At the recent GlobalFact conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, Peter Erdelyi, a media strategist based in Budapest, delivered a sobering wake-up call to the fact-checking community: the traditional safety net of philanthropic grants and government backing is fraying. For years, organizations dedicated to information integrity have operated under the assumption that their work is a “public good”—a noble, essential service that society has a moral obligation to fund. However, Erdelyi argues that this idealism ignores the shifting political winds, particularly in the United States, where the very act of checking facts is increasingly being reframed by critics as a tool for censorship. As this political consensus erodes, the reliance on subsidies or charity is no longer just risky; it is becoming a precarious strategy for long-term survival.
The core of Erdelyi’s argument is that fact-checkers must stop viewing themselves as public charities and start viewing themselves as providers of essential, high-value information. He illustrates this with a deeply personal example: his own struggle to decipher legitimate medical information regarding GLP-1 weight-loss medications. Faced with a sea of health misinformation, he realized he would happily pay $10 a month for expert, verified clarity. That $10 subscription wasn’t just a business transaction; it was a testament to the value of “information integrity.” His point is that when an outlet solves a concrete, daily problem for a specific person, that person becomes a customer who is willing to pay for truth—a revenue stream far more stable than the fickle moods of grant-giving foundations or the tightening budgets of state-led initiatives.
Transitioning to a consumer-driven model is easier said than done, and Erdelyi is careful to note that this shift requires a fundamental change in how journalists think about their audience. If you want people or businesses to pay for your work, you must move beyond the abstract concept of “saving democracy” and focus on tangible, “direct-to-life” problem solving. For instance, he suggests that fact-checkers could pivot to serve professional industries that are currently bleeding due to misinformation. Imagine providing specialized monitoring services for health insurance companies, creating verified information guides for overwhelmed pharmacists, or offering training packets for medical clinics. By targeting sectors with both a need for accuracy and the capital to pay for it, fact-checkers can transform their survival from a grant-writing scramble into a sustainable business model.
Perhaps the most provocative part of Erdelyi’s advice is his suggestion to look closely at who actually has the resources to buy into this mission. He candidly pointed out to the conference attendees that, while academics might share their intellectual goals, “lawyers have more money.” By identifying audience segments that value accuracy and have the disposable income to support it, media organizations can bridge the gap between democratic idealism and fiscal reality. The data supports this shift; of the two dozen organizations Erdelyi studied, the vast majority have already moved away from a, reliance on pure donations. Even those that still accept gifts are increasingly building out paid, exclusive products to secure their future.
However, moving toward this commercial model will demand a structural transformation that many mission-driven nonprofits are not currently prepared for. Erdelyi warns that these outlets cannot simply “add on” a business layer; they must fully embrace a new organizational DNA. This likely means that a successful, future-proofed newsroom of the future will be split roughly 50/50 between editorial staff and business-growth professionals. Many of these organizations started as small, editorial-first teams, but to survive, they must start hiring people who specialize in customer service, market expansion, and product development—roles that go far beyond writing the next fact-check.
Ultimately, Erdelyi’s message isn’t that institutions should immediately abandon their current funding sources, but that they must stop waiting for a miracle to save their existing models. He emphasizes that expecting the same funding methods of the past decade to work in the next is, as he put it, “not going to work as a strategy.” It is a call to action for leadership in the sector to begin the difficult process of retooling their operations now, while their current funding is still intact. For information integrity to endure in a hostile landscape, fact-checkers must stop being passive recipients of aid and start being active architects of their own economic independence, ensuring their work is valued not just by the ideals it represents, but by the concrete problems it solves.