Media outlets need to think about their technological independence too, and outlets of any size can act on. To help you in this process, this guide goes through the risks and presents a few good practices already put in place by independent media.
This is the second installment in our new series of case studies, published each month until the end of the year, exploring the practices and strategies of independent European media, along with our advice on how to put them into practice: technological independence, economic models, content diversification, and more. This guide is also available in French.
Editorial and financial independence is no longer enough. As digital tools increasingly become vectors of political pressure, newsrooms also need to think about their technological independence. Decisions to use, or step away from certain platforms, Twitter/X being the prime example, have pushed some outlets to take a public stance. But the question of technological independence actually plays out somewhere less visible to readers: in the tools, software and devices used internally to produce a newsroom’s journalism. The risks are numerous and concrete, to the point that some governments, institutions and media organisations have begun taking steps to free themselves from them.
This guide takes stock of these risks, while also presenting the good practices already put in place by several European newsrooms, along with a selection of concrete tools to help you get started, whatever the size of your team.
1. Does This Apply to Me?
Behind every newsroom lies a technical infrastructure, commonly known as a tech stack. This can include collaborative writing tools, messaging, video conferencing, and the technical structure of your website: its hosting, content management system and analytics tools. Choosing these tools is never neutral; it raises a series of challenges:
Consistency: By supporting you financially, your community is backing journalism it considers useful and true to the values it holds. The question of technological dependence —through social networks, but not only — has progressively made its way to mainstream public debate, and your supporters would be right to wonder: “By supporting this outlet, how much of my money ends up in the pockets of tech giants, when I’m already choosing to move away from them in my own life?” The stakes aren’t limited to internal daily operations: they concern your readers directly too, especially when it comes to the tools used to collect and process their own personal data.
Political risk: The International Criminal Court experienced this firsthand when it announced it was dropping Microsoft Office in favour of OpenDesk, after one of its judges, sanctioned by the United States, found himself cut off from a whole range of American digital services. This episode has pushed governments and international organisations, particularly in Europe, to take similar steps to strengthen their technological independence.
For the planet: Some tools can be overly bloated and are built to become obsolete by design , which can accelerate the need to replace your devices (computers, phones, etc.). Lighter alternatives can extend the lifespan of your equipment, and cut costs. This is the case at the French outlet Reporterre, for example, where the vast majority of computers run Linux rather than Windows. Being less resource-hungry, Linux helps delay the obsolescence of its devices. Services that collect less data can also help reduce your footprint.
Thinking about your technological independence isn’t just about guarding against risk. It’s also an opportunity: a way to reclaim control over tools that suit your newsroom, and to strengthen your readers’ trust by aligning your technical choices with your editorial values, as several outlets in this guide further illustrate . Reducing your dependence on Big Tech is possible, and often less costly and less technical than you might think… provided you don’t dive in blindly.
A few key terms
This guide contains some words you don’t come across every day. We’ve listed them here for reference.
Free software: software whose source code can be freely used, modified and redistributed. These freedoms are guaranteed by a free licence, which prevents a single publisher from keeping exclusive control over it.
Open source: software whose source code is public, and therefore available for anyone to view, modify and improve. Note: although this is often the case in practice, open-source software isn’t necessarily free software. Some publishers impose restrictions, particularly on redistribution or commercial reuse, and the software isn’t necessarily free of charge.
Proprietary software: software whose source code is closed and controlled by a company or publisher. Users generally cannot view, modify or redistribute the code.
Decentralisation: the development and governance of an infrastructure or service across several independent actors, rather than around a single authority or provider.
Self-hosting: installing and running software yourself on your own servers, rather than relying on an external provider. This approach offers greater control over data and infrastructure, but requires more resources and technical expertise.
2. How
Start by Auditing, not Replacing
Strengthening your technological independence can’t be improvised, and it doesn’t happen overnight. The first step is an honest audit of what you already have: which tools are actually being used, by whom, for what, at what cost, and how critical they are to the outlet’s day-to-day operations. This audit helps identify the easy substitutions (where a simple, suitable open-source alternative exists) and the areas of friction (where the transition will be costly in time or money).
How they did it: Follow the Money and De Correspondent (Netherlands) decided to collaborate on a technological transition they judged necessary. The two outlets published a dedicated page listing all of their digital tools, including those they still use and have no immediate plans to replace (Slack, 1Password, Shopify, etc.). It’s a substantial project, for which they recruited a dedicated Project Manager.
The Dutch coalition PublicSpaces, made up of around thirty organisations and cultural institutions, has formalised its own framework, nicknamed the “Digital Powerwash“, based on a series of questions to assess the level of risk associated with a given tool. Is the source code reusable? Can users see and export their data? VPRO, the Dutch public broadcasting group, used it to “clean up” its digital infrastructure and has shared its results. This framework can seem long and complex if used as-is, but nothing stops you adapting it. An outlet just starting out could limit itself to five or six key questions.
