Bringing sources directly to the audience, The Centrum Media (TCM) uses the power of videos shared via social media to engage young audiences in politically divided Pakistan, writes Sophie Bennett.

The Centrum Media focuses on putting human faces to news stories and providing deeper context around contemporary political issues. It builds credibility by presenting its expert sources directly to the audience rather than providing its own analysis.

The Centrum Media launched in 2016 when CEO and Editor Talha Ahad returned to Pakistan after studying in the UK and working for digital news organizations such as Vice News and Now This. Upon returning, he saw a gap in the country’s traditional media landscape for a non-aligned media voice catering to younger audiences.

“In Pakistan, entertainment is politics… from the age of 15 to 55, everyone is into politics”, Ahad says. “But one of the things I think I started seeing was that the media is very polarized. So it’s either an extreme rightist or extreme leftist view.”

The Centrum Media is now Pakistan’s first all-digital independent news network and is creating a space for young experts rather than the traditional faces who dominate the media landscape.

“When I started TCM, and still now in Pakistan, whatever content, whether it’s news or politics, anything which we are consuming, I’m not sure how much accurate information we are getting”, Ahad says. “And through that information, we make our choices about our lives. And that choice then affects your life, your community, your country, everything.”

Starting with a small investment from family and friends, The Centrum Media has since grown organically by adding revenue streams including ad revenues from Facebook and YouTube and collaborations with other media organizations and brands. It is also experimenting with audience revenues and has recently set up a Patreon account that offers access to their full interviews in exchange for financial support.

Ahad says while he has been encouraged to focus on the organization’s website or to create an app, they’re not the places readers go for content.

“We have our website, but again, the numbers or the analytics in Pakistan tell us that no one goes to the website these days”, he says.

Instead, The Centrum Media is aiming to focus on YouTube, which Ahad says has been more favourable to TCM’s content in its algorithms in comparison to Facebook. They hope to increase their revenue stream from YouTube to up to 40 percent of overall revenue by 2030.

Within Pakistan, they are using in-depth local stories, often with a human-interest angle, to reach local audiences outside the major cities.

However, they are also hoping to expand internationally into countries including Australia, New Zealand, Norway, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, where ad rates are much better than in Pakistan.

In doing so, they hope to tell new types of stories about Pakistan. “Whenever you hear about Pakistan… it’s mostly about terrorism and mostly about extremism and politics, but not the human sort of element of this side of the world”, Ahad says.

As part of IPI’s Local Journalism Project, Jacqui Park talked to Talha Ahad at length about the journey of building The Centrum Media, their journalism mission, and the products and business model that are helping them deliver it.

The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Case Study: The Centrum Media

 

Park: Let’s start with what The Centrum Media is and how you got to where you are now.

Ahad: So it started back in 2016. I was studying in the UK, I did my bachelor’s and master’s in London in digital journalism and documentary filmmaking. Then after finishing my bachelor’s and master’s, I started working as a video journalist for CNN, for BBC, for VICE news, for Now This, for Asia Plus and then I moved back to Pakistan. From the beginning, I always wanted to come back to Pakistan and work from here. One of the things I realized is that there are so many untold stories about Pakistan and generally about humans that a lot of regular outlets were not that interested in.

I think one of the other very critical sorts of decisions at that point was that we wanted to be an independent digital news media outlet, specializing in video content. So we are Asia’s first video journalism platform producing only videos. So we don’t do articles, we don’t do blogs.

We want to be a very centrist news organization in Southeast Asia, especially starting from Pakistan. That’s where the word Centrum comes from. And now we have roughly a reach of about 30 percent outside Pakistan as well, in the Western world and India. And also one of the other important things which we wanted to do was to go to the experts to talk about the subjects. So, as an example, if I want to understand the Pakistani media, we don’t invite just any analyst or anyone to talk about that, we go directly to a source who is in the game, so that they can share their insight. We also wanted to give space to the young experts in the field rather than to traditional faces who are already in the media.

Park: What is the business model of The Centrum Media?

Ahad: We are an independent platform. We don’t have any investors, we don’t have any funders. I started with seed money from my family and friends. And then I think what we did smartly was to come up with ways of monetization through which we can sustain editorial independence. We started with literally one editor and one producer, with a very small team and in a very small room in one of my friend’s apartments. Now we have a team of about 35 full-time employees from journalists to producers, to graphic designers, to researchers and video editors. We have a full in-house team.

So there’s been like four or five different models which we have tested. We will work with brands or organizations who are aligned with our ideology, with our sort of vision and mission. But we are not making that much money in this way.

