2024-10-04
COPENHAGEN - Highlighting the vital role of local media for stable communities, International Media Support (IMS) shares key insights, tools, and case studies from the Local Media for Democracy programme which supported 42 grantees across 17 EU countries.
This report explains the phenomenon and challenge of news deserts in Europe. It details the LM4D’s design, implementation and results, and highlights its capacity development tools. It also includes selected project case studies with the emphasis on their impact on news deserts, to serve as inspiration of what is possible. The report offers key findings and recommendations of relevance for future programming of this kind. This report is primarily aimed at two target groups: those working in the media development sector and media practitioners.
The Local Media for Democracy (LM4D) programme was designed to revive the EU’s local media landscape through measures that would build resilience, independence, and sustainability. It set out to improve the capacity of local media in terms of innovation, business strategies and audience engagement, underpinned by extensive research on news deserts in Europe, direct funding to local, regional and community media in the EU 27 member states and capacity building for the grantees.
Read more about the 42 granted projects.
International Media Support (IMS) learned what works for local media and their vital importance in upholding a healthy media ecosystem. Here we share relevant lessons learned for funders, the media development community, policy makers and media practitioners. This report helps spotlight local media’s unique ability to provide perspectives from the ground and cater to otherwise underserved audiences.
In this report IMS:
- unfolds 10 practical examples and five detailed case studies of media initiatives to overcome news deserts from 10 EU countries.
- shares best practices and inspiration for local media on how they can take action in short time frames.
- sets out the practical capacity-development tools designed by our expert advisers.
- shares programming methodology.
- offers our recommendations on continued long-term support for local media in Europe.
LM4D’s community-centric approach emphasised the need to understand and engage with audiences. Half of the LM4D partners organised public events such as focus groups, town hall discussions, debates, pop-up newsrooms, open-editorial meetings and workshops on media literacy and citizen journalism.
At least 15 partners conducted journalism training sessions for their teams or community members, 13 media piloted new or increased existing revenue streams, 10 developed strategic documents, practical guides, media-kits and other license and knowledge products and seven media automated their editorial and management processes, helping towards improved efficiency.
The Local Media for Democracy project was an 18-month pilot project co-funded by the European Commission, Porticus, and the King Baudouin Foundation and launched by a consortium of partners: the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF), IMS (International Media Support) and Journalismfund Europe.
