Deadline: 12-Jun-25
Do you want to reach an important niche audience or diversify your business model? Innovation is key to staying relevant as a media outlet. The Journalismfund Europe and International Media Support has announced the launch of an innovative project, “Pluralistic Media for Democracy.
Through strategic support in innovation, business sustainability, and audience engagement, the programme will empower media organisations to continue their critical role in upholding democracy and fostering informed public discourse across Europe.
Funding Information
- The Media Pluralism Fund will allocate €1,400,000 financial support to local and regional outlets.
- The total available amount per call to be distributed among all supported projects will be €700,000.
Eligible Activities
- Launch of new media products targeting at least one marginalised group e.g., different genders, minority groups, and underserved audiences
- Upgrade of websites and other existing media products
- Diversification of genres and formats
- Multimedia content production
- Multiplatform content distribution and social media marketing
- Development of content marketing strategy
- Audience understanding: audience research, data monitoring and analytics (especially of underserved audiences)
- Development of audience growth and engagement strategies, including for marginalised groups
- Community building activities and participatory journalism
- Development or improvement of organisational and editorial policies and practices related to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)
- Automation of editorial processes
- Conduct market research
- Experimentation with new revenue streams
- Development of sustainable business strategy and plan
- Strengthening financial planning and management
- Development of strategic documents, practical guides, media-kits and other license and knowledge products
- Development of sustainable marketing and business strategies
- Investing in technical tools and development (only the depreciations on investments will be accepted as cost)
- Training for staff related to project implementation, including on DEI
- Dissemination activities related to the project
Eligible Costs
- Directly attributable to the project
- Arise during the project period and after the signing of the grant agreement with Journalismfund Europe
- Necessary for carrying out the project, reasonable and justified
- Effectively incurred by the grant beneficiary, identified and verifiable, in particular, recorded in the grantee’s accounts in accordance with the accounting standards applicable in the country where the beneficiary is established and with the grantee’s usual cost accounting practices
- Not funded by other donors or support programmes
- Compliant with the applicable national law on taxes, labour and social security
- Purchases of equipment, infrastructure or other assets used for the project must be declared as depreciation costs, calculated on the basis of the costs actually incurred and written off in accordance with international accounting standards and the beneficiary’s usual accounting practices. Only the portion of the costs that corresponds to the rate of actual use for the project during the project duration can be taken into account.
Ineligible Costs
- Personnel and operating costs not directly attributable to the project
- Internal rental costs (rental to oneself – as owner – of premises or other infrastructure)
- Overhead costs
- Meal costs, food and beverages
- In-kind contributions by third parties
- Interests, debt service charges, currency exchange losses
- Recoverable VAT
Eligibility Criteria
- This grant programme is open to small corporate legal entities with a registered seat in one of the EU27 countries, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia & Serbia.
- The small corporate legal entities should have a turnover of less than 1.5M EUR and shouldn’t be part of a group or consortium with a consolidated turnover that exceeds an amount of 3M EUR.
- The media outlets must be small corporate legal entities officially incorporated at least one year before the application deadline of the grant call.
- Media outlets should already have made journalistic content available to the general public before 1 January 2024 (no Business2Business journalism).
- Training organisations cannot apply for this grant.
- Only one project application is possible per applicant.
- The relevant news medium should deliver public interest content to the audiences in the region concerned.
- The project should be clearly defined to build independence, resilience, and sustainability in local, regional, and community media, and should also be defined in time (the maximum term of the project may not exceed 9 months).
- The grant request does not intend to finance the regular operations, but to support well-defined innovative projects that go beyond regular operation.
- Eligible proposals entail to benefit the public, especially local communities and marginalised groups whose interests are best served by quality, ethical, and pluralistic local media.
- Only applications submitted via the Journalismfund Europe’s online application platform will be eligible.
For more information, visit Journalismfund Europe.