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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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The Impact of Ending U.S. International Media Assistance

Daniel Sabet, Susan Abbott

Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2026), 45 pp.

"A free press is indispensable to democracy and accountability. Independent media delivers fact-based information to policymakers and voters alike, provides a forum to debate public policy, offers a tool to identify corruption and abuses, furnishes a means to hold political leaders to account, and c ... reates an avenue for those out of power to peacefully express themselves. In recognition of its importance, the United States firmly supported independent journalism around the globe from the aftermath of World War II until 2025. This assistance came to an abrupt halt in early 2025 immediately following the inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S. president. The termination of U.S. assistance to hundreds of media organizations, independent outlets, journalists, and civil society organizations came at a particularly hard time for independent media. The sector already faced an existential crisis in many parts of the world in the face of rapid technological change, declining revenues, and shrinking political space. This paper draws on 68 interviews and a global survey of 177 media outlets and media support organizations to chart the financial, sectoral, and political impacts of terminating most U.S. support for independent media. We find the following: The sudden, ill-planned termination of U.S. governmental support caused harm and waste. Depending on the estimate and measurement, prior to the Trump administration, the United States was providing between $135 million and $248 million per year in foreign assistance support for independent media. The termination of almost all awards and payments, including payments for work already completed, was done shockingly fast. It precluded a thoughtful closedown, deprived implementing partners of payments due to them, left many without jobs, and invited costly and lengthy litigation. Unable to pay their bills, the U.S. government’s main media implementing partners fired hundreds of workers and closed offices as their staff were doxed and harassed based on false allegations. The cuts have had wide negative effects. U.S. support not only sustained media organizations but also sought to improve the political and enabling environment for media, strengthen information integrity and resilience, protect the safety and security of journalists, improve the quality of journalism, increase the market viability of media operations, and ensure the reach of independent journalism to underserved areas and populations. The aid cuts have undermined all of these goals. For example, U.S. funds had been used to support a freedom of information act in Zambia, promote information integrity in the Philippines, provide legal support to journalists in the Republic of Georgia threatened by frivolous lawsuits, train and support journalists to conduct investigative journalism in Eastern Europe, improve media business models in Serbia, and strengthen community radio stations in Mozambique. The termination of aid stopped all of these endeavors." (Summarys, page 1) more

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The State of Media Development 2026: Funding, local ownership and adaptation in international media development
New

Ines Drefs, Rose Kimani, Dennis Reineck, Martin Scott

Bonn: Deutsche Welle DW Akademie (2026), 85 pp.

"With resources drying up, not least because the U.S. administration has pulled the plug on international development funding, a rise in authoritarianism and another large-scale tech reset looming with AI, media development organizations are struggling to meet the challenges. According to data colle ... more

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Journalism Funds: Building Sustainable Infrastructure for Healthy Information Ecosystems. Why and How the International Fund for Public Interest Media Supports Journalism Funds
New

Pierrick Judeaux, Bridie Rollins, Maha Taki, Jessica White, Sameer Padania

International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM) (2026), 24 pp.

"This position paper presents the International Fund for Public Interest Media’s vision for journalism funds as a promising structural and sustainable solution for financing independent journalism at scale. It draws on our experience as a multilateral pooled fund, as well as our work funding, advi ... more

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‘A Smaller Budget Means You Have Less Time to Work in the Field, Less Time for Everything’: US Foreign Aid Funding Cuts One Year Later

Michele Barbero, Rawan Damen

Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) (2026)

