Dragomir on Funding Journalism

The media industry has been severely disrupted by the economic crisis and a series of technological shifts. Funding sources are in a continuous state of flux, and the Covid-19 pandemic caused even more damage to the sector. The license fee model that has been a funding pillar for public service media in many European countries is rapidly collapsing. Some news media outlets, especially publishers, are experimenting with subscriptions or membership payments, but these funding models have few chances of success in less developed economies or in countries without a solid culture or tradition of paying for news.

In this situation, many governments in Eastern Europe became the largest funders in media, and use funding as an instrument of editorial control, our Director, Marius Dragomir wrote in his paper published by Mediaforum, available now in Romanian and soon in Russian.

The paper aims to identify current funding trends and define their impact on editorial independence, and offers a set of recommendations for transparent funding models, which ensures editorial independence, and increases the economic sustainability of media outlets.

Based on our Media Influence Matrix project, the paper is a short version of a much bigger upcoming study slated to be released in February 2021.