Discover the essential tools and platforms every independent journalist needs to create content, build an audience, and monetize their work in the digital age.
There has never been a better time to be an independent journalist in the truest sense of the word. The abundance of digital tools and platforms means it’s easy to create content, build your own audience, and monetize your work. Encouraged by the success of content creators making a living on the Internet, more journalists are looking to do the same (plus, their Internet fame guarantees further earning opportunities such as merchandising, training courses, and streaming deals). Some of the best examples include the founder of the Platformer Substack newsletterCasey Newton, the YouTuber and video producerJohnny Harris and the host of theThe Bitchuation Room podcastFrancesca Fiorentini.
Summary
This is not an exhaustive list and the tools aren’t guaranteed to help you emulate their success. It’s more about taking the first steps toward becoming an independent creator of journalistic content.
Google Products
You can’t go wrong with the basic elements of Google’s suite of products, available for free with any Google account.Google Drive offers 15 GB of free data storage per account for backing up or sharing files and photos, along withGoogle Docs andGoogle Sheets, which are useful for any shared project.Google Meet andGoogle Calendar are useful ways to set up and organize interviews. However, you’ll need to upgrade to aGoogle One Premium plan (€7.99 per month) if you want to record calls internally, or you can simplyinstall a browser extension (but with limitations). Google also has a range of usefulartificial intelligence products, such as speech-to-text, text-to-speech, AI translation, and AI video technology. The first 1,000 minutes are free,after that, you’ll have to pay.
Adobe Products
Adobe products are often what students learn to use, and once you understand them, you can use most other video and audio editing tools. However, legacy Adobe products come with a hefty price tag. A full suite of Adobe products, including the staples of Premiere Pro (video editing), Audition (audio editing), After Effects (video effects), Photoshop (graphic design), and Dreamweaver (website design), will set you back north of €50 per month (or €20 per month individually).
Content Creation
Video is an important tool if you want to build any kind of following on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. For this reason, you’ll need to be able to shoot, edit, and post-produce video content.
Video shooting
If you’re not going for a video camera, then a smartphone can be a lightweight and cost-effective alternative with the right apps.
FILMIC PRO is the popular mobile app for video shooting thanks to its manual control options and dual camera mode, Double Take. The price was recently increased to £51 per year with the switch to an annual subscription. If you purchased the app before the change in August 2022, you can still download the previous app.
Multirecs is a free alternative that can record with up to three cameras simultaneously.
Video editing
Produce videos on the go with your phone or at your desk with a desktop computer. You have plenty of options depending on your preferences.
Kdenlive, desktop video editor (free and open-source).
Capcut, video editor (free with watermark) for both desktop and mobile devices. It can export videos directly to social media platforms.
Lumafusion, (€25) is the gold standard of mobile video editing. It’s like having Adobe Premiere in your pocket.
Wochit, (free trial available, pay-as-you-go after at €0.02 per second of content), a desktop video editing tool with a stock content library. Good for quick social videos.
Mojo, (free) video editor specific for creating Instagram Stories and Reels, offering a wide range of different texts and templates.
Animation
They can improve the quality of your video and help you explain difficult concepts. Watch Johnny Harris’s videos for great examples. Both are simple drag-and-drop animation studios with a resource library designed for beginners.
Videoscribe (free week trial available, paid option up to €27 per month)
Subtitles
An indispensable tool for accessibility and for the many social media audiences who watch videos with the audio muted.
YouTube (free): while uploading a video to YouTube, you should use its subtitle features to create and download SRT files (a simple text document containing subtitles).
Clideo, (freemium, up to €7 per month) is an online tool that allows you to add subtitles manually or by uploading SRT files (see above). Clideo also lets you create SRT files.
Zubtitle (freemium, up to €40 per month), lets you create subtitled videos for specific platforms and video formats, for example Pinterest videos, YouTube Shorts, etc.
All-in-one
You want to keep your tech stack lightweight, so there are many benefits to using tools that serve multiple purposes.