"In January last year, US President Donald Trump abruptly froze almost all foreign aid provided by the US Agency for International Development and the State Department, including that earmarked for independent media around the world. He then proceeded to slash more than 80% of USAID programs and to ... cut some $60 billion in overall development assistance. The move came as a huge shock — and a devastating blow — for many investigative news outlets, particularly in the Global South, which suddenly found themselves grappling with huge holes in their budgets. GIJN sat down with Rawan Damen, director general of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism(ARIJ), a nonprofit organization based in Jordan that focuses on cross-border collaboration and on empowering journalists in the Middle East, to find out how they are coping one year later. [...] "One year ago, we lost 25% of our annual budget overnight. We worked with the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Projects focused, for example, on the environment, fact-checking, diversity, and gender equality. It was the first time ever in our “ecosystem” that contracts that had been signed, with the work already started, were terminated without being honored. For us, it was a big shock, but other organizations, like some Russian and Iranian exile media, lost 100% of their annual budget that day. Nobody was able to help us — or others — because it was a global funding crisis affecting civil society, human rights defenders, and independent media around the whole world. During 2025, there was a “snowball effect” with less funding coming from Europe, too, as more resources were allocated to defense amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine and souring relations between Europe and the US. GIJN: How did these cuts aff ect your day-to-day operations? RD: We managed not to lay people off , but many of our partners and friends had to do that immediately, they had no choice. In our case, because we are a small organization of 30 full-timers and our funding is diversified, we managed to move people from one project to another, although that meant a learning process and adapting to new jobs. But we had, of course, to cut activities and do things in a much cheaper way. This affected our production from a quantitative standpoint, we can’t deny it. Our work typically involves journalists, but also a fact checker, a lawyer, a designer, and a developer, and we had to cut on all levels. The number of investigations we can work on is reduced, but we try our best to preserve quality and do good stories. But when you have a smaller budget, it means that you have less time to work in the field, less time for everything." more

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Targeted: How cuts to US foreign aid threaten freedom of expression and its defenders worldwide

London: Article 19 (2026), 112 pp.

"Between January and April 2025, the United States government implemented massive and immediate cuts to foreign aid spending. Our new report Targeted explores the global impact of those cuts on freedom of expression and the people working to defend it. The cuts have weakened civil society’s capac ... more

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Meeting the Revenue Challenge: Philanthropy's Role in Local News Growth

Mark Fuerst, Caroline Porter, Feather Houstoun

Philadelphia, PA: Wyncote Foundation (2026), 32 pp.

"Starting in February 2025, we set out to identify and examine success stories among local news groups, where success was sustainability in business operations, even if that term has a range of interpretations. We reasoned that the experiences of these successful organizations might carry predictive ... more

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Journalism and Media Funding in Europe

Brussels: Philea - Philanthropy Europe Association; Journalism Funders Forum (2026)

"Based on a sample of 36 philanthropic organisations from 12 countries, the report shows that while funding for the field remains relatively limited, it is diverse, evolving and increasingly shaped by concerns around democracy, misinformation and the long-term sustainability of independent journalis ... more

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Buying time, not markets: The limits of donor funding in Hungary’s captured media system

Marius Dragomir, Robert Nemeth

Journalism (2026), 20 pp.

"Independent journalism faces converging pressures from media capture, volatile donor priorities, and platform-driven markets accelerated by generative AI. This article presents 5 years (2020–2025) of first-hand evidence from a donor-funded program to support journalism in Hungary that combined co ... more

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USA: Trump's foreign aid freeze throws journalism around the world into chaos

Reporters Without Borders, February 6 (2025)

"President Donald Trump has frozen billions of dollars around the world in aid projects, including over $268 million allocated by Congress to support independent media and the free flow of information. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounces this decision, which has plunged NGOs, media outlets, an ... 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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Mind the Gap! 18th fome Symposium 2024. A critical review of common practices and strategies in International Media Assistance
Deep Insights

Michel Leroy, Anja Wollenberg, Sofie Jannusch (eds.)

Forum Medien und Entwicklung (fome) (2025), 35 pp.