In practice:
Build a simple table (you can use the Digital Powerwash as a starting point) with the key criteria and information: tool / importance to the newsroom / cost / who uses it / host (country) / sensitive data / known alternative. Have several people across the team fill in the table, rather than just one, to produce a broad and thorough audit. You may well be surprised by the tools you find in use. Sort tools into three columns: replace soon (low friction), keep an eye on (medium friction), don’t touch for now (too critical/costly). Appoint someone within the outlet to own this project and oversee the rollout of the various tools.
Make the Switch, Gradually
The goal isn’t immediate or perfect change but the gradual reduction of the riskiest dependencies. Bringing about change gradually, with internal training, shared documentation and a review of updates, is essential if a change of tool is to become a genuine change of internal culture. It’s also an effective way to give journalists more control, so they take ownership of these tools.
Spotted elsewhere: The Belgian magazine Apache applies a gradual method. As the newsroom explains on its site: “Over the past few weeks, we’ve catalogued all the digital tools we use and are examining them critically. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll work on replacing the most problematic ones with alternative solutions. We’re not making this transition all at once, but step by step.” The team, which opted for Google Workspace when it was founded 16 years ago, will drop it this summer thanks to a system built on Nextcloud, an open-source tool.
In practice: Starting with the least critical tools, or those for which alternatives are obvious, can be the right approach. It may be wiser to look at your video conferencing system, for instance, before overhauling your content management system (CMS) doing so will help work out a method suited to your team ahead of heavier transitions later on. Stage the transition, moving from peripheral tools towards core ones, to avoid getting stuck mid-publication, for example. Note down what worked and what didn’t during the transition process. Set an official switch-over date too (even a symbolic one), rather than a vague, open-ended transition.
At the end of this guide, you’ll find a list of free and/or open-source tools.
Plan for the Costs and Time Required
Open source doesn’t mean free. Building these costs into your budget planning, and not underestimating the time and effort required, is essential to avoid abandoning the process partway through.
Spotted elsewhere: Set up as a cooperative, the Belgian outlet Médor made tool choices part of its founding principles: “How do you make a Belgian magazine using Californian software?” The team decided this wasn’t possible as it was incompatible with its mission and its promise to readers. But relying on free or open-source tools doesn’t mean no costs at all. The outlet recently spent €55,000 on a major update to Odoo, an open-source tool. For this, the Belgian magazine was transparent about its approach and ran a crowdfunding campaign to cover the costs of this specific project. A sign that these issues, which might seem like narrow, internal, technical concerns, can ultimately become solid arguments to put to your community.
Médor carries this argument into its cookie banner too, which reads “Médor doesn’t track you”, immediately highlighting its use of Matomo, an open-source tool considered more privacy-respecting than Google Analytics.
Related resource: Want to learn more about organising your fundraising campaigns? How do you turn your readers into a community of donors? We’ve compiled concrete examples and our advice on how to achieve this in the first guide of this series. “Turning your readers into a community of donors” — https://spheranetwork.com/turning-your-readers-into-a-community-of-donors/
The Markup, an American outlet investigating tech, has publicly documented what refusing all tracking tools costs it, what it calls its “privacy tax”. In 2020, the newsroom logged, hour by hour, every tool it had to recode in-house for lack of a privacy-respecting alternative on the market. The cost and time spent on each tool are broken down with full transparency: a homemade video player to replace YouTube (240 hours and $18,000), and a form to replace Google Forms (40 hours and $3,000). Contexte, a news outlet based between Paris and Brussels geared towards professionals working in politics, has also worked on building its own tech stack thanks to its in-house developers. It dropped Google Docs, for instance, in favour of Echo, its own collaborative editing tool, built specifically to meet its needs. It might require some initial investment, but building and strengthening independence from tech giants can also mean fine-tuning tools that best fit your own needs, systems and working methods, which could save you time and resources further down the road.
In practice:
Work on this together rather than separately: that’s the whole point of open source. That’s the choice Follow the Money and De Correspondent made: “We share the same journalistic mission, use similar technologies and are a comparable size. This way, we maximise our impact, avoid duplication, and can sometimes afford more affordable solutions.” This kind of pooled effort can even extend to jointly developing tools, as with beabee, a subscriber-management tool. Correctiv (Germany), The Bristol Cable (UK) and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism chose to build their own open-source solution together, rather than each facing unsuitable, overly costly tools on their own. The tool has since been picked up by other outlets, such as Fumaça in Portugal, which didn’t have to start from scratch.
