Trouble at Global Press

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Global Press was founded in 2006 with a noble mission: to train and employ local women journalists in countries and regions with limited press freedom and economic opportunity. To date, it says, it has trained 275 women from Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa to remote areas of Asia, including Mongolia, to report on their home communities and counter stereotypes about the developing world often found in the Western press. 

But the organization is now at a turning point. Facing the same kind of funding crunch that has affected many other nonprofit newsrooms, Global Press is terminating the contracts of thirty-seven reporters, all in low- or moderate-income countries, by the end of the year. It has also laid off four full-time employees, let go of seven contract reporters and cut back on, or stopped using, seven contract editors. 

The group’s publication, Global Press Journal, has tightened its focus to three topics—global health, civil liberties, and the environment—and the organization will offer certificate programs, two-year fellowships, and senior reporting residencies. Reporters who are let go will be offered those new opportunities, according to Global Press. 

“It takes a lot to change an institution,” Cristi Hegranes, CEO and founder of Global Press, said in a phone interview. “I have been doing this for almost my entire adult life. I derive a significant part of my identity and my purpose in the world around creating jobs for journalists.”

She added: “Creating jobs for journalists is central to who I am and what drives me. It absolutely breaks my heart anytime someone has to be let go, especially due to layoffs.”

The organization’s annual budget is $5.5 million, and it has around five months in reserves, she said. “This summer, it became clear to us that many donors were pausing their giving until the US presidential election results were final,” Hegranes said. “That freeze deeply impacts cash flow and the logistics of our business. That is what prompted layoffs—an unfortunate but necessary business decision.”

The Columbia Journalism Review spoke with twelve former staffers of Global Press, including seven who were recently let go, who were critical of how the organization was run. They described an idealistic venture that has had some successes but overpromised and underdelivered, with a disorganized editorial strategy and a toxic work culture permeated with fear and secrecy. In the past year, freelancers’ pitches were continually refused, further contributing to their frustration and uncertainty.

This is not the first time Global Press has found itself under scrutiny. A year ago, an investigation by Semafor revealed that the organization had vastly inflated audience metrics as it pitched itself to funders. Hegranes said that Global Press currently receives around forty thousand monthly page views but actually has a much wider reach that isn’t captured in those metrics, because it partners with more than a hundred news outlets around the world. 

Austin Bachand, an American photo editor at Global Press from 2017 to 2021, said that Hegranes “has been saying for fifteen years that ‘next year is our year.’” He recalled endless promises of growth and breakthroughs that never came to fruition. He described a recurring pattern: securing grants, doing the bare minimum, and then moving on. He characterized his time at Global Press as deeply emotional and overwhelming, marked by a constant sense of failing the reporters. “We consistently let them down,” he said, noting the persistent inability to provide the necessary support for journalists in the field. He felt that the staff were overworked and ultimately used before being discarded.

“It was one of the hardest, most stressful times in my life,” said Bachand, describing a work culture characterized by gaslighting and bullying. He said he was once so close to Hegranes that he joined her on a trip to Rwanda, but that the relationship soured when he brought up issues of staff burnout. He was offered a leave to manage his stress, he said, but was let go when he returned. (“Global Press, and myself as a leader, prioritize and take seriously the mental and emotional health and wellness of our staff,” Hegranes said when pressed on this matter.) 

The fallout from the problems at Global Press is far more difficult for women in developing countries, for whom the work was their only source of income.

“I am falling apart,” said a reporter from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who worked for Global Press for several years and is raising four children on her own, and who was interviewed in French by phone and on WhatsApp. “Life has become extremely difficult. I haven’t found another job, and I have a family to support.” 

She said the layoffs came as a surprise: “We were told it was a transition period, that staff had to be reduced, and we were among those affected.”

A longtime former reporter who is based in East Africa said she was let go with less than a month’s notice. 

“I had a contract, but halfway through the year they told me, ‘We’re moving to a new model,’” said the reporter, who is raising a school-age child on her own and has taken on odd jobs. “I was building a home for my family, but I’ve had to stop until I can find another way to earn money.” She says that Global Press “looks good on paper, on the website. But for the women, no. In reality, we are just there to be used and then dumped.

“I don’t think I’ll continue as a journalist,” she added.

In Mexico, a former Global Press journalist struck a similar note. “What upset me most was the lack of notice,” said the journalist, who was told her contract wasn’t being renewed twenty days before it ran out. She is now looking for work and relying on her spouse’s income. “If I had been on my own, I would have faced serious financial trouble.” 

All three women spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation. Two of them said they had been asked to sign non-disparagement agreements as a condition of receiving severance payments as high as $1,000, a considerable sum in many countries.

Gamuchirai Masiyiwa, a reporter in Zimbabwe whom Hegranes referred to CJR, said she and her colleagues were hopeful about the organization’s future. 