Clideo (see above), offers 23 different video and audio tools including the subtitle feature.
Kapwing (freemium, up to €13 per month), offers hundreds of specific tasks including video editing, translation in 60 languages, meme generation, and AI-based tools that can remove silence from audio or remove backgrounds from videos.
Descript (freemium, up to €20 per month), a tool for video and podcast production. Features range from transcription, podcast studio, screen recording, producing clips for social media, overdubbing (AI voice synthesis of your own voice), removing filler words (uhs and ums), and more.
Audio – or more specifically podcasts – are a popular medium for content creators due to the relatively low production requirements involved. All you really need is a way to record and edit your conversations, a podcast hosting platform (see distribution further below), and maybe trimming some of the best audio bites for social media (see description above and audiograms below).
Audio recording
Voice Record Pro (free), if you’re doing your podcast in person, you can record your conversations using many apps on your phone. This provides all the necessary audio recording formats, note-taking features, audio editing and production tools, and, of course, various export options.
Audacity (free and open source), you can record directly on desktop, use multi-track audio editors like Audacity and then start cutting and producing your episode.
Hindenburg Pro (free trials available, €300 one-time or €10 per month), an audio editor tailored for podcasts and interviews. Unlike more general options, Hindenburg has features specific to voice editing.
Audiograms
Made popular by the tool of the same name and Headliner (below), this is an engaging visual way to repurpose your best audio bites into dynamic video. You can do this with desktop and mobile tools, and most work in a very similar way.
Audiogram, (freemium, paid up to €24), desktop only
Headliner, (freemium, paid up to €16), available on desktop and mobile devices
They are necessary to create eye-catching posts for your social media channels, especially Instagram.
Canva (freemium, €100 per year for individual pro accounts), is the ideal image design tool for beginners to create social media posts. It can also be used to create presentations, résumés, business cards, and more.
Visme (freemium, up to €20 per month), is an alternative that integrates with popular platforms like Mailchimp, Google Drive, Survey Monkey, Dropbox, Slack, and others.
Design Wizard (free with pay-as-you-go downloads or paid up to €8 per month), also offers more video design features.
Live content
These are an effective way to reach your audience in an informal way or at key moments. Most social media platforms offer native tools, but they can be rather basic. Some third-party tools can enhance your production values for live streaming.
Twitch (free) is a standalone live streaming platform and is most commonly associated with video games, but it also has a “creative” section.
Be.Live (two-week free trial available, paid up to £46 per month), integrates with Facebook and LinkedIn to add more production options within its live streaming features, such as name tags, logos, lower thirds, and overlays.
Streamyard (freemium, paid up to €32 per month), adds more production value to multiple social media channels, as well as to the virtual events platform Hopin.
Restream (freemium, paid up to €13 per month), adds more production value to social media channels, as well as the video editing tool Descript (for streaming a pre-recorded video), the private messaging platform Telegram, and the video communication tools Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
The interview
It can be done on platforms like Skype or Zoom for free and is a good solution for remote interviews, but these tools are not designed for high quality audio recording. Other platforms are emerging that allow you to host virtual interviews, record audio and video in HD, and then download the files separately. Most now also offer post-production editing tools and work more or less in the same way.
Now that you have great content, you want to get it in front of an interested audience and start building your following. In addition to the usual suspects, there are a growing number of alternatives to the big social media platforms, although they have yet to become equally influential.
Social Media Management Tools
These are key players in any social strategy for scheduling your carefully crafted posts and tracking your growth and performance.
Hootsuite (free trial available, paid individual plan), publishes and schedules posts, manages messages, analyzes activity, and promotes paid content across numerous platforms.
Sendible available, paid individual plan, a more affordable alternative with more limited usage.
Later (free trial available, paid individual plan €15 per month), includes access to Linkinbio, a link referral tool.
Link referral tools
An essential part of Instagram growth strategies, as the platform is notorious for not easily accommodating clickable links. The standard is to have a link referral tool in a profile’s bio section, which redirects your audience to all your other main channels and websites.