"Critically examining the sectorʼs performance is a routine practice of the Forum Media and Development (fome), a network of 32 German and Swiss organisations, all active in the field of International Media Assistance (IMA). A fome working group identified four areas in which the gap between aspira ... tion and reality of media development co-operation appeared to be greatest: • Dominance of Western values: IMA has been criticised for lacking awareness of its Western bias. The criticism is that Western concepts, while applied in the Global South, are unsuccessful in non-Western contexts. • Local Ownership: Local ownership and participation are guiding principles in IMA; however, funders often dictate topics and objectives. This paternalistic approach has caused local partners to adopt a more constrained and less autonomous stance. • International Coordination: Poor coordination of activities and strategies between IMA organisations active in the same country or context is a notorious source of inefficiency and subsequent problems in IMA. • Measuring Impact: Due to a lack of resources or methodological challenges, the effects and longterm impact of projects often remain unknown; effects are claimed, but claims are not supported by evidence. To broaden our understanding of these issues and find ways to improve practices and strategies within the IMA community, these topics were the subject of discussion at the 18th fome Symposium in Dortmund from Sep 30 – Oct 1, 2024. In advance, a survey was developed and shared across the network to test some common assumptions. The fome Symposium was hosted by the Erich-Brost Institute (EBI) at the University of Dortmund, with nine other fome members responsible for organising various sessions. To kickstart the event, Dani Madrid-Morales from the University of Sheffield presented a broad perspective, comparing the principles, beneficiaries, and approaches of China and Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries in a keynote speech. Morales put forward several recommendations for reforming media assistance by DAC countries to contribute to the information sovereignty of the partners. The four articles in this publication introduce the abovementioned subjects and summarise the speakersʼ contributions at the Symposium. The survey results for each topic are tabulated, and the recommendations of all symposium participants on how the weaknesses discussed could be improved in the future are also listed. These are some key take aways from the summary: Participation and locally driven development, as stipulated in the OECD Principles for Relevant and Effective Support to Media and the Information Environment adopted in 2024, appeared to be an overarching requirement for successful media development. Participation is one of the prerequisites for developing ownership and setting priorities that meet the local needs and interests of both the media and the public. This is key to successful communication, as it avoids imposing values and priorities on partners and compromising their independence. International coordination has also proven particularly effective when local partners take the lead from the very beginning of activities, including conceptualisation. Repeated requests were made for more research. Before setting intervention targets, greater investment in media and audience research and impact studies is needed to determine the effects of media-supported involvement. Some of the analyses and recommendations may resemble a déjà-vu of previous events. Whether the sector has sufficient evidence of its impact, for example, has already been questioned at the fome symposia Measuring Change I and II in 2007 and 2009. Seventeen years later, some of the recommendations sound familiar. However, it must be acknowledged that in recent years there has at least been an increased awareness of the sectorʼs weaknesses, both in practice and in terms of academic knowledge. This is reflected, for example, in a greater recognition of the local partnersʼ funding priorities or improved international coordination in crisis situations where a rapid response is required. Under real-world conditions, it will probably be impossible to achieve any desired ideal. This does not mean, however, that ideals should not be pursued and that a critical review of practices is pointless; on the contrary, given an increasingly uncertain funding environment, we should uphold ideals even more resolutely, including the ideal of a controversial, critical and open debate." (Editorial, page 3) more

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Media Assistance: Mind the Gap! A critical review of common practices and strategies. Presentations

Dortmund: Erich-Brost-Institut; Forum Medien und Entwicklung (fome) (2025), 202 slides

"This is a compilation of the presentations at the fome conference on "Media Assistance: Mind the Gap!" from September 30 – October 1, 2024, in Dortmund." (commbox)

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“Priorities Were Chosen by Donors”: A Critical Review of International Media Assistance in Afghanistan (2001-2021)

Hazrat Bahar, Anja Wollenberg

Global Media Journal - German Edition, volume 15, issue 1 (2025), 23 pp.

"This study presents findings from research on international media development strategies and practices in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021. Based on qualitative interviews with 35 Afghan journalists in Afghanistan, the research offers a retroactive assessment of key patterns in International Media ... more

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Impacto de programas de apoyo de grandes plataformas digitales a medios de comunicación en América Latina: Los casos Google News Initiative y Meta for Media

Santiago Marino, Agustín Espada

Montevideo: Observacom (2025), 43 pp.

"1. Los apoyos, herramientas y recursos económicos analizados no son ni cercanamente suficientes para reducir los daños que su capacidad de control genera en los medios ni en la actividad periodística. 2. El impacto cuantitativo es relativamente menor; esto sucede tanto en lo económico como en ... 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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20 Years of Networking for Independent Media Worldwide

Forum Media and Development (fome) (2025), 31 pp.