“Everyone is excited about the new model and can’t wait to see where this new model will take us,” said Masiyiwa, who added that the new operating model was explained earlier this year and that the transition has gone smoothly. 

When Masiyiwa joined the organization, in 2016, the Zimbabwe team had twelve reporters; now only three remain. “Reporters leave, they come and go,” said Fortune Moyo, a former reporter in Zimbabwe who now tracks the impact of Global Press’s journalism worldwide. Moyo added that she was in touch with only a few of her former colleagues, and that those she knows are no longer working as journalists.

Former editors fear that without Global Press’s support, many of its reporters will struggle to find new opportunities. In countries like the DRC and Haiti, opportunities for journalists are scarce unless they’ve received sufficient training to work as freelancers for international publications. Yet, according to several former editors, many of these reporters are not adequately prepared to operate at the global level. “If the mission is to train these women to become journalists, you either need to prepare them to secure other jobs, or you have to take responsibility for them,” a former editor said. 

Nicole Neroulias Gupte, who was an editor at Global Press from 2021 to 2022, noted that non-disparagement agreements are rare in other journalism or nonprofit organizations she’s worked with. “It’s highly unethical, especially considering that many of these journalists lack access to legal counsel or financial safety nets,” said Gupte, who was not offered such an agreement. (Bachand, the former photo editor, said he was asked to sign an agreement but refused.)

Hegranes said the use of non-disparagement and non-defamation clauses is a “common practice,” but in the context of the United States—where journalists routinely disclose that they have been laid off, and often are quite critical of their former employers—the fear and anxiety expressed by the overseas journalists was palpable and striking. 

In the US, where Global Press now employs twelve full-time employees remotely, veterans of the organization also described a challenging environment. 

Contacted by CJR, an American former editor at Global Press said: “Working there left me traumatized, and I’m still afraid of the CEO. It’s too draining to relive that experience. I’ve spoken up before, but nothing changed. I hope this time will be different.” 

Another American, who held a senior role within the organization, described an atmosphere of fear so pervasive that, still wary of being monitored, she would agree to speak only in person. “After I left, I started having panic attacks,” she said, explaining that she lost faith in Global Press just months after joining. Shortly before she left, she wrote herself an email: “I don’t believe anything the CEO says anymore. And I couldn’t wait to leave.” 

When CJR attempted to contact a former business-side employee using her Global Press email, Hegranes wrote back minutes later, saying that Global Press was “implementing a new operating model.” The day after, Hegranes posted a message on the company’s Slack channel, instructing staff to forward any media inquiries they received so that management could “best determine the response.” (A screenshot of that message was sent to this reporter.)  

After the Semafor article came out, Hegranes circulated a lengthy memo declaring that she was “furious about this irresponsible coverage.” She said that two former contractors quoted on the record in that story were determined to undermine Global Press and accused Semafor cofounder and editor in chief Ben Smith, who cowrote the story, of having “used two of his own former employees as off-the-record sources without disclosing that information.” She added: “Semafor is a new competitor to Global Press, especially in African markets, and this is a clear attempt to discredit us.” (Smith declined to comment.)

In the phone interview, Hegranes said she and Global Press “have been targets of a yearslong campaign involving racism, violence, and defamation,” referring to former employees’ accounts of their negative experiences at the organization, including reviews on Glassdoor. 

Even those who had largely positive experiences noticed what they described as a “cult of personality” within Global Press. “I think everyone joins Global Press because the mission sounds really good,” said Dominic Ronzo, an American who resides in Australia, who started as an assistant photo editor and worked remotely. However, Ronzo observed a shift when journalists’ contracts ended: “Once your contract is up, you’re out, with no further support.”

Beyond that, Ronzo was disappointed to see many Global Press staffers departing “with the same opportunities they had when they started.” He added: “It is disheartening, given that the mission is supposed to be giving these people the opportunity to become journalists.”

After news director Krista Karch left in 2019, two other editorial leaders came and went; Karch returned two months ago, as editor in chief.

Hegranes said that many of the concerns about Global Press stemmed from the pandemic. “It’s certainly not the experience I want people to have here, and we’ve worked to make sure our systems and structures and organizational culture are much stronger than they were years ago,” she said. 

The organization, she said, has had to discard practices that are “beloved but not serving us anymore,” such as a “non-assignment policy,” which empowered reporters to identify what they wanted to write about but led to sporadic work and made audience engagement challenging. 

Hegranes and her board of directors meet each year, she said, to discuss “whether I am the right person to lead this organization.” 

She added: “I will do this job as long as I am the best person to be doing this job. But this is my life’s work, and I will make sure that the next era of Global Press without me, whenever that happens to be, is sturdy and strong.” 

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Sacha Biazzo is a Delacorte fellow at CJR.