We have roughly three to four revenue streams. There is a small amount from YouTube and Facebook, a very, very small amount but we are hoping that over the next few years we will have a good revenue stream of at least 40 percent from YouTube. We will start focusing more on the international audience because YouTube rates are much better in the Western world than in Pakistan.

We are also producing content for other organizations as well. So, as an example, there are development organizations who want good storytelling like human-interest stories and things like that. And then we also work with the development sector more in terms of collaboration. This year in March we did an eight-part documentary series called “Wonder Women of Pakistan”. It was about females around Pakistan who are doing extraordinary work, and that was in collaboration with the U.N.

We’ve also set up a Patreon where you can basically become our member. Although we still haven’t started pushing this a lot because in Pakistan, we don’t have PayPal, we don’t have Amazon, so there are a lot of technological problems as well.

And in Pakistan, we’re willing to pay for Netflix, but no one will pay for really good journalism. So it’s very interesting, I think it’s just the behaviour of our audience.

Park: How do you measure your audience and engagement with your journalism?

Ahad: We are quite popular within the young demographic in Pakistan. Our core audience is 16 to 35 and our engagement is much higher than our reach because we normally try to not just get views but to start a debate within society. Our audience is very well-educated students who want some sort of a change, who want to add into the debate. We are not into the extreme masses because we are not a tabloid. We have a lot of content that is accessible to everyone but there’s also content that is sort of a bit more premium.

Park: You mentioned that you’re hoping to expand. How are you creating content for audiences outside of Pakistan?

Ahad: One of the things we are doing is subtitling every single video, which is taking time and effort but we have seen there is a need from the Western audience. So if you go to our channel you will see videos from two minutes to 30 minutes, and everything is subtitled. Also, our short-form content is often bilingual. As an example, if you’re interviewing an expert on international affairs, they are talking both in English and Urdu.

Park: You’ve said you focus on Facebook and YouTube. How has your experience been with these platforms?

Ahad: So yeah, we are mainly on social platforms. We have our website, but again, the numbers and the analytics in Pakistan tell us that no one goes to the website these days. So we are not focusing on our website.

At the start, we were quite happy with Facebook, with the reach and the engagement, and when we ran the ads on Facebook they were quite cheap. But now, especially after the elections, it started becoming a very difficult sort of platform, especially in this part of the world. I think in India, they have offices, but in Pakistan, there is no office. There is no contact with the representatives. So our videos got flagged a lot, and we got warnings from Facebook that your page is about to be unpublished and deleted and everything was just algorithms.

Obviously, a lot of people suggested that we should just start our own application or start working towards our website but again the problem is that the audience who we are targeting are not the sort of the people who will go to those places. So basically what we need to do is to bring our content in front of their eyes, to social media.

So now I think we are probably the fastest growing channel in Pakistan because YouTube is recommending our videos to our audience. It’s massive because I feel like there is so much need for serious, good quality content in Pakistan and in Asia. Right now somehow the YouTube algorithms really like us.

thecentrummedia.com/originals

Park: Could you explain a little bit more about your content and how you serve local audiences?

Ahad: We have four different pillars in terms of Centrum Media content verticals. One is the contextual news videos and then the explanation videos – they are very successful verticals. And the third one is the mini-documentaries or human-interest stories. Those are mostly very soft stories. Then the fourth is the diaries format, in-depth exclusive interviews with people who were on important seats, but never ever came on the media before.

I also see a huge need to serve local audiences. As an example, we just did a story on one community’s first female journalist. And obviously, she’s been doing journalism for the last, I don’t know, five or ten years, but no one has ever heard of her. So, there are these local stories and access is available if you are willing to look for them.

Park: What would you say is the job that your organization is doing for the audience?

Ahad: It’s a very important question. And every single day I think about this. When I started TCM, and still now in Pakistan, I’m not sure how much accurate information we are getting. And through that information, we make our choices about our lives. So I think essentially what we are trying to do is to give our audience that actual information from the actual source. So that’s one of the components and the second is also to give them some sort of hope about the country by showing these positive stories.

Park: And what’s the biggest lesson that you’ve learned along the way?

Ahad: One thing which I’ve learned is a lot of patience. People ask me what the secret ingredient is. There is no ingredient. It’s very simple. It’s hard work and patience. And these are the big themes in my life right now. In terms of the platform, there is so much need for good quality and truly informative content in the world, amid the fake news and misinformation. Especially for generations like Gen Z. I at least still have books in my house, but if you talk to someone who’s around 12 or 15 years old, they don’t read books, their phone is their library. So it all depends on what sort of a library you are building for them. That’s a huge responsibility.

Local Journalism Project Case Studies

 

This story is part of IPI’s Local Journalism Project. IPI’s work mapping, networking and supporting quality innovative media serving local communities is supported by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.