Don Quixote and a fistful of frozen dollars

11 thousand subscribers in four days, OpenAI worried about intellectual property, smart paywalls, a new study on the publishing tech stack and 19 active calls.

Welcome!

This week on the Media Finance Monitor:

• Don Quixote and a fistful of frozen dollars

• 11 thousand subscribers in four days

• OpenAI accuses DeepSeek of inappropriately using its data

• House Democrats are looking for a creator-whisperer

• Smart paywalls and a new study on the publishing tech stack

• Help us with our media funding research!

• 19 active calls (7 new)

Don Quixote and a fistful of frozen dollars

I was really hoping to start with something different, but realistically, the US funding freeze and its effects are going to dominate this newsletter, and more importantly, the realities of global media funding for the foreseeable future. Bear with us.

RSF now quotes an exact figure, $268 million, that USAID was supposed to spend in 2025 on “independent media and the free flow of information” globally. This is not all US funding in the space, NED and DR…