Further reading: Basta!, alongside the Portail des médias indépendants (Independent Media Portal) and La Presse libre (The Free Press)… In France, media outlets are building shared infrastructure to reclaim their independence from tech platforms. “Beyond the platforms: Europe’s quiet technological revolution” — https://www.cjr.org/analysis/europe-quiet-tech-revolt-basta-la-presse-libre.php
Accept the grey areas, and be transparent
Compromises are inevitable, especially early in the process. Another important point: transparency. Some of the outlets mentioned above openly acknowledge certain concessions in their approach: at Reporterre, two computers still run Windows, mainly because of software that isn’t compatible with their other, Linux-based free operating system. At Médor, an external proofreader uses an extension only available on Word. These documented exceptions don’t invalidate the overall approach. Explain to your readers that you’ve adopted this process, and set out the reasons and the steps to come.
Related reading: “Newsroom independence also runs through their tools — From Google to Microsoft, European newsrooms often rely on tools from Silicon Valley. Some are seeking to break free, through free alternatives or homemade tools.” — https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/editorial-independence-means-technological-independence.php
How they did it: Follow the Money and De Correspondent openly admit they don’t know how long their transition will take. Their transparency is about the road travelled, not just a still-distant end point. To document the work publicly, they launched a newsletter to keep readers informed of the process. Its first edition was an interview with the person recruited to lead the project.
The French local outlet Mediacités launched a WhatsApp channel in 2025, drawing criticism for using a tool built by Meta, and therefore owned by a backer of Donald Trump. The outlet hadn’t reached internal consensus on the matter, but chose to own the decision on pragmatic grounds: without a mobile app, it’s the most effective channel for reaching readers who mostly read its investigations on their phones. Mediacités published its reasons for the choice, while noting that it’s considering building an app. During a recent fundraising campaign, the outlet set a target of €50,000 to make that happen.
A note on AI
Beyond the editorial, environmental, managerial and social questions raised by the use of these tools, there’s also a dependency issue in its own right: like office software or CMSs, generative AI tools often rely on American infrastructure subject to the same geopolitical risks. This was clearly illustrated by the temporary suspension, in June 2026, of access to Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 models by the US government: tools can, overnight, become inaccessible for reasons entirely beyond their users’ control.
Reporterre has banned generative AI from all of its output (writing, research, communications), in the name of consistency with its values and to donorswho fund 95.4% of its budget. The outlet chose trust over surveillance: no automated detection, no list of banned tools, but a clear principle for its community and its teams. Reporterre is well aware it has no way of ensuring, for instance, that its freelancers have followed these principles to the letter. It’s above all a direction it has set, which can guide the outlet’s practices and may be revised in future. Other French independent outlets such as Splann and Bon Pote have made similar choices, with the same aim of excluding generative AI from their editorial output. Bon Pote, for example, adds a note at the end of every article explicitly stating that no generative AI was used to produce it, highlighting the craftsmanship behind their work.
Related reading: “Generative AI: Reporterre says no, without policing it — The eco-focused outlet is banning generative AI from all of its output. More notable than the announcement itself: a manifesto that forbids without monitoring, resting on trust. A commitment with acknowledged limits, but judged essential towards the 54,000 donors funding the newsroom.” — https://www.medianes.org/ia-generative-reporterre-dit-non-sans-surveiller-pour-autant/
In practice
- Like Follow the Money and De Correspondent, publish an “our tech stack” page on your site, listing the tools you use, the reasons behind your choices, and the exceptions you’ve accepted.
- Update this page regularly, to highlight how things evolve over time.
- Mention this approach explicitly in your fundraising/subscription appeals. The issue of tech independence is gradually gaining traction in public debate and can be a solid argument in your campaigns.
- Thinking of drafting a charter on the use of artificial intelligence within your newsroom? Be precise with the terms you use. Consider going beyond your journalists’ editorial practices too: could a LinkedIn post, for instance, be AI-generated? Be specific about your approach and methods: what does an “AI-assisted” newsroom actually mean? If you need inspiration, the Nieman Lab has compiled several guidelines.
3. A few tools to get started
Here are a few accessible entry points, covering the most common use cases, favoured by the outlets mentioned above. Do look into other alternatives available too, suited to your needs and the size of your outlet.
- CryptPad — collaborative editing, an alternative to Google Docs and the Microsoft Office suite
- Nextcloud — online storage and workspace, replaces Google Drive
- Jitsi — video conferencing, replaces Google Meet
- Matomo — web analytics, replaces Google Analytics
- LibreOffice — office suite, replaces Google Workspace / Microsoft Office
- Linux — a free, open-source, no-cost alternative to Windows that can extend the life of your devices
- Proton Mail / Proton Drive — a European (Swiss) alternative to Gmail and Google Drive
- Framasoft — the French non-profit offers a range of tools to help you do without the tech giants
