"This guide helps media managers identify and choose the most relevant business models and practices that fit with their missions and operating conditions. It provides a common language around core concepts of media business functions and provides links to further resources. It offers practical, str
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aightforward guidance on growing audiences and diversifying revenue sources. The guide is written through the lens of news media and is written by media managers experienced in many different contexts. It includes topical overviews, case studies, interviews, guest essays, and practical hands-on tools." (Page 6)
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"There is a growing market for factual, independent, reliable, and affordable news delivered in diverse languages in southern Zimbabwe. The local revenue sources to fund those efforts are not apparent. In an area of deep poverty, which has only been amplified by natural disasters and pandemic, large
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parts of the population live in the informal economy and at subsistence levels. Consumer-generated revenue, at a level equal to supporting newsgathering, is unlikely to materialize in the near-term. National advertising revenue appears to be captured by close-to-government news media and does not flow to the community level; there are few sources of paid local advertising. The government has used prolific tools in its efforts to suppress reporting, including force, legislation, intimidation, imprisonment, and — perhaps the most ubiquitous — increasing credentialing and licensing fees to unaffordable levels. While the absolute cost of those fees might seem modest, in the context of pervasive poverty, they are often punitive. Broadcast licenses remain beyond the reach of local news organizations in smaller urban or rural areas. Yet there are ways to strengthen journalists and journalism. Journalists have demonstrated spirited innovation in their adoption of low-cost, no-cost platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Their use of podcasts, populated with audio bites captured from chatgroups enables them to reach audiences (literate or illiterate) in vernacular languages. Audiences’ increased use of diverse news sources, including online ones, during the pandemic reflects their hunger for credible information. Investments in capacity building, along with support in the form of computers, phones, and data, will help meet those needs. Topline audience data from GeoPoll suggests that deeper dives into audience analytics, particularly those related to youth and women audiences, could help uncover rich veins of content that would connect in substantive ways with those audiences." (Conclusion)
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"The purpose of the Media for Democracy Assessment Tool (MAT) is to assist United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in producing media assessments to inform strategy on media and democracy programming, help inform potential media development programming goals, and help provide an i
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nformed understanding of where USAID investment is most feasible and needed and will have the best chances for impact. The MAT provides a standardized methodology to answer the key question: How do media connect to democracy and how can media support democracy promotion and civic space?" (Introduction, page 6)
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"This collection is the first of its kind on the topic of media development. It brings together luminary thinkers in the field—both researchers and practitioners—to reflect on how advocacy groups, researchers, the international community and others can work to ensure that media can continue to s
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erve as a force of democracy and development. But that mission faces considerable challenges. Media development paradigms are still too frequently associated with Western prejudices, or out of touch with the digital age. As we move past Western blueprints and into an uncertain digital future, what does media development mean? If we are to act meaningfully to shape the future of our increasingly mediated societies, we must answer this question." (Publisher description)
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"Until the state and its aligned media operate in a fair and competitive media market, there will be little space for independent news media to survive, much less make the investments needed to innovate and survive in this raucous, frontier environment. Myanmar has a much smaller overall advertising
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sector than neighboring countries, and audiences are rapidly shifting to digital/mobile platforms. Outside Yangon, ethnic and regional news media, often operating in rural and conflict-filled environments, have little possibility of generating sufficient amounts of market-derived revenue to support their operations. To lose their voices would be to lose the plural, local and diverse voices of an inclusive society. To create a vibrant overall media sector, the government must have the political will to create a vibrant public service media sector. To repeat: at the very least, it should stop competing for revenue against the news media it licenses, regulates, can sue, prosecute and imprison. The Broadcasting Law has provisions for this; the government should embrace them. It must also further develop the legal infrastructure supporting media, including copyright, intellectual property, and online privacy laws. For all the laws governing journalists and journalism, there are few that protect their work product or that support the news media industry and its role in the broader economy." (Conclusion)
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"This report looks at ten factors that have altered the media marketplace and that pose challenges to national and local news producers and their sources of revenue. They include ways in which governments interfere in media markets; changes in the structure of news distribution and audience behavior
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; and the way these changes have transformed how advertising media is bought, sold, and distributed. It then examines the key engagement metrics taken from a sampling of media development partner organizations to offer thoughts on how well these news producers are prepared to compete for audiences and revenue. Finally, it offers thoughts about the implications of these issues for media development organizations." (Introduction, page 2)
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"The handbook seeks to shine a spotlight on media organisations that have prioritized gender equality within their organizations, leadership teams, and within their audience, and as a result, have seen a positive return. At best, we hope these stories inspire media to take concrete action to priorit
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ize gender equality and inclusion in their management structures and newsrooms. At the very least, we hope they start a broader conversation around this important subject." (Introduction)
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"Independent news media, which often operate on the fringes of media markets, risk being left out completely if they are not participating whole-heartedly, and with solid knowledge and support, in these emerging arenas. They must embrace audience research as the foundation of both their business dev
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elopment—and audience development—practices. From a market development perspective, best practices around audience research deserve greater focus and resourcing in order to support partner news organizations." (Conclusions, page 19)
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"At an international level, the media development community should advocate for standards governing media cross-ownership limitations, best practices in media licensing, and the licensing of the broadcast spectrum. States should adopt net neutrality and support increased uncensored access to social
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media and Internet news sources. They should scrutinize media ownership sales and declare non-transparent sales of media companies illegitimate and make their ownership visible. Media owners, governments, and media development funders and practitioners must modify the belief that advertising will always automatically support independent media. It won’t. It is not in any advertiser’s business model to underwrite news reporting; first and foremost, it is their fiduciary duty to build their own customer bases. If that means redirecting marketing strategies to more effective platforms, they will. And they have. The media development community should commit to aggressively accelerating the financial management, business, advertising, and digital media skills of media managers, particularly in transitional countries. When entering transitional markets, media outlets should first conduct audience research to establish a baseline for advertising rates. Cronyism and coercion lack force when advertisers, particularly large international advertisers, are given legitimate choices among alternatives. Media developers should support independent community and investigative reporting, especially local radio, through multiple funding sources, including helping to build local revenue bases, even if they exist outside traditional media business models." (Recommendations, page 31)
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"According to this paper, many media businesses lack management skills and experience in developing effective business models. "Compounding this is a lack of media development assistance targeted to media managers, the expansion of economic constraints on media businesses, and a lack of access to in
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vestment capital", says the executive summary, and concludes that "this naiveté about the business side poses a significant risk to the sustainability of independent news media. At the same time that audiences are growing, they are also increasingly decoupled from advertising, traditionally the largest and most easily accessible form of revenue supporting news media. Whether a market is growing or declining, this trend threatens to undermine the ability of independent media to fund news reporting." (commbox)
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