Post by Pawel Wujec

Three years ago I got a message: "Could you meet with a publisher from Romania?" That's how one of the most interesting advisory adventures of my professional life began. Marcin Gadziński was launching the Amplify program at the time - looking for valuable, independent media outlets across Central and Eastern Europe that needed support, not just financial. He connected me with Razvan Ionescu, CEO and publisher of HotNews, a well-regarded Romanian news platform. In spring 2023, HotNews was at the dawn of a huge transformation. Recently acquired by ZYX Publishing Group, it had strong brand, solid reach and big dreams. It also had unbalanced revenue, outdated technology, an editorial identity that was hard to pin down, and a homepage as neglected as the company's office at the time (and the office was genuinely neglected 😊). Over nearly three years - workshops and meetings in Bucharest, Prague and Warsaw, countless Zoom calls - I watched up close as Razvan and his team rebuilt HotNews from the inside. New technology. New visual identity. New verticals. A developed advertising offer. But the boldest move was the "acquisition" of Catalin Tolontan and his top class reporting team, which gave the outlet a real journalistic identity and character. This in turn, after a year of hard work, enabled the recent launch of the first in the market subscription offer - Hotnews Plus. And the numbers? They behaved as they should, given the passion and quality of work 🙂 ⬆️ ⬆️ ⬆️ Now comes the next key milestone: Pluralis (a fund managed by Media Development Investment Fund) announces its investment in ZYX Publishing/HotNews (link in the comments). I'm super happy I could contribute a small piece to this. And I know, from watching the CEE landscape, that more stories like this are needed. Despite all the complaining, independent media in the region have great people and often strong brands. What they lack is capital and strategic support. Amplify and MDiF show this model works. Congratulations to the MDiF team, Grzegorz Kossakowski, Joanna Rozycka-Iwan, FCCA. To Razvan, Dragos Vilcu, and the whole HotNews team. My special thanks go to Marcin, for connecting us, and for what he believes in ❤️