See our work.

Then put us to work for you.

 

Splice helps build viable media startups in Asia.

We do this by working with the global media ecosystem to report on, teach, advise, transform, and fund media startups.

We’re in a golden age of media.

For the first time, we’re able to create information and news faster and cheaper, and deliver it into the hands of those who want or need it.

Splice is here to help you build.

It’s been quite the year.

We’ve been running projects with people in Australia, Denmark, Hawaii, Mongolia, the Pacific Islands, the Philippines, Poland, and Singapore.

Research

We were commissioned to do a Philippines media landscape audit and report. For this project, we began with how the media environment has been affected by the Marcos Jr. win. We then got a little deeper into the increasingly profound role of creators and influencers. The report covers conversations with media professionals in mainstream media, influencers, and NGOs about the changes that are needed — and recommendations around the role that media programs can play in pivoting to this new media environment. We’ll share the report once we clear it with our partners.

Transformation

Frontier Myanmar has come a long way from where it was since the coup, the pandemic, and their physical relocation under duress. We built an MVP for Frontier Myanmar 3.0 that reimagined their mission, branding, and expanding role in the region.

Training

The East West Center and Internews commissioned us to run an Innovation Lab. This was a 3-track program covering key gaps identified by the Pacific Media Sustainability Project: lack of new digital skills training for media professionals, uncompetitive media products for communities, and undiversified revenue streams.

Splice provided participants training in 3 key areas:

  1. Modern journalism skills (eg. product management, audience research, community management, targeting audiences)

  2. Understanding product-market fit (eg. jobs-to-be-done, personas, feedback loops)

  3. New business models (eg. memberships, services, diaspora community products)

ABC hired us to mentor Beatrice Go. Beatrice is an ex-Rappler journalist in the Philippines with an interest in how women’s sport was covered in the media. We helped her formulate and test her assumptions around women’s sport, and then act on it with a report and actionable recommendations. Here’s more about the ABC’s Women in News and Sports Initiative.

The Temasek Foundation-funded Asia Journalism Fellowship hired us to run a media trends and product workshop for 14 mid-career journalists from around Asia. More on their program here.

Podcasting

We continue to be excited about the media startup ecosystem. Splice Pink is where we have quick conversations with media startup founders and journalist creators across the ecosystem. Have a listen, and subscribe if you love it.

Data

Splice Lens is a searchable database of the global media ecosystem. How media works together is increasingly relevant. This is a comprehensive database of everything media: from media startups, donors, and fact-checkers to investors, foundations, education, Big Tech, podcasters, and adtech. All in one sweet spot. Get your media search on.


Community

Planet Splice — our intended community hub for knowledge, resources and networking — is on Slack. We also hired Mili Semlani to manage the community with us. Come join the conversation — it’s nice in here.


Meanwhile, the Splice Telegram group continues to buzz with great media-worthy conversation and ideas from some of the most generous minds in the community. Are you in there yet?

 We’re Alan Soon and Rishad Patel.

There’s more about Splice here.

Our work in 2022

  • School of Splice logo

    School of Splice

    School of Splice Season 2 begins, with 20 audio lessons on building a viable media business.

  • ABC ID logo

    School of Splice Pacific

    We’re working with the ABC’s Pacific Media Assistance Scheme to train media startups to build and test media prototypes.

  • Frontier Myanmar logo

    Frontier Myanmar 3.0

    We’re pitching to build v3 of Frontier Myanmar — the mission, their branding, and their expanding role in the region

  • ICRC logo

    International Committee of the Red Cross

    We’re running a ICRC media and climate change roundtable in April

  • East-West Center logo

    Pacific Islands Innovation Lab

    We’re running a series of mentorships with media startups in the Pacific Islands for the East-West Center and Internews.

  • Splice Lights On image

    Splice Lights On 2022

    Our Splice Lights On survey for 2022 is looking to find out how media startups are doing 2 years into the pandemic.

  • Genie's lamp

    Splice Media Wishlist

    Our media wishlist for 2022. What dream feature, service, product, or resource would help you build a more viable media startup, or to grow as a media professional?

Areas of work

Our reporting, mentorship, research, workshops and talks, funding, and consulting

 
 

We report on the transformation of media in Asia.

We are read by people who work across the media ecosystem: SCMP, CNN, Quartz, BuzzFeed, Rappler, Twitter, Asahi Shimbun, ABC, New York University, FT, BBC, Meta, Straits Times, Reuters, Deutsche Welle, Open Society Foundation, Chartbeat, Google, Omidyar, and Malaysiakini.

We work with writers across the region, covering Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore, Australia, Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Sri Lanka.

We love talking about the inspiring work that media startups such as Frontier Myanmar, the Mekong Review, FactWire, New Naratif, Magdalene, Malaysiakini, Citizen Matters, and The News Lens are doing in Asia.

We also report on the gaps in media, especially when it comes to diversity, discrimination, opportunity, and access. We run these stories on our site and they are often picked up on Nieman Lab, IJ Net, Asian Correspondent, and others.

Our newsletters are part of that reporting. Our goal is to keep you informed of what’s happening in media trends: stories of transformation, innovation, and user experience and perception.

We’re always looking for stories. We pay well and on time. 

Read our stories and profiles

Want to write for us? Pitch us.

Copy icon
 

 Our content is meant to be copied.

This reporting is free to re-publish — our work is created under a Creative Commons license because we want it to be read and published elsewhere. That’s how we spread our ideas and that’s how we help our writers find more readers to connect with.

