resulted in a self-sustaining, successful business. Most don’t.
• and not just any sort of business: an online media business, born in the first dotcom, which survived the first dotcom crash. Most didn’t.
• and not just any online media business – an EU-focused media business. Few survive.
• and not just one business – while EurActiv.com is produced in three languages by teams in four capitals, there’s also a network of franchises in ten more countries, each covering EU affairs from their national perspective, in their national language.

Together, the EurActiv network provides free access to localised news and opinion on EU affairs in 12 languages. Would anyone care to estimate how much it would cost the EU Commission to do that by outsourcing it via a communications project?

Digital native

To understand how it got here, you first need to consider how the online media landscape has changed since 2000.

 

Back then, legacy media were still outsourcing their websites as they struggled with the upcoming revenue plunge a few of them could dimly see approaching. But they still had no idea just how bad things were going to get.

 

In parallel, a bewildering array of content start-ups were busily burning through venture capital as if it would never stop. But it did – those start-ups are now a distant memory.

Today, the legacy media that survived have fully digitised their newsrooms, upended their processes, created new content forms, adapted to social media and incorporated native advertising. All of that … to face their fifth (or is it sixth?) existential threat in the form of programmatic advertising, mobile uptake and ad blockers. There will doubtless be more.

Watching their struggles, a new generation of digital native media emerged a few years ago: Buzzfeed, Vox, Upworthy, Quartz, Vice, Circa and more are (or were) technology companies that do news, rather than news organisations using technology. After revolutionising everything from business model to technology, they have raised hundreds of millions in venture capital to expand globally.

Finding its own path

EurActiv followed a different path. As a dotcom content start-up, it created a business/editorial model that now looks conservative compared to the brand journalism focus of many of today’s digital natives. Moreover, it expanded internationally without venture capital to become a unique niche player with on average over 660k monthly unique visitors across its network.

I’ve spent a grand total of 6 months working at EurActiv, so I’m not well placed to say how they did this, but I do know how it feels to walk back into the office after eight years away.

It still feels like a dotcom start-up. There’s still that buzz from the news- and translation desks, and the constant to-and-fro between them and the IT team sitting next to them. There are still tiny rooms for stand-up meetings, weekly team stand-ups every Monday, and a steady programme of events and workshops with members who pay to be part of the EurActiv club – something other news operations have only just started doing. There’s still a big bowl of fruit at the entrance and team photos in the kitchen. Everything’s still bright yellow.

But in many ways it doesn’t feel like a ‘normal’ stand-up. There is no table tennis, beanbags or pinball machines. No beer in the fridge or cuddly toys. People may have stock or stock options, but there’s no sense of getting rich quick by building the next Uber for pet-minders.

Instead, they’re thinking about the next innovation in news.

Innovation pipeline

Because if there’s an answer to the place, it’s that innovation was baked into the culture from Day One.

Well before I joined they had already created a site using XML-based content management, and have migrated to open source, and obsessively improved interface and design, several times since I left.

BlogActiv was first piloted as a separate blogging platform – today we’d have called it a Minimum Viable Product, but this was 2007, not 2011. It worked, has been integrated more and more into the main site in successive redesigns, and now generates an average of 45 new posts per week.

And today, via EC-funded research, EurActiv is piloting new concepts [in Data Journalism] like EurActory and PolicyLine, which will – if successful – be integrated into the main site in turn.

EurActiv, in other words, has an innovation pipeline that is less about venture capital and more about culture. I don’t know what’s next, but it’s good to be back.

 

Mathew Lowry,

Founder of BlogActiv.eu, Fresh Integral Communications / Cohereal

Author : EurActiv: Pioneering Values in European Media
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