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Editor’s note from Ludovic Blecher, Head of Google News Initiative Innovation: The GNI Innovation Challengeprogram is designed to stimulate forward-thinking ideas for the news industry. The story below by Miguel Paz, CEO and Founder of Reveniu, is part of an innovator seriessharing inspiring stories and learnings from funded projects.

“Do you believe me now?” is my favorite question. It’s the one I ask news organizations after they launch recurring payment programs for their audiences using Reveniu. When we look at the numbers from their first month using our tools, they see their revenues have doubled or sometimes even increased up to five times what they expected. These kinds of results drive our team’s work.

And it’s personal for me. As a former journalist and newsroom editor, I know how difficult it can be to develop technical solutions. When you are a small organization focused on producing good journalism, you don’t have the time or resources to develop advanced tools or platforms to drive audience revenue. I learned this firsthand when my last newsroom tried to develop a membership platform. We were discouraged by the sheer amount of work required — writing code, setting up payment gateways, fixing bugs, the list went on.

So I decided to build and launch Reveniu, a 5-minute-setup subscriptions and membership management platform for news organizations and small businesses with little to no tech experience or support. These businesses now have an easy-to-use platform with 24/7 support, including growth advice. These are the kinds of tools that would have helped me when I was in the newsroom myself.

The Google News Initiative’s support was crucial to jumpstart our work. The financial support we received from the Innovation Challenge, plus the help from the Global Partnerships team at Google Chile, gave our startup the necessary runway to conduct audience research for news organizations and overall research for product development. Since our launch, we’ve grown by an average of 20% month over month and raised over $300,000 in pre-seed money from venture capital funds and local angel investors. And our Software-as-a-Service is the one most widely used by newsrooms, newsletters and podcasts in Chile, a country with over 19 million people — and it’s having a concrete impact.

For example, Interferencia.cl now manages over 4,000 subscribers through Reveniu, representing an important part of their revenue stream. “El Semanal,” the country’s most influential business and finance newsletter, launched using Reveniu and has grown its subscription base three times beyond its original goals. The award-winning investigative reporter Alejandra Matus has funded the monthly operations for her website using Reveniu and was able to launch La Neta, which is partly funded by supporters paying through our platform. National broadcaster and podcaster Paula Molina and the podcast Relato Nacional are also growing their audience bases using our tools without having to spend any money upfront. 

At Reveniu, our goal is to help our customers build audiences and focus on delivering high-quality journalism, without worrying about cost. And as we expand to more Latin American countries in 2022, we look forward to supporting even more news creators and helping them grow their businesses.

Imagine living your truth, but not being able to tell anyone. That was my experience as a young queer person in small-town Alabama. Twenty years ago, nobody, including LGBTQ+ people, had the language we have today to talk about queerness or gender outside the binary. Coded language made it even more difficult to learn about the LGBTQ+ community, much less learn about myself. Even when I felt safe (mostly in anonymous chat rooms), I found it nearly impossible to talk about what I was going through.

It wasn’t until my college professor, Cliff Simon, shared his story that I first heard someone use terms like “gay” and “lesbian” without shame or judgement. Cliff’s story proved to me that I could be happy, and it’s the reason I came out — and ultimately, my inspiration to start VideoOut, an LGBTQ+ education and advocacy nonprofit.

As the population of openly LGBTQ+ people increases around the world, VideoOut aims to shepherd people from a place of limited exposure to a place of expanded understanding.

I’m queer trans nonbinary. Not long ago, queer was a derogatory word — it’s what the bullies used when they weaponized their language against me. As attitudes and society evolved, so did our language and our understanding of the power words have to uplift or disparage people.

This year, VideoOut launched The LGBTQ+ Learning Project. It includes multiple phases, including a comprehensive educational resource and live community events that ladder up to our long term goal of building a museum on the National Mall. The Google News Initiative has supported us every step of the way during the first phase – the LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy Program.

Partnering with the GNI gave VideoOut the opportunity to work with a team of PhD linguists from the LGBTQ+ community to research the origin, evolution and current usage of 100 words and phrases that range from clinical terminology, like HRT and dysphoria, to slang terms used in niche communities like drag and ballroom. We will continue to expand the data visualization, designed by Polygraph, and employGoogle Trends technology to show the popularity of search terms over time.

This tool guides journalists through the complex world of LGBTQ+ vernacular. It shows who should be credited when using words that belong to marginalized communities. Most importantly, it arms reporters with knowledge, helping them to use LGBTQ+ terminology respectfully and accurately.

