Where is the money? New forms of funding financing and investment in media

Abstract

Through contextualised research, it offers insights into the funding landscape including opportunities, needs, challenges, gaps and recommendations in four regions: Asia, MENA, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

Written by four eminent researchers and edited by IMS Head of Journalism and Viability, Dr Clare Cook, the report provides a deep analysis and multi-stakeholder reflection on how public interest media in the four regions can best be supported over the next decade. The question is not whether interventions are needed to tackle the economic crisis facing journalism, but how this support should be structured.

At a time when independent media must often contend with multiple threats to their existence, Where is the money? could hardly be more timely. It comes as platform-based digital advertising revenue for public interest media is in constant decline. This is coupled with the fact that public interest media often face hostile policies or conflicts that further undermine their ability to exist and thrive, financially and otherwise.

The report, two years in the making, is the result of extensive qualitative and quantitative data collection in the four regions, collating insights from public interest media, media development organisations, government development agencies, media investors, donors and researchers.