You just need to give Splice appropriate credit, link to our original story, and indicate if you’ve made changes on your end. You’ll find all the details on our Creative Commons license here.

Or just email us. We love email.

2. Mentorship

We support the important work that journalism schools and institutions are doing.

We’ve partnered with the University of Hong Kong, Nanyang Technological University, Australian Broadcasting Corporation International Development, Kaplan, ICFJ, AAJA, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and the Aga Khan University in Nairobi, Kenya in their efforts to grow the next generation of media professionals.

We provide coaching, internships, and advisory support.

The School of Splice is our most ambitious mentorship program so far. School of Splice gives you knowledge as a learning program, a network because it's community-led, and a one-on-one mentorship from some of the finest minds in media. 12 people enrolled in the Class of 2021 from 11 countries. See the School of Splice program here.

How can we help you?

3. Research

We audit and research media businesses and their relationships with their audiences. The dynamic between them is defined by change, and it is central to the Splice DNA to track its evolution.

UNDP Cambodia commissioned Splice to do a a media landscape audit of media alternatives in Cambodia. See the article, get the executive summary booklet, or download the full report here.

We also worked with Meta to audit the media landscape in Australia and New Zealand to understand what it would take for media startups to grow and thrive in the next 2-3 years. We spoke with almost forty media companies about the way they approached their market, their products, their users, and their ideas for the future.

We worked with the Nest Center for Journalism Innovation and Development on a media landscape audit and report to understand how journalism and funding worked in Mongolia. Here’s the website and report.

If you’d like to commission Splice for a research project, get in touch.

4. Workshops and talks

We take some of the ideas we’ve generated from our reporting and turn these into case studies that we teach at workshops, or other events such as conferences. This is one way we make a living.

We talk about media trends — what’s happening in this space, and how that affects the way consumers respond. More importantly, we drive discussions around what needs to be done by the industry.

We’re known for our work in media design; we’ve run design-thinking workshops with a focus on helping publishers connect problems that exist with potential solutions. We are building on a design canvas that we’ve created specifically for media.

We’ve done workshops and talks in various formats and content for the Asian American Journalists Association, Asia Journalism Fellowship, Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, Australian Broadcasting Corporation International Development, Deutsche Welle, East-West Center, ESSEC Business School, the European Journalism Centre, Free Press Unlimited, Google, Ink Publishing, International Committee of the Red Cross, International Media Support, Medtronic, Meta, Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Open Society Foundations, Society of News Design, United Nations Development Programme, the U.S. State Department, WAN-IFRA, and Wikimedia Foundation.

Need a Splice workshop? Email us.

5. Funding

We’re keen to support the work of media startups. 

We believe that while it’s important to support the transformation of traditional newsrooms, the real change to media can only come when small, nimble startups take the lead. We’re obsessed about finding ways to help build sustainable options for media.

We created and rolled out two funds supported by the Meta Journalism Project:

Splice Lights On (emergency support for Covid)

Splice Beta Fund (for product prototyping)

If you’re building a fund to support news orgs, let us help you. Reach out.

6. Consulting

Consulting is the deep, transformative work we’ve been doing with newsrooms big and small to drive change within organisations. We’ve worked in countries such as Indonesia, Myanmar, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Philippines. We work directly with these media organisations, and at times, with media support non-profits. This work pays for the bulk of our operating costs.

This is where we deploy the best of our case studies to solve specific problems. It could be to change mindsets in productisation and workflows.

We’ve designed operational processes for a newsroom for CNN and integrated it with their social strategy.

We worked with Google News Initiative in collaboration with Echos on Asia’s first design accelerator program for news and media companies in Asia to build a culture of innovation. As part of this program, the GNI Design Accelerator (GNIDA) partnered with seven small, medium, and large media companies from seven countries across Asia Pacific, helping to foster a design thinking mindset and creating seven new products (one per partner) that defined new audiences, new revenue models, organisational culture, and encouraged a product mindset.

We also helped build a membership model for Frontier Myanmar.

Do you have a media transformation project you’d like us to work on? Let’s talk.

Our services and how you can work with us

Transforming newsrooms

If you’re trying to turn around or rejuvenate a legacy business, we want to help. We’ll help you create new monetisable digital products for your audiences, and establish digital-first operations for your teams.

Building new media products

The product journey starts with the question: What do people want that they’re not getting? We’ll help you figure out the gaps in market, the jobs that people expect you to do, and we’ll help you plan and build those great news products that people want.

Growing audiences and building communities

We can help you grow and engage with your audiences. Often, it requires a hard look at what they need, and creating a regular and consistent engagement strategy. We’ll also make sure you’re tracking real metrics, not vanity traffic numbers.

Streamlining workflows and operations

Scale your processes, not teams. We can help you build the right tech stack to automate tasks, or simplify your current operations so that your team is able to focus on the most important parts of the work.

Mapping the media landscape

Media companies don’t grow in isolation. Having the right ecosystem can help create viable media businesses in a country. We can help you put media landscapes in context.

Training modern news and media teams

New technologies, new formats, and new audiences mean there’s a constant need for training. We can help get the right skills in place.

Case studies

Alan Soon and Rishad Patel Alan Soon and Rishad Patel

Mongolia: Codifying and funding the media ecosystem

For this report, we spoke with digital-first media startups, legacy media companies, NGOs, educators, early career journalists, freelancers, and YouTubers to detail trends, threats, and opportunities across the Mongolian media ecosystem.

Read More

“Splice is our No. 1 resource for media trends, challenges, and innovations in Asia Pacific.”

— Susan Kreifels
Media Programs Manager
East-West Center