
Jane Ferguson has won awards for unflinching reporting from dangerous lands including Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. So she was unlikely to be intimidated by seeking financing for a new journalism platform, despite tough times for the news industry.
“It’s very high pressure,” said Ferguson, founder of Noosphere. “I’m used to pressure in the field.”
Started this year, Noosphere offers journalists a place to showcase work to consumers who are attracted by a more personal style of reporting than they’d normally see on traditional outlets.
It’s similar to Substack, with a twist. Instead of paying for feeds of individual journalists — the Substack model — people who subscribe to Noosphere for $14.99 a month get access to all of its journalists. There are 20 so far, expected to increase to 24 with the site’s upcoming British launch.
Ferguson needed a change after 15 years on the road
Noosphere — named to reference a state of consciousness advanced by Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin — arrives at a time of flux in the news industry. Consumers are fleeing newspapers and television news and trying different approaches springing up in a new media world.
Ferguson raised $1 million to get Noosphere off the ground and is about to announce an additional round of investment.
Ferguson, 40, grew up in Northern Ireland, and was attracted to the high-stakes, high-risk world of international reporting. For CNN International and then PBS NewsHour, she worked largely alone, covering stories about famine and war crimes in South Sudan, the conflict in Syria and Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021.
The latter experience left her shell-shocked and heartbroken, wondering if she’d reached the end of that phase of her career. “I had been on the road for 15 years,” she said. “I was exhausted, and in some respects, burnt out.”
She settled in the United States, teaching — and learning — at Princeton. She took classes in entrepreneurship and built contacts in the business world. Ferguson knew how many of her former international colleagues had to hustle to find outlets for their work, and envisioned Noosphere as a landing spot. Her business partner, Seb Walker, worked at Vice Media, known for its strong international reporting before filing for bankruptcy in 2023.
“It’s gotten a lot harder to continue making a living doing this,” said Matthew Cassell, an international correspondent whose credits include Vice. A member of Noosphere’s inaugural class of journalists, Cassell has posted videos giving his perspectives on the Israel-Iran war, along with recent reporting from the West Bank.
Shrouq Al Aila contributed video from Gaza, showing efforts to distribute aid as the sound of gunfire is heard in the background. Oren Ziv reported from a missile strike in Israel, walking through a hospital’s shattered hallways to show the destruction.
“It feels like a really high-quality reporter is Face-Timing you from the field,” Ferguson said, “which is really cool.”
News consumers, particularly young ones, are souring on more stilted, conventional television news reporting, said veteran journalist Kate O’Brian, who is on Noosphere’s board of directors. “The stage has been set for an audience who wants to hear directly from the journalist,” O’Brian said.