Announcement: How we are responding to the COVID-19 crisis

As you know, since the start of 2020, our newsletter has been taking deep dives into the funding environment for journalism in individual countries in Europe.

However, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has had sudden and catastrophic impacts on thousands of news media and journalism organisations across Europe and beyond – collapsing advertising revenues, enforced layoffs and pay cuts, reduced print runs or worse, and in some countries, government crackdowns. This is why we will be adapting to the current situation.

Many funders and investors in this community and beyond are asking us and each other how they can support the media to survive this crisis. We’re going to divert resources at this unprecedented time to help build and support the European funder community.

Here’s how we are playing our part, starting next week:

  • This newsletter, which continues to be authored by Sameer Padania of Macroscope, will now be fortnightly, not monthly, and will bring you the latest COVID-19 initiatives, funding pools and collaborations;
  • We’ll convene a fortnightly digital roundtable to help European funders learn from each other how to best support grantees and most importantly to stay informed of each other’s work during the crisis (starting next week with a funder-only check-in on what everyone is working on right now);
  • We’ll create an online space for this community to share information and connect, and pull together an open database to keep track of useful information for media and journalism funders across Europe.

Amid the darker news, this crisis has helped society after society to rediscover that journalism is – as we all knew – an essential service and journalists are key workers. Online audiences are larger than ever, and there are countless examples of journalists and organisations playing a brave and selfless role in their communities and societies.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will do everything we can to support you all to play your own roles in supporting and protecting journalism across Europe and beyond.

If you have any suggestions on what we should share in the next editions, please reach out to us via email info@journalismfundersforum.com or tweet to @ejcnet or @sdp including the hashtag #JournalismFundersForum.

[See the emailed version of this announcement here.]