Where is the money? New perspectives on funding, financing and investment for public interest media

Public interest media see an increasingly complex and unclear future when it comes to funding, financing and investment.

While public interest journalism is an essential cornerstone of democracy, human rights and sustainable development, and therefore a central stakeholder in achieving a democratic mission to address inequality, there are shifting approaches on how best to support journalism. 

And as multiple economic and geopolitical crises have crystallised the need for international actors to find new more effective ways to provide at-scale and sustained support to national public interest media systems, new conversations are needed.

That is why we have spent two years taking a deep dive into regional perspectives of new forms of funding, financing and investment for public interest media that bring together context specific and localised perspectives.

Now more than ever our partners need to know where their next income streams are coming from – and what can be done.

A new report from IMS out on 31 October takes a deep dive into the funding, financing and investment landscape affecting media in four regions. It includes four regional deep dive chapters from Asia, Latin America, MENA and Africa. 

What we found is that donor funding is a crucial part of the revenue picture in all the regions studied, especially for high-risk, not-for-profit investigative and factchecking work and for those in exile or working in conflict settings. But there is appetite for more financing and investment tools – and workable new entry points.

Join us on 31 October 2024 for the report launch and to hear from the report authors, Guy Berger, IMS board chair, and Mira Milosevic, executive director, Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), as they present forward-looking insights about the landscape for journalism funding.

Dr Clare Cook, head of journalism and media viability at IMS, said: “In many of the countries where IMS works, financing journalism is a critical blocker. Public interest media, journalists and content producers are battling to finance their operations. So we urgently need to lean in and unfold where new forms of funding, financing and investment can be found and what needs to happen to make more capital available in the media viability sector.” 

This global reflection project comes amid a number of sector-level initiatives focused on media and business viability have thus been formed: the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM) is scaling up its grant making efforts and system-level financing mechanisms; the Media Viability Manifesto has set a common framework for joint action; and the Media Viability Accelerator, Ads for News and the News Sustainability Project are all efforts to gather data and tools that help overcome global-level data deficiency. Meanwhile, there is a growing cohort of national journalism funds looking to provide strategic, long-term financial support to public interest media as well as to media ecosystems more broadly. Media finance legislation with dominant tech companies is also rapidly evolving. This is in keeping with the OECD Development Co-operation Principles for Relevant and Effective Support to Media and the Information Environment‘s call for increased volumes of financial and other support to the media and the information environment.

Join us online on 31 October at 1pm CET for the report launch to discuss how we can work together to understand and underscore new funding, financing and investment to public interest media. For more on our viability work visit the Media Viability Manifesto and our Viability pages.