YouTube is the undisputed king of this world, where content creators big and small can (for free) publish content, grow subscribers, monetize that content, and use their popularity to boost other ventures. Beyond YouTube, there are a few other video platforms worth dabbling in.
Vimeo (paid, ranging from €9 to €51 per month), this platform hosts videos but, depending on the plan you choose, opens up other possibilities, such as virtual events and webinars, with live polls and registered participants.
Muse.ai (free trial available, paid €32 per month), a video player with AI indexing and video search features.
Nebula (contact the team) a streaming service made up of digital video creators and podcasters. Johnny Harris is on Nebula and promotes a unique code that gives his followers discounts on Curiosity Stream (which includes Nebula).
Podcast platforms
Discoverability has long been an issue with podcasts, but more platforms have emerged to help audiences find your show. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Soundcloud are the obvious mentions.
Podbean (freemium, up to €24 per month for individual plans), includes a directory of other podcast platforms, a podcast player and studio, as well as dynamic ad integration and monetization features.
Buzzsprout (freemium, up to €20 per month), includes a directory of other podcast platforms, advanced podcast analytics, automatic transcriptions, audiogram creators, and a website for your podcast.
Acast (freemium, up to €25 per month), includes Podcastle (recording, editing, and mixing podcasts), distribution to other platforms, data and analytics, and monetization features.
Padverb (free), is a podcast aggregation tool that can upload interviews simply by submitting an RSS feed. Guests and podcasters can be followed on the platform.
Newsletter
Despite the shutdown of Twitter’s Revue and Facebook’s Bulletin, newsletters are still a simple and effective way for content creators to stay in touch with their audience.
Substack (free, 10% revenue share), the newsletter subscription service that many content creators use for its simple tools and built-in monetization features.
Ghost (the basic price range varies from €7 to €12 per month. The Creator account starts at €20 and increases with the subscription), an all-in-one platform for creating newsletter subscriptions and recurring revenue.
Mailchimp (free with limits, paid starting at €16 for individuals and scales with subscription), focuses on creative tools, in-depth analytics, and marketing automation.
Beehiiv (freemium, paid up to €81 per month without scaling), is a newcomer that markets itself on growth tools.
Community Building
There are many ways you can contact your audience directly these days.
Telegram (free), the private messaging platform can be used to create channels and send mass messages to your subscribers. Other private messaging platforms would work as well.
Join sub text (free with a 20% revenue share), an internationally accessible SMS subscription service that journalists can use to send messages to their audience directly with news updates, either free or paid.
Discord (free), a community communication tool used by Casey Newman for Sidechannel, a subscriber-only perk for those who subscribe to Platformer, offering exclusive conversations and brainstorming sessions.
Clubhouse (free), having fallen from grace due to its pandemic-fueled popularity, the social audio tool gives content creators the means to host live conversations with guests and experts. Through workarounds, you can record these conversations and use them for podcasts and other content. Tools like Twitter Spaces have taken much of the wind out of Clubhouse’s sails.
Callin (free), a social podcasting tool created specifically for hosting live audio conversations in a Clubhouse style and then record, edit, and publish podcasts within the app.
Monetization
If you create great content, your followers will want to support you. Many tools make this possible.
Patreon (free with revenue sharing up to 12%), popular among general content creators on the Internet, processes audience donations at a basic level. Higher tiers offer analytics and promotional tools, as well as your own subscription levels.
Ko-fi (freemium with 5% revenue share, up to €5 a month without revenue share), a good alternative to Patreon that allows you to offer your audience a way to support you through memberships, one-time donations, and crowdfunding projects.
Memberful (unlimited test mode, free with 10% revenue share, up to €82/month plus a 4.9% revenue share), a monetization tool that integrates with WordPress websites, podcast platforms (like Buzzsprout and Acast), Discord communities, and its own newsletter provider.
Steady (free with a 5% revenue share), a simple monetization tool created with social media content creators in mind.
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