Biggest Success Factors

Vilaweb's biggest success factor has been its early adoption of the membership approach as a new way to finance journalism, although this strategy took more than ten years to develop fully. Significant increases in membership were observed during key events such as the Catalan referendum in 2017, the pandemic, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Also always being flexible and innovative, exploring various financing methods beyond merely selling journalism, such as programming websites and producing online content for others has been an important factor in the past but remains until today: Partal says every decision at Vilaweb is made by balancing a journalistic perspective with business considerations, e.g. deciding that they can’t afford to cover football (although very important in Catalonia) or making a deal with the Washington Post regarding the coverage of foreign affairs, instead of building their own correspondent network.

Partal says that Vilaweb also benefits from not being a too large company, maintaining a functional team size of about 30 people which he considers perfect for a national newspaper not covering day-to-day news.

Consistency has also been crucial for Vilaweb, ensuring that their mission and focus are always clear to the public, thus avoiding any confusion about what they stand for, while on the other hand Partal says they reinvented Vilaweb 3 or 4 times in the last 29 years of existence.