Social media was the main battleground in Romania’s recent period of intense political upheaval: the constitutional court cancelled the first round of the presidential election after allegations of Russian interference via suspicious TikTok influencers who boosted a far-right candidate. Pro-European Nicusor Dan eventually won the presidency in May despite a fierce online disinformation campaign.
Against this backdrop, independent Romanian media outlet PressOne decided it wanted to boost its presence on social media to reach new audiences who don’t normally follow political news, particularly women under the age of 30. That meant encouraging journalists to work in new ways to create engaging posts, to build stronger relationships with online followers, and to learn from influencers. It is worth mentioning that women have been pivotal in countering the rise of the far-right in politics and that Romania ranks last in the EU on the Gender Equality Index, lagging particularly in the area of health.
The resulting editorial product – Project F – has helped PressOne become a more innovative and resilient media organization, ready to apply the lessons it learned to new projects.
The topics Project F covers are weighty – women’s rights, abuse, and health – but the style is not heavy. “It’s not about compromising values, but creating posts with journalistic tools and integrity. The format is closer to what influencers are doing. It doesn’t mean it is selling out,” said editorial director Ioana Epure.
PressOne was set up in Cluj-Napoca and launched in September 2015. Its headquarters are now based in Bucharest, and the core team of 15 people is spread across Romania and other cities in Europe. PressOne focuses on exploring the key issues affecting Romania, and on finding solutions to them.
That was also the ethos for Project F: find out what are the key issues that matter to women under 30, and offer practical solutions. Connecting with the audience was baked into the product from the start: the team started out with an online survey promoted on social media and complemented that with in-person focus groups. The team asked what does it mean to be a woman in Romania in 2025 and then followed up with stories on those topics, incorporating comments from the audience in the posts.
That challenged the mindset that the journalist knows best when deciding on what stories to cover, but also created an ongoing feedback loop that kept generating new story ideas and interaction. Topics included TikTok trends affecting body image and mental health, abusive relationships and menstrual poverty, as well as lighter subjects like summer book recommendations.
We set three goals at the start of the year-long mentorship:
- Create a new, self-sustainable product which can reach a new audience and become a new source of revenue
- Help junior female journalists grow, assume more responsibilities, and develop their skills to reach audiences
- Embed the use of AI tools in newsroom processes to enable multi-format storytelling
Project F exceeded all its targets for numbers of posts, engagement and reach, with total views on Instagram almost hitting 1 million, ten times the project’s target of 100,000, a major achievement that had a lot to do with journalists listening to their audience and learning from influencers. That in turn helped boost the social media reach of PressOne.
On Instagram, Project F got 101,000 views with a post on femicide with Emilia Șercan, a Romanian investigative journalist who has been the target of online harassment. On TikTok, the most popular reel was about Birthgiving in Romanian hospitals. On YouTube, the top post with 10,000 views was about toxic relationships.
“PressOne is now significantly stronger, more resilient, and more visible than it was in November 2024, despite operating through one of the most turbulent political periods in recent Romanian history. These gains are reflected both in our audience indicators and in the increased impact of our investigative and thematic reporting,” Ioana said.
The biggest mindset shift that happened during the mentorship was an increase in the confidence of the team of young female journalists, who were concerned that they might not be taken seriously if they reported a story in a more easygoing way and revealed their own personality.
Ioana challenged her team to get out of the studio and film themselves in the streets or their homes, just as influencers do on social media. “You have to be willing to show yourself,” she said. Project F also sealed collaborations with leading influencers in areas relevant to the audience such as books and health.
PressOne’s mission is “to restore Romanians’ confidence in themselves. It’s not easy for us either, but that makes us all the more ambitious.”
And that is exactly what happened during this project: the young team’s confidence visibly improved as they experimented with a more personal style in their videos and gained experience in video editing and producing multi-format content, while strengthening their storytelling skills. The shift was rewarded by more likes and shares of posts.
(The following three posts illustrate the increasingly personal style of reporter Malina Gindu)
Journalists used AI tools to streamline production, edit videos, improve scripts and copy, and repurpose long-form investigations into short-form videos. This workflow meant an in-depth investigation could be transformed quickly into podcasts, video explainers, articles, and social media content.
Ioana’s confidence in her own leadership skills also increased as she increasingly trusted her team to follow their instincts and respond to the growing community they had created. My main job as a mentor was not to drive her on – she is one of the most highly motivated, well organised and inspiring editorial leaders that I have met. My role was more to encourage her to look after herself as much as she looks after her team, especially in these troubled political times.
“You challenged me to see the bigger picture and, at times, step back instead of constantly putting out small daily fires. We explored many ideas that helped me gain perspective – from the role of emotions in engaging audiences and improving as journalists, to questioning whether women’s voices are truly being heard, and even to prioritizing mental health for myself and the team,” Ioana said of the mentorship.
At the same time as running PressOne, Ioana is working on a PhD and her own newsletter. You might think those personal projects would distract her from the day job but she takes her learnings from them and applies them back to PressOne so there is a real synergy.
The only goal that the project did not reach was to generate enough new revenue to make the product sustainable as the challenging political and economic climate made it difficult to sign up advertisers.
However, the project did allow the team to experiment with new ways of generating funds such as social media collaborations, which should eventually help PressOne to reduce dependence on grants and raise more funding through special projects.
“The increased visibility and trust generated by Project F strengthened PressOne’s overall supporter base and created the foundation for future commercial partnerships once market conditions stabilize,” Ioana said.
In future, PressOne plans to secure advertiser partnerships and targeted funding before launching new projects, based on structured audience research and concept validation. PressOne will also continue to develop what it learnt about building niche but loyal communities around specific themes. It plans to keep pursuing in-depth reporting on women’s issues and will integrate these themes into its broader editorial strategy to ensure that the coverage becomes more sustainable.
“PressOne will continue to strengthen its position as a credible, socially responsible media outlet that uses its journalistic capacity and new storytelling formats to drive meaningful public engagement and long-term change,” Ioana said.
This mentorship process was conducted as part of the Business Innovation Synergizer programme within the Deepening Digital: Reinforcing Resilience project.