Toolbox Management & Financing

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Funding the Future of Local News: Lessons for the UK and beyond from journalism funds around the world
Deep Insights

Lucas Batt, Rhiannon Davies

Greater Community Media; Public Interest News Foundation (PINF) (2026), 124 pp.

"In this report we have documented ten case studies of visionary journalism support funds that we can learn from, drawing out insights and experiences from interviews with the people behind these funds. As we ourselves have been founders and leaders of pioneering local news organisations in the UK, ... more

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Guía de ayudas a medios y publicidad institucional para el Tercer Sector de la Comunicación

Guadalupe Aguado-Guadalupe

Salamanca: Comunicación Social Ediciones y Publicaciones (2025), 68 pp.

"La presente guía expone el funcionamiento de las ayudas a medios de comunicación y la publicidad institucional, destacando su relevancia como posibles fuentes clave de financiación para medios del Tercer Sector y aquellos que se autodefinen como independientes. Se anal ... more

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Demokratie beginnt im Lokalen: Zeit für eine neue Medienförderung

Christian-Matthias Wellbrock, Matthias Künzler, Leyla Dogruel, Gergana Baeva

Berlin: Heinrich Böll Stiftung (2025), 30 pp.

"[...] mit welchen Instrumenten können journalistische Marktaustritte verringert und Neugründungen gefördert werden – und das mit möglichst effizientem Mitteleinsatz? In diesem Kurzgutachten vergleichen wir verschiedene strukturelle Maßnahmen sowie Förderinstrumente mit Blick auf Kriterien w ... more

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The Critical Role Support Organizations Can Play in Maturing the Local News Field

Anika Anand, Darryl Holliday

Democracy Fund; Commoner Company (2025), 16 pp.

"[...] this report aims to help support organizations foster a shared identity so that, in collaboration with funders and newsmakers, they can execute on our primary recommendation: Create a field-level agenda for the local news field. We recommend a field agenda address at least these four key goa ... ls, which should be refined and expanded through discussion and debate by field leaders. 1. Codify best practices and instruments for assessing community information needs. 2. Make support organizations’ offerings more accessible and navigable while streamlining, consolidating, and strengthening those offerings. 3. Engage in public policy development to generate public funding for newsmakers and shift the narrative on the value of local news. 4. Draw on knowledge from outside the local news field to attract and develop existing talent and leadership who can strengthen business practices and reimagine the role of local news and information for communities. This report draws from the authors’ extensive experience in local news, as well as insights from conversations with 22 local news field leaders and guidance from an advisory council of six people comprising representatives from these organizations. Together, the authors bring more than two decades of combined experience in local news, spanning legacy newsrooms, nonprofit and for-profit news startups, and support organizations. Independently, both have recognized the need for more cohesive field building efforts. Anika Anand has called for more coordination of support organizations and Darryl Holliday co-authored The Roadmap for Local News report. Although this report focuses on establishing a shared identity for support organizations, our research revealed that newsmakers and funders could also benefit from a structured articulation of their respective identities. This is because the effectiveness of support organizations, newsmakers, and funders cannot be evaluated in isolation–their work is deeply interconnected and collectively impacts the health of the local news field. We advocate for further research to help lay a stronger foundation for shared identities across the entire local news ecosystem, ultimately contributing to a more mature local news field." (Page 2) more

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The Economic Imperative of Investing in Public Interest Media

High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media

Forum on Information & Democracy (2025), 20 pp.

"Halting the decline of public interest media requires systematically recognizing, measuring, and rewarding the true value of public interest media to national and global economies and enabling governments to more effectively guide both public and private innovation. As we have argued, too much of t ... more

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Guía de acceso a la contratación pública para el Tercer Sector de la Comunicación

David Comet-Herrera, Lucía Benítez-Eyzaguirre, Juan Antonio Roa-Domínguez

Comunicación Social Ediciones y Publicaciones (2025), 85 pp.

"Esta guía ofrece una herramienta útil y práctica que facilita el acceso del TSC a las licitaciones públicas, contribuyendo a su sostenibilidad económica y fortaleciendo su autonomía e independencia. Proporciona información clara, sencilla y accesible sobre los procedimientos, requisitos y op ... more

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Enabling a Sustainable News Environment: A Framework for Media Finance Legislation
Deep Insights

Conny Moon Sehat, Amy Mitchell, Samuel Jens

Center for News, Technology & Innovation (CNTI) (2024), 46 pp.

"This study examines 23 recently enacted or proposed legislative efforts from 2018 through 2024 aimed at providing revenue streams for journalism. We hope it offers a fulsome method for analyzing possible paths forward. There are two main parts of the report: Part One groups this legislation into se ... more

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Public financing of news media in the EU: Final report

Astrid Henningsen, Adam Krcal

Luxembourg: European Union (2024), 162 pp.