The program aims to inform people who are less familiar with the LGBTQ+ community, with the hopes of warming attitudes and fostering allyship. To that end, we’ve partnered with Men’s Health magazine to help contextualize the research and data in the program. We hope to reach a new audience and model how sharing information makes the most impact when it’s done across lines of difference.

The tool will be accessible through the Men’s Health website.

Queer and trans people are not new, but increasingly people are beginning to feel safe about living authentically. According to a recent Gallup poll, “One in six [U.S.] adults in Generation Z identifies as LGBT.” At the same time, a GLAAD report found 45% of non-LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. say they’re confused by the different number of terms to describe individuals who comprise the LGBTQ+ community.

Thanks to the efforts of queer and trans people on the forefront of the liberation movement, things are better now than they have ever been — but they are still fragile. The news media can help. Journalists can reference this tool to ensure they are using language appropriately. They can also interact with members of the community in their process. For example, if there is a story written about trans rights, VideoOut believes the writer should interview trans people, particularly ones who are active in the movement for trans rights.

The LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy Program is more than a glossary, though at its simplest, it can function that way. It’s a way to understand the LGBTQ+ community, and hopefully, it will transform the way journalists — and all of us — write and talk about LGBTQ+ people.

When I was growing up, my Misho (my grandfather) was the chief of our tribe (Prairie Band Potawatomi) and would often tell my brother and me stories and tales sacred to our Indigenous history. When I was in second grade, I asked my Misho to come into my class to tell his stories for show and tell. I was immensely proud of him, and grateful for the opportunity to share my culture with my classmates. But after he left, my classmates started calling me names like “Pocahontas,” and war-whooping at me on the playground. After that, I didn’t mention my tribe or Native affiliation to classmates or colleagues again until I was in my 20s.

When I got pregnant, I realized I wanted to reconnect with my culture. I wanted my son to know about the powerful, strong history of the Prairie Band Potawatomi, and about his family and my Misho. I threw myself into trying to learn the language, the history and our stories again. I bought my son children’s books written by Indigenous authors, and watched every film and movie I could about Indigenous culture — even if it wasn’t about the Potawatomi.

As part of reconnecting with my heritage, I also joined Google’s Aboriginal and Indigenous Network (GAIN) to stay up to date on any native-focused events at work. I’d been a member of other employee resource groups at Google before, like Women@ and Pride@, but I wanted to find a group of other Native and Indigenous people. I was thrilled to discover GAIN and see that there were not only other Indigenous Googlers like me, but that there were enough of them to organize their own group.

During this time reconnecting to my heritage, I watched a film about the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. According to the United States Department of Justice’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Initiative, “American Indian and Alaska Native people suffer from unacceptable and disproportionately high levels of violence, which can have lasting impacts on families and communities.” In Australia and Canada, Aboriginal and First National Australian women are six times more likely to be victims of homicide than non-Native women. In the U.S., a Task Force was recently created with the purpose of working with tribal governments and developing protocols for the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples, among other things. I remember feeling completely gutted after listening to the stories of Indigenous women disappearing from their Indian reservation, never to be seen again. This is particularly traumatic for many Indigenous tribes as funeral drum and burial ceremonies are critical for the spirit to move on to the afterlife, and for those of us behind to mourn.

After seeing that film, I reached out to GAIN leadership and asked what we could do to raise awareness for MMIW. The next thing I knew, we had a working group of more than a dozen people raising awareness and resources for MMIW organizations. We’ve even held 10 events with Googlers, including panels with Black and Indigenous women to discuss the intersectionality of murdered and missing women of color, began a podcast listening group, held a 5K run and hosted other fundraising and awareness events. This experience has made me feel more connected to my tribe and my culture. It’s empowered me to share more of my whole self at work — I’ve introduced colleagues to my language, for instance, and I’ve felt like I have a space to identify as Native American. I’m proud to be a member of GAIN, and appreciate how much they help to raise awareness not only about Indigenous culture but also MMIW.

There is a saying in the Indigenous community about MMIW: “When an Indigenous woman goes missing, she goes missing twice — first her body vanishes and then her story.” With help from Googlers and GAIN, and through the work of MMIW organizations and their volunteers, I hope these Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit peoples do not go missing forever. You don’t have to be a Googler to take part: You can educate yourself about MMIW, look into policies meant to address this issue, or find ways to support organizations that advocate for MMIW. These missing people are not just faces on missing posters. They’re family — and we are all connected.