New technology deals between broadcasters and journalism startups are moving beyond simply delivering content to trying to remake how audiences connect with the people who report it.
Environmentalist Christine Holland, who has followed journalist Tiffany Higgins’ work from the Amazon River region, said she has often sent comments and questions through the Noosphere app. This week, Holland said Higgins responded to one of her messages—about Higgins’ story on Brazil’s arts community—by sending her a lengthy personal video, turning what Holland described as a typical one-way exchange into a more direct back-and-forth.
The change was a central reason a multiyear licensing agreement announced Friday drew attention beyond tech circles. Noosphere, a New York-based news company, signed with British broadcaster Sky News for access to its app technology that facilitates those connections, with Sky News immediately saying it will test the approach with its defense and security experts.
The Noosphere app’s guiding concept, according to the company’s description of the system, is to “give audiences access — not only to the news but to those who report it.” Sky News described its own planned use as “a dedicated experience expressly designed for highly engaged audiences,” suggesting that the broadcaster views the interaction layer as something that can be tailored for specific editorial teams.
For Noosphere, the licensing arrangement fits into an effort to operationalize what founder Jane Ferguson described as a broader shift toward industry endorsement of the model. Ferguson, a former war correspondent, said she has also been speaking with some U.S.-based news companies about similar deals, adding that “Getting the endorsement of the industry is really special for us” and that it has taken time for news organizations to be ready for “this level of a change.”
Noosphere is also built around journalist participation. Ferguson said the company hosts some two dozen journalists, including former NBC “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd and former CNN journalist Chris Cillizza, who work in a way Ferguson described as akin to independent contractors. The company’s reporters specialize in a more personal style of reportage, and part of that approach is making themselves available through the app to people who follow their work.
Holland said the availability matters because it changes what the audience feels they are getting from journalism. She described the experience as bringing a personal stake to stories and said she feels “it brings a personal stake to the stories, more like the journalist is talking to them with their work,” rather than delivering television news “from ‘on high.’” She also said, “With this, I am much more inclined to remain loyal” to the journalist and outlet.
Other audiences described similar expectations around response. Mike Varga, a retired businessman who lives near Tampa, Florida, said he is used to receiving no response or only pro forma replies when he writes to news organizations or politicians. He said Todd sent him a brief “thank you” video after Varga complimented a Todd story about tariffs, and that Varga later wrote to Ferguson after she did a story about the late British war photographer Paul Conroy; Ferguson then invited him to a focus group meeting about Noosphere.
Financial details of the Sky News partnership were not disclosed. Ferguson and Sky News did not provide terms, and Noosphere has also not publicly said how many subscribers it has, according to the report. Still, the company’s approach includes a revenue-sharing arrangement in which a person who subscribes to follow a specific Noosphere journalist shares in subscription fee revenue, a concept Ferguson said is not what Noosphere sells to a broadcaster like Sky News.
Ferguson linked the model to the broader competition for attention and the changing ways journalists monetize audience relationships. She said the rise of reporters going independent on platforms such as Substack or YouTube reflects audience appeal for what she described as authenticity—feeling that a “real human being” is behind a story—an experience Holland described in her own words as she said, “It’s so hard to know what is even written by a human being anymore,” adding, “I really appreciate that there is a real human being behind the story.”
Ferguson also said the licensing deal can be a midpoint for journalists who want more independence but are hesitant to work entirely on their own. She said, “We see a lot of appetite for deals like this,” and that the company was “very interested and looking forward to expanding into the U.S. marketplace,” as Sky News prepares to begin testing the app with its defense and security team.