"At an aggregate level, public allocations dedicated to public service media have increased only modestly in recent years. However, there are substantial variations in allocations (absolute and per capita) across countries. Some Member States have recently increased funding, others have cut back. As ... more

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Peer-based research funding as a model for journalism funding

Maria Latos, Frank Lobigs, Holger Wormer

Journalism, volume 25, issue 11 (2024), pp. 2440-2459

"Financing high-quality journalistic reporting is becoming increasingly difficult worldwide and economic pressure has intensified in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While numerous alternative funding possibilities are discussed, ranging from membership models to government funding, they should no ... more

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National journalism funds: A GFMD impact policy paper

Sameer Padania, Francesca Silvani

Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) (2023), 17 pp.

"As such, a National Fund for Journalism (NFJ) is a dedicated structure that is designed with a strategic sectoral purpose to provide long-term funding and financing to an independent journalism ecosystem in a particular country, region or place (as a Local or City Fund for Journalism, for example). ... It can take different forms, but in essence is designed to redress shortcomings, barriers or imbalances in a particular media market, or to incentivise, catalyse or accelerate new entrants or transformative processes in that market. A National Fund for Journalism (NFJ) can complement and reinforce other policy measures aimed at improving and strengthening the independent media ecosystem. NFJs are ideally nationally- or sometimes regionally-governed funding structures that are independent of the funders - including governments, bilaterals, multi-laterals, foundations, tech platforms and others - that provide them with financial resources. Even if underpinned principally by public money - either from a domestic government or from international government donors or both - their transparency and independence reduces the risk of the funder being seen to be interfering in the media landscape/market or in individual grantees. This can also help to give confidence to other sources of funding, such as philanthropic, tech, corporate or individual donations, where such donors are wary of being seen to fund media directly. Given these primary sources, NFJs need to operate with a high degree of accountability and transparency, and in general, NFJs are designed and administered by independent and professional bodies, with independent governance and transparent structures and processes. NFJs ideally include representation from diverse parts of the media sector, and potentially from citizens. An NFJ may be centrally administered through a single body or may be a mechanism to decentralise funding through diverse bodies or sub-funds to particular regions or communities, to counteract spatial, racial or other inequalities. As a sector-level intervention, an NFJ should have a longer horizon than project or programmatic funding schemes. In many locations, NFJs will need to address the need for long-term stable funding and therefore, if not established in perpetuity, could be designed to last for a minimum of ten years. NFJs should be established to exist beyond electoral or political cycles, emergencies or short-term project cycles. In many cases, for example, where funds are provided through regulatory mechanisms, they may be established in law." (Pages 4-5) more

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Sustaining Journalism, Sustaining Democracy: A Policy Guide on Platforms and the Press

Michael Karanicolas, Courtney Radsch, Akshat Agarwal, Nicholas Wilson

UCLA Information Policy Lab (2023), 68 pp.

"This publication considers the range of policy changes that have been tried or recommended by global regulators, assessing their impacts on press freedom and news media sustainability, with consideration for the risk of capture, and other potential tradeoffs of these interventions. It examines four ... more

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Creating National Funds to Support Journalism and Public-Interest Media
Deep Insights

Anya Schiffrin, Brigitte Alfter

Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) (2023), 17 pp.

"Global interest in funds to support journalism is on the rise, as governments and journalists seek ways to support quality information even as the business model has become more difficult. Some countries, including those in Northern Europe and the European Union, have been using these journalism fu ... more

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Public Support for Local and Community Media in Three Countries: A Comparative Study

Franz Krüger

African Journalism Studies, volume 44, issue 4 (2023), pp. 310-326

"In the discussion of possible solutions to the business crisis facing legacy media, insufficient attention has been paid to existing arrangements that channel public money to media serving marginalised audiences, particularly in Global South countries. Argentina and South Africa are upper middle-in ... more

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Incentivos tributarios para las industrias creativas: Guía práctica

Diana Rey Vásquez

Bogotá: Centro Regional para el Fomento del Libro en América Latina y el Caribe (CERLALC); Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (2023), 54 pp.

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Funding journalism using participatory grantmaking: A guide

Debs Grayson

Media Reform Coalition; Public Interest News Foundation (PINF); Institute of Welsh Affairs (2023), 55 pp.

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Indirect and Direct Subsidies for Media: The European Experience

Milan F. Živkovic, Karolina Leakovic

BBC Media Action; PRIMED (2022), 22 pp.

