Romania’s investigative outlet Recorder has built a reputation for in-depth reporting that reaches mass audiences and drives public debate. As demand for its journalism grew, the organization focused on strengthening its operational structure and revenue model to support long-term sustainability. With strategic support, Recorder expanded its reach, diversified income and reinforced its position as the country’s leading investigative video newsroom.
The work
Recorder entered Amplify Europe to strengthen leadership, improve organizational management and enhance audience engagement. While its editorial impact was already significant, the organization needed to build capacity beyond the newsroom to support growth.
Through targeted support, Recorder developed its non-editorial operations, introducing dedicated roles in fundraising, product and social media. A new executive leadership structure and middle-management layer improved coordination and reduced reliance on founders.
At the same time, Recorder expanded its editorial formats, launching a daily video podcast and a bi-monthly opinion series to reach wider audiences. A large-scale audience survey, with more than 30,000 respondents, informed its multi-platform strategy and strengthened engagement.
The impact
Recorder’s transformation resulted in substantial growth across audience, revenue and organizational capacity.
The organization increased its unique viewers across platforms by 595% and revenue by 22%, significantly contributing to its national reach.
Audience support deepened, with the supporter base growing by 309 percent, resulting in stronger community engagement leading to a more diversified funding model.
Recorder also expanded its team by 93 percent, effectively doubling its journalistic capacity. Organizational improvements strengthened resilience, enabling the newsroom to sustain high-impact investigations while scaling operations.
The results demonstrate the effectiveness of an audience-supported model combined with structured organizational development. For every euro of innovation funding, Recorder generated approximately €139 in revenue, highlighting both financial and operational efficiency.
MDIF helped us clearly recognize that we had a significant need to grow and organize our extra-editorial department … After joining Amplify Europe, we were able to hire a fundraising manager, a social media manager and a product manager, which allowed us to build a fully functional extra-editorial department, now coordinated by a full-time member of the team. Additionally, we managed to understand the importance of having a clear vision, mission and strategy, as well as the need to set specific objectives. These changes have had a significant impact on our organization’s growth and resilience, and we are proud of how much we’ve been able to accomplish since then.
– Alina Paduraru, Executive Manager