"Twenty years ago, representatives from a handful of organisations involved in media development cooperation established the Forum Media and Development (fome). Some could draw on nearly 40 years of experience, some were newbies in the field of media development assistance. However, it was only thre ... e years earlier that all these actors had met for the first time to share information about their specific work and common challenges. After a few meetings and a jointly organised conference — known today as fome symposium — the founding members decided to collaborate more closely to sustain this exchange and their commitment to shared goals. Meanwhile, 31 organisations and institutions from Germany and Switzerland have been forming a stable network for years. Instruments and focal points have evolved over the past 20 years; the shared goals and, consequently, the ongoing tasks have remained consistent for fome members: learning from one another and from partners; coordination of joint action and collaboration; promotion of media support within development cooperation. In fact, media development has gained a significantly stronger presence within German development assistance over the last decades. In the early years of fome's existence, media was one of several cross-cutting themes, for which four hours of the responsible staff member's time were allocated in the governmental administration. Currently, two staff members are responsible for media assistance within the BMZ — the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation. A fixed title has been established in the budget plan since 2015: ’Promotion of media, access to information, and freedom of expression in partner countries’. Over the years, this amount increased to €30 million. However, the sum was not increased in the fourth year, which ultimately signifies a slight decline, as personnel and material costs have risen during the same period. The challenges in media assistance, however, increased over these 20 years. Digital media caused the breakdown of traditional funding business models, and especially local communication spaces are becoming more vulnerable.Never before have so many journalists faced such severe threats — being murdered in war zones, imprisoned by authoritarian regimes, and subjected to hate speech and open threats on social media. Digital media serve as tools of hybrid warfare, and the ways in which propaganda and misinformation influence democratic elections and societal debates have increased. AI will further boost the potential of deepfakes. Therefore, combating disinformation remains a key focus of German media support. However, fighting disinformation also involves backing credible media organisations and making independent journalists as resilient as possible against various forms of attack. It also involves identifying the most effective ways of publishing and accessing information, as well as exploring the potential of AI in journalists' professional environments. The most effective approaches to achieve this have been the subject of learning and discussion in the fome network during the last 20 years, and they will be explored within the fome network over the next 20 years. Some of the member organisations featured in this brochure highlight one of their projects, which they implement with media professionals in the so-called Global South. The individual articles also demonstrate the diversity of the member organisations and their various areas of activity across different regions of the world." (Introduction by Sofie Jannusch) more

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Reimagining Funding for Journalism: Key Takeaways from IJF 2025

Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), May 6 (2025)

"At the International Journalism Festival (IJF) in Perugia this year, journalism funding and sustainability took centre stage. International funders, media leaders, and innovators grappled with the urgent question of how to keep independent journalism not just alive—but thriving—in an era of shr ... more

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Support for Ukrainian Refugees Through Media: Summary of Project Achievements

Paris: UNESCO (2025), 10 pp.

"Through this project, UNESCO strengthened fact-based information exchange between refugees and host citizens as media audience. In doing so, it fostered social cohesion. The project assisted the media in their portrayal of the diversity of viewpoints, and governments in their response to the refuge ... more

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Armenian Media Vulnerability Report: Survey Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations

Riga: Baltic Centre for Media Excellence (BCME); Media Initiatives Center (2025), 35 pp.

"Armenian media outlets face multiple vulnerabilities that threaten their organizational security (including digital and cyber security), financial stability, the well-being of journalists, as well as ability to operate in a crisis to contain reputational damage and ensure continuity of operations. ... more

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

The State of Media Development 2026: Funding, local ownership and adaptation in international media development New

Journalism Funds: Building Sustainable Infrastructure for Healthy Information Ecosystems. Why and How the International Fund for Public Interest Media Supports Journalism Funds New

Mind the Gap! 18th fome Symposium 2024. A critical review of common practices and strategies in International Media Assistance Deep Insights

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

The State of Media Development 2026: Funding, local ownership and adaptation in international media development
New

Journalism Funds: Building Sustainable Infrastructure for Healthy Information Ecosystems. Why and How the International Fund for Public Interest Media Supports Journalism Funds
New

Mind the Gap! 18th fome Symposium 2024. A critical review of common practices and strategies in International Media Assistance
Deep Insights