The Good and Bad of Financing Your Own Global Investigation

In 2018 in Istanbul, two younger reporters from the US approached me and suggested we start a documentary podcast together. I was skeptical but tired of pitching ideas from Turkey and editors in New York telling me that my stories must have an American angle. Why did every story have to have the US in it? Maybe a podcast based in Istanbul was a way for freelance journalists to share engaging stories outside the US with an audience curious about lives beyond their own borders.

We voted for On Spec as our name as a parody or snub at editors who told us that they may take our stories “on speculation” after we had reported and written them paying our own expenses.

I agreed to lead the effort, and at first it was six freelancers: a hodgepodge of journalists from different backgrounds and varying levels of experience across mediums. We had some ideas: each season would have a theme, the reporter should have a depth of knowledge and personal connection to stories, no parachute journalism.

Learning Podcasting on the Job

None of us had created a podcast before. The team embraced the learning curve, and we’re still figuring out how to produce and fund a media startup, trying new approaches with each season based on audience feedback. We’ve learned some searing lessons as we wrap up our fifth season and march toward a sixth one.

Some of our biggest takeaways: Don’t give out cash advances to reporters who can disappear in the middle of a story; Don’t spend beyond your budget, or you’ll end up paying for the extra expenses personally; Invest in promoting the journalism you work so hard to produce, since there’s no point to making an investigative podcast when few people hear it. In the end, producing a podcast is like making a film, not writing a text story. Riveting art, music, and titles are the first draw for listeners.

We learned all this through trial and error.

At first, the team began holding lunches at each others’ homes to brainstorm story ideas and a name for the podcast. We voted for On Spec as our name as a parody or snub at editors who told us that they may take our stories “on speculation” after we had reported and written them paying our own expenses. The team decided, in contrast to that condescending approach, we would be more fair by commissioning a story based on a pitch. We are a reporter-strong, independent entity with no rigid corporate hierarchy.

Two more journalists joined us, making it a team of eight, and it was all hands on deck to get things done. We shared skills to keep costs down. We spoke eight languages between us and we would help each other with translations, voice-overs, marketing, and research. We tapped into Laney Community College in Oakland, California to hire interns to do marketing in exchange for journalism training workshops. The interns published blogs on our site, and when they did audio stories, we paid them. But that ended up being more labor intensive than we had time for, so we asked for willing volunteers to assist. We stopped the blog because it was bringing readers but not listeners – our goal was a wider listenership.

We called for pitches globally and hired local journalists worldwide. Our core team trained the reporters in writing 5,000-word scripts and the many layers of audio production. Reporters from Zambia to Brazil and Hong Kong were excited to make their debut half-hour documentaries.

Launching — and Sustaining — the Series

With each season, we tried to innovate and learn from the mistakes of the previous one… Our listener data told us few people listened longer than 30 minutes, so we adapted our episode run times not to exceed that.

Our first season was funded by a Kickstarter campaign — we asked for US$20,000 from our social networks. We received roughly US$22,000 in donations in a month. Our plan for making money was to apply for grants, find individual donors, and get subscriptions — we eventually signed up for Patreon. I knew not to expect profit for the first couple of seasons. But I never expected to work for free by our fifth season.

On Spec was slowly getting an audience but little pay.

It started with 300 downloads an episode, and by the fourth season, it had risen to about 3,000. That’s not a viral hit, but it’s a dedicated listenership akin to a small town.

With each season, we tried to innovate and learn from the mistakes of the previous one. By the third season, I knew I had to get on a live call with the reporters to edit instead of going back and forth over changes on Google docs, which could take days to resolve. Our listener data told us few people listened longer than 30 minutes, so we adapted our episode run times not to exceed that. Listeners also told us they wanted a mini-series, a story that kept them at the edge of their seat.

