After the Guardian wrote three weeks ago about the collapse of independent media all around the world, it quickly became apparent that was only half the story.

Press freedom is at its lowest ebb this century. Authoritarian rulers and an economic rout have combined to drive hundreds of titles out of business. 

But a number of small independent startups all over the world are staging a fightback. And in many cases, the thing that keeps them going is the generosity of readers.

For example, when Siddharth Varadarajan’s news website The Wire was hit with a lawsuit, it should have been a disaster. The Delhi-based editor knew things were financially delicate for the startup he had part-funded.

The announcement that a politician’s son intended to sue over one of their articles could have been fatal. Instead, a strange thing happened.

“People were so outraged that he would try to intimidate us, they started to send in money,” says Varadarajan. “It was astonishing.”

It was a turning point. The Wire quickly cast around for ways to solidify this support. It found inspiration in our own scheme – and our own members. The website is now setting up membership programmes based on the Guardian model.

“We’ve really looked to the Guardian for some of this,” says Varadarajan. Reader revenue made up 20% of the Wire’s income last year but will make up more than 40% this year. 

They are not alone. From Venezuela to Poland and from Hong Kong to Hungary, editors determined to break out of the tight stranglehold imposed by regimes, oligarchs and the even more brutal depradations of media market economics are finding support where they never thought it existed.

“There was a kind of resigned cynicism about the idea that people would actually pay for journalism, after a long period where advertising had been doing much of the heavy lifting,” says community ownership expert Dave Boyle, who worked on a crowdfunding project for Positive News that raised £250,000, and one with the New Internationalist in which the magazine smashed their £500,000 target, raising £750,000. “It turns out that in fact readers will pay, and they will pay more than most editors ever dared hope.”

The Membership Puzzle runs a database of media organisations experimenting with reader revenue models and, according to research director Emily Goligoski, the list expands weekly. “The level of experimentation is so impressive; it’s really exciting to see sites around the world setting up and really succeeding.”

Ng Hiu-tung began to think about setting up an independent news agency, crowdfunding seemed the best option. “I set the target for HK$3m (nearly £300,000) and Kickstarter said it would not be possible, as they had never seen a target that large. But I knew that if I wanted to do this properly, I was going to need that much. If Hong Kong people like this idea, they will support it.”

Two months later, he hit the target. He has since used the Guardian’s ownership structure as the basis for the legal agreement for his ownership of Factwire. “Our lawyers used many phrases from the Guardian documents to ensure that Factwire is truly independent and can’t be affected by its ownership.”

In Hungary, journalist Gergely Dudás – until recently editor of one of Hungary’s biggest papers – is currently running a crowdfunding campaign to raise €1m(£880,000) to start an independent news site: “The goal is ambitious because it’s about making a real journal,” says Dudás.

In neighbouring Poland, former Gazeta Wyborcza foreign editor Adam Leszczyński started OKO.press, a crowdfunded fact-checking and investigative website which has soared to become the fourth most quoted political website in the country.

Membership and reader donations have become an important part of the model for sites which often have a very specific beat or service. Local news sites have sprung up across the US – Civil Beats in Honolulu, the Charlotte Agenda, the Texas Tribune, the Voice of San Diego – that depend on reader donations and support as a crucial part of their funding.

Sites are set up around specific topics too, such as What The Fuck Just Happened Today?, which sends out a newsletter every day listing exactly what happened with Trump.

In Europe, investigations agencies and sites like Correctiv, Investico, Krautreporter, Blankspot, and Inside Story all look for donations. In the UK, local news site the Bristol Cable asks readers to donate £1 or £5 a month. Mada Masr in Egypt, working under incredibly challenging conditions, says on its website: “We want to be at the forefront of the new journalism movement in Egypt, where organisations are journalist-run and reader-funded … We want our accountability to ultimately be toward our readers.”

El Diario in Spain and De Correspondent in the Netherlands, both reader-led news organisations, have been at the forefront of this particular revolution.

“We’re seeing a new wave of news organisations online, all over the world,” says Prof Rosental Alves, director and founder of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas.

“There is a fantastic new generation of young journalists creating new models. Some of them are looking for a way to be profitable, but on the other hand you have a wave of small not-for-profit organisations getting funding from readers and foundations.”

These sites are breaking stories that some of the large media organisations won’t touch. In Chile, the Centre for Investigative Journalism (Ciper) has been monitoring irregular political financing and has come up with scoop after scoop. In Venezuela, Nelson Bocaranda, one of the country’s best-known journalists, set up Runrun.es and used the site to uncover the horrifying story of the Operación de Liberación y Protección del Pueblo (Operation to Liberate and Protect the People) – state-sanctioned paramilitary groups killing hundreds in raids around the country.

The Daily Maverick in South Africa made its name with its exceptional coverage of the Marikana miner massacre, a brutal police crackdown on a strike which resulted in 47 deaths, and this year led the Guptaleaks story, exposing financial links between the billionaire Guptas and the ruling party (and playing a role in the downfall of PR firm Bell Pottinger).

In Hong Kong, Factwire exposed the malfunctioning of a brand new air traffic control system. The Spinoff in New Zealand, best known for sarcastic, funny takes, also began to cover sexual violence and harassment stories last year, pre-Weinstein, and is now running more and more investigations, says senior editor Toby Manhire.

“We have to check and double check everything we do so carefully,” says Lisseth Boon of Runrun.es. “If we make the smallest mistake, we make it possible for action against us.” In the longer term, these are new relationships, and they are certain to be tested.

Ultimately, how sustainable will these new sites turn out to be? Many will disappear, for sure. But Varadarajan – now seeing a healthy circulation of 3.5m uniques a month – is serenely confident. “We’re not chasing ad views, so that gives us greater editorial freedom in terms of considering what you cover, and that helps us to stand out from the crowd.

“We are confident that we can weather many kinds of pressures because we rely on readers. The more the government puts pressure on us, the greater the likelihood that readers are going to come out and support us. That’s the kind of logic – it’s a virtuous cycle that we have tapped into.”