"This report presents four models of direct media subsidies in Europe: from Serbia, Croatia, Sweden and the European Union as well as an overview of reduced VAT rates for newspapers, digital publications and periodicals in EU countries and Serbia. In recent years, the value of direct state aid for m ... more

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Öffentliche Förderung journalistischer Informationsmedien in ausgewählten Ländern

Deutscher Bundestag (2021), 29 pp.

"Die Presse- und Medienförderung in den im Rahmen dieser Arbeit ausgewählten Ländern besteht aus vielfältigen Formen und Instrumenten. Angesichts der technischen Entwicklung und mit dieser einhergehenden Innovationen für den Bereich der Kommunikation, die auch mit neuen Anbietern auf digitalen ... more

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Television and the Afghan culture wars: brought to you by foreigners, warlords, and activists

Wazhmah Osman

Urbana: University of Illinois Press (2020), 272 pp.

"Portrayed in Western discourse as tribal and traditional, Afghans have in fact intensely debated women's rights, democracy, modernity, and Islam as part of their nation building in the post-9/11 era. Wazhmah Osman places television at the heart of these public and politically charged clashes while ... more

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Public Funding of High-Quality Journalism

Robin Foster, Mark Bunting

[no publisher] (2019), 58 pp.

"For this report, we have examined nine countries: the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Across all the countries surveyed, quality journalism is under pressure from well-documented and disruptive market and technology changes. Everywhere, there is growing public ... and political interest in finding new ways of securing the future of journalism, reflecting its perceived importance to society and the challenges faced by commercial providers. In some countries, the notion of public support for journalism is quite new, in others there has been a long-established tradition of government support since the 1960s. Different approaches have been taken, but there has emerged a common “toolkit” of measures: indirect support ( for example, a range of tax reliefs and exemptions which reduce costs to news providers and/or encourage higher consumption of news products and services); direct support (for example, direct grants which support various types of news production, marketing and distribution, or long-established public funding of public service media, such as the BBC); encouraging philanthropic support (for example, government support for private donations to support news provision). The longest established and most widely used schemes are typically based on indirect support for traditional media, in the form of sales tax or value-added-tax relief. These can be costly for government – for example many cost in the region of several hundred million AUD$ a year – and obviously vary by market size. Their critics argue that they can be a blunt form of support, as it is not clear how much of the direct cost of each scheme translates into actual benefits for the newspapers targeted, and they tend not to be linked to any specific type of content. As copy sales fall, they decline in cost and value. Recently, there have been moves (e.g. in France and the Nordic counties, with proposals to do so in the UK) to extend such schemes to digital news subscriptions, with the aim of reaching a wider group of beneficiaries (new as well as established news media), and offsetting a decline in the value of benefits to established publishers as their print sales decline [...] Alongside or in place of indirect support, the countries we surveyed are turning to more direct forms of public funding, which are seen to offer scope for better targeted support of the journalism that they believe matters to society. These include: • Support for research and innovation in business models, skills, distribution, marketing etc. Examples include new strategic and support funding schemes in France, new proposals in Sweden and Norway for platform-neutral innovation grants, an Italian fund to support pluralism and innovation, and the UK Cairncross proposal for an innovation fund. • Support for what in each country is thought to be the most “at -risk” journalism – typically local news in general, local “public interest” reporting, and investigative journalism. Examples include Canada’s proposed fund to support local journalism in underserved communities, the UK’s proposed local public interest journalism fund, France’s local and community media fund and similar proposals in Sweden • Support for journalism for indigenous communities or minority languages, where commercial provision is uneconomic – for example schemes in Canada and Finland • Tax credits which are tied to investment in all or particular aspects of news provision." (Executive summary, pages 4-5) more

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Alternative Models for Independent Media Funding: Who Will Pay for Journalism?

Milan F. Živkovic

Media Integrity Matters; South East European Media Observatory (2016), 23 pp.

"[...] Examples of support for non-profit media in France, the Netherlands, and Croatia demonstrate that it is possible, within a relatively short period, to develop the media system’s third sector, which is overall better at serving the communication needs of many cultural, local, and interest co ... more

Funding the Future of Local News: Lessons for the UK and beyond from journalism funds around the world Deep Insights

Enabling a Sustainable News Environment: A Framework for Media Finance Legislation Deep Insights

Creating National Funds to Support Journalism and Public-Interest Media Deep Insights

Funding the Future of Local News: Lessons for the UK and beyond from journalism funds around the world
Deep Insights

Enabling a Sustainable News Environment: A Framework for Media Finance Legislation
Deep Insights

Creating National Funds to Support Journalism and Public-Interest Media
Deep Insights