Earlier this year, at a national conference on the future of journalism in Canada, a few newsroom leaders and I found ourselves finally relaxed enough to speak honestly. One leader looked around the bar and said, “Sometimes I just want to work on a ferry.” Another laughed and said, “Honestly? I just want to work in a garden.” I added, “Some days I dream of working in a croissanterie.”

We were giggling like teenagers — half-joking, half-telling the truth.

A newer leader standing with us watched for a moment and quietly asked: “Are you all…okay? Because this is not normal.”

We were okay.

We also run respected, community-rooted independent newsrooms.

But what came out in that moment wasn’t personal burnout — it was the structural reality of leading independent media today.

Leading an independent newsroom means carrying layers of responsibility at once — operational, editorial, financial, relational, and emotional. Titles may differ across newsrooms, but the weight is similar: Leaders are asked to hold far more than any one person should, and they do it inside systems that rarely offer the stability or senior infrastructure needed to make that work sustainable.

None of us were talking about leaving journalism. We were naming the conditions that make the work far heavier than people realize.

Later in the conference, a panel on mental health brought another truth into focus. The conversation centered on reporters until one participant asked the question that shifted the room: “What about the mental health of leaders?”

The room went quiet. It struck me how often we overlook the people responsible for holding entire organizations together.

Because while reporters are stretched, so are the people coordinating everything around them — often with thin teams, overlapping roles, and almost no operational cushion.
In another conversation during that conference, someone voiced something I’ve since heard echoed across the country: Leaders end up carrying everything because the structure around them isn’t built to hold the weight.

And burnout, as I’ve come to understand it, isn’t about working too much — it’s about carrying too much without the support required to distribute the load.

This year, I’ve also seen something that worries me deeply. Our field depends on leaders who are rooted in community, equity, and new ways of doing journalism — yet our current structures make those very leaders the least supported, and therefore the most likely to leave.

And I’ve seen what that departure looks like. Leaders who spent years building trust and developing community-powered journalism quietly step away — not because they stopped believing in the work, but because the ecosystem makes staying nearly impossible. Many move into journalism-support organizations, not for easier work, but for the basic stability their newsrooms were never afforded.

It’s not passion that’s missing. It’s infrastructure.

I’ve also seen the emotional consequences of this structural precarity up close. At one gathering, another founder who had grown their newsroom from five staff to thirty confided that this explosive growth came without any added operational support. When I told them, “It’s not your fault — it’s structural,” their eyes filled with tears. They said, “I feel so seen right now.”

In other conversations, I’ve heard from leaders who spent a decade or more building organizations they loved, only to discover how vulnerable their roles were when governance or funding pressures shifted. It is destabilizing — and it is happening quietly, across the country.

And here is the consequence we are not talking about enough: a growing brain drain. Every conference reveals another founder quietly planning an exit. Another leader wondering how much longer they can continue. Another brilliant, community-rooted leader — often racialized, often a woman — carrying an impossible load with little structural support.

Meanwhile, we continue to celebrate innovation, AI, audience strategies, newsletters, and new tools. But innovation cannot stabilize a field built on leaders who are exhausted and overextended. We cannot keep celebrating resilience while ignoring the structural conditions that make resilience necessary.

We also need to stop glorifying leadership models that require sacrificing personal lives, rest, relationships, and mental space. These sacrifices may look like dedication, but they are symptoms of a system designed without care for the people inside it. The same pressures affect reporters in small newsrooms — and leaders often carry an added emotional and operational load that few people see.

If we want independent journalism to thrive, we need more than individual resilience. We need organizational infrastructure: operational directors, managing editors, development staff, and leadership roles that distribute responsibility instead of concentrating it onto one or two people. And we need stable, multi-year, mission-based commitments — not one-year project grants, but 5- or even 10-year funding horizons that allow newsrooms to plan, hire, and build sustainably. Larger institutions take this architecture for granted; small newsrooms simply cannot afford it — yet are expected to deliver the same level of impact. No field can thrive under those conditions.

If we want independent journalism to thrive, we need to stop treating self-sacrifice as a prerequisite for leadership and start building structures that allow leaders and reporters to be whole human beings, not endlessly resilient ones.

My prediction for 2026 is simple: Journalism will finally realize that the future of news depends on care — and that care must begin with the people holding our newsrooms together. Because the future of journalism isn’t just about innovation. It’s about care. And care is the missing infrastructure our sector needs.