Turning to Collaboration

At this point, we had US$10,000 left in the On Spec account after all our previous rounds of fundraising and podcasts — not enough for a fifth season. I knew one of the best models for podcasting was collaborating with other podcasts. We had done cross-promotions and episode exchanges with smaller podcasts like ours. This time, I wanted to go all in with a bigger name. I pitched the genesis of Lethal Dissent: Iran’s Hunt for its Citizens Abroad to a producer colleague at The World, a renowned radio program based in the US and Canada with about three million listeners. I was reporting on Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022 for The World, and it seemed like a natural fit for a partnership since On Spec has a similar target audience.

The editors of The World, which is distributed by the nonprofit digital distribution channel PRX, were on board, and Lethal Dissent would become their first narrative podcast. The World’s biggest contribution involved producer Chris Harland Dunaway’s time working with me on the series. Still, both of our outlets had to apply for grants. Chris secured one from the Pulitzer Center, I got one from Radio Zamaneh (a GIJN member). And we still had the money remaining in the On Spec coffers.

Challenges of an Investigative Podcast

In all, we had a budget of about US$30,000, which was a normal amount for an On Spec podcast season. But I underestimated the time and cost of doing an investigative mini-series. A disadvantage of morphing a podcast format is that new challenges arise each time.

On Spec formed a team of 11 people for Lethal Dissent, including a musician, graphic artist, fact-checker, a multimedia producer, and a guest host. I’m the regular host but I was the lead reporter for this project and felt we needed another voice to introduce each episode for On Spec and writer Nafisa Haji, the guest host, would bring in her audience. The guest host, marketing assistant, researcher, and I worked without pay, and the rest of the team made minimal money. Our biggest expense was script editing. We had planned four episodes but ended up with nine — the story was just too complicated to make it that short.

But extending the series by five episodes doubled both the hours we worked and the reporting expenses, which included tape syncs, accommodations, transportation, and translation. We scrambled and applied for other grants in the midst of production, but were rejected. When I asked friends working at established podcast houses how much they spent on projects like ours, they said US$100,000. I knew we were in over our heads, but we kept working.

Most serial podcasts finish their investigation before dropping episodes, but we didn’t, in part because I kept finding new leads in the death and court case we investigated. Then the head of the kidnapping ring in the story threatened to take Chris and I to court for publishing his name, so we became part of the story. We produced the episodes weekly as we dropped them. The stress and work hours across time zones with such close deadlines meant many sleepless nights.

We ran out of the money to pay the script editor, so he paid personally because he was determined to make a quality podcast about a story we had risked our safety for in Turkey.

This has become my passion project when it should be a paid position in my 25-year journalism career.

It took about two years to complete Lethal Dissent and On Spec dropped the last episode on September 20 of this year. The series has been heard by thousands across the globe on both the On Spec and The World feeds, increasing our visibility while The World increased its podcast downloads. One Apple Podcast reviewer said it’s On Spec’s best work so far. It was lauded as “gripping”and “journalism at its best.” Listeners now can binge listen to all nine episodes. Also, On Spec is currently dropping biweekly conversations with experts about transnational repression — the theme of Lethal Dissent — through the end of 2024.

Impact and Future Plans

I’m proud of the project, and it was worth the pain because of the impact we have already made. Three of the dissidents the Islamic Republic were threatening and one whom the regime had tried to kidnap in Turkey received asylum in the US and France. Our investigation pushed their cases to the forefront of the long refugee line where they had been languishing in fear for years.

Still, I don’t want to work for free on such crucial journalism projects that should be funded either by listeners or grant funders. Moving forward, On Spec will focus more on marketing and fundraising before we dive into another investigation. We’ll collaborate with partners who can pay for a dedicated team of experienced investigative audio journalists. This has become my passion project when it should be a paid position in my 25-year journalism career.

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Fariba Nawa is a freelance journalist, author, and chief editor of On Spec Podcast. She has been covering global news for 25 years from places like Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and now Turkey. She is also a speaker and author of the book Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords and One Woman’s Journey through Afghanistan. A native Afghan, Fariba’s fluent in Farsi/Dari and can get by in Arabic and Turkish. Some recent work can be found in The World, Time, The Christian Science Monitor,  The New Yorker, and The Financial Times.