On 6 and 7 November 2012, the Future Media Lab hosted the first European conference on innovative funding for quality journalism in Ghent, Belgium. The event, which was part of the annual iMinds conference “Creative Media Days”, brought together leading experts in creative media funding approaches with journalists and publishers. The panel discussions, keynote speeches, and workshop sessions over the two-day conference gave participants the opportunity to actively engage with one another in order to share experiences about philanthropic funding, crowd funding, cooperatives, and preferential loans for journalistic projects and to debate the future of media financing.
The post-conference report summarises these discussions, presenting the views and experiences presented by the speakers and panellists from the US and Europe. The report also introduces the funding organisations, intermediaries, and platforms for investigative journalism across Europe. Therefore, this digital publication, which is available for free, gives an overview of the state of the debate on this topic in Europe and forms the starting point for a long-term project coordinated by the Future Media Lab on the future funding of quality and investigative journalism.
As journalism enters the online realm, the ability for journalists and media organizations alike to adapt to new methods of producing, funding and presenting content is crucial, says Future Media Lab.
Michael Maness, Vice-President of Journalism and Media Innovation at the Knight Foundation, pointed out during his keynote speech, in the US, 5 billion US$ have been taken out of newsrooms over the last years. Also, the traditional relationship between the media and their consumers is withering, as communities of potential funders replace the conventional media audience. These trends make events such as the “creative funding for creative media conference” increasingly relevant.
Max von Abendroth, EMMA’s Executive Director, concludes that “the debate about creative funding for creative media is crucial for the understanding of how the future media landscape in Europe will look in terms of content, technology innovation and business development.”
The conference was made possible thanks to the support of Adessium (NL), BMW Stiftung Herbert Quandt (D), Knight Foundation (US), Stichting for Democratie en Media (NL) and iMinds (B).
