Articles

Maribel Königer, Director of Journalism and Media at ERSTE Foundation, highlights the importance of supporting independent journalism to protect democracies in Europe. From fellowships to pooled funds, the Foundation’s evolving approach aims to strengthen media resilience, for which it is essential to develop sustainable business models.

Why is it important for the ERSTE Foundation to support journalism? How does it fit into your broader mission?

The Journalism and Media programme is embedded in our Europe and Democracy programme. We define the problem here: liberal democracy is under threat. Europe’s democracies remain fragile and unprepared to withstand internal and external socio-economic, technological, and geopolitical disruptions. One of our answers to this problem is that we want to support high-quality independent media and journalism in CEE. We have been doing this since the very beginning, only a bit differently; now we do it with a wider focus.

Together with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (and the Robert Bosch Stiftung, who left some years later), we started the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence. At that time, in 2007, we were focused on the Balkans because we thought that countries in Central Europe who just became members of the European Union – Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, et cetera – were good, so we should focus on South Eastern Europe, on countries which are not yet there. As a fellowship it was meant as an investment in people, in investigative journalists, and for many years this was our only project in the field of journalism.

Then in 2018, we were shocked about what happened in our surroundings. Jan Kuciak and his fiancé were killed. Hungary and Poland changed their laws and their attitudes towards independent media. Also in the Czech Republic, politics became hostile towards independent media. Suddenly we became aware that focusing on the Balkans to support independent journalists and good journalism in CEE is not enough.

First, we enlarged the scope of the fellowship to the – back then – so-called Visegrad countries. Then we saw a decline in the media scene: the well-trained journalists that came out of this fellowship had no platforms anymore on which to publish. A lot of media were gone. What could we do now, if they cannot tell their stories to their audience anymore? The geographically enlarged fellowship was embedded in a platform called “Reporting Democracy” where articles could also be published.

It was clear from the very beginning that we don’t want to invest directly in media. Actually, we cannot. As an Austrian savings bank foundation, the core shareholder of Austria’s biggest bank, Erste Group, we are only allowed by our statutes to invest in nonprofits. There are a lot of nonprofit media around, but we also saw a risk of conflicts of interest in both directions, as well as reputation risks. Then we discovered the wonderful tool of pooled funds.

What are the advantages of these pooled funds?

We very much like the idea of joining forces. The leverage is bigger. If you put money in a pile, you can support media with higher amounts, or longer, or more of them, and have more impact. Also, you can delegate the delicate task of selecting the media you support. You have a qualified jury to do that. It’s much more efficient if several foundations join into a fund.

Civitates was the beginning. Its sub-fund for public interest media has a focus on Southern and Eastern Europe. That is important for us because we have a strict geographic focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Our revenues are the dividends of our share in Erste Group, one of the biggest financial service providers in Austria and Eastern European countries.

In 2021, we were approached by the Media Development Investment Fund. They presented us with the idea of Pluralis. An impact investment fund was something new for us. Pluralis guarantees editorial independence for legacy media by investing in publishing houses in Eastern Europe; a smart concept. By now, Pluralis has a portfolio of three important media in Poland, Slovakia and Croatia and it plans to grow further.

Finally, we became one of the initiators of the Media Forward Fund, focusing on Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

So, your journey as a funder of journalism started in the Balkans and ended in Austria?

Indeed! If you had told us 18 years ago, when we started the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, that we would one day be supporting innovation in Austrian media, we would have laughed in disbelief. But the media ecosystem in Austria is in danger, like in many other countries. The market is in an extremely precarious situation, public interest media struggle to survive although (some even say: because) there is a lot of public funding.

The Media Forward Fund supports – with much money for a short and limited period – media organisations that apply with a convincing business idea. Good journalism is the precondition, but it’s not what is funded. You should apply with a smart idea to scale up your business or to secure more stable resources.

How would you explain this substantial growth in the Foundation’s engagement for journalism?

ERSTE Foundation reacted in a timely manner to what was happening to the media scene and in journalism. We all see the threats everywhere: Autocratic regimes attacking independent media, media capture, disinformation campaigns, decreasing societal trust, and increasing technological and economic disruptions put public interest media and critical journalism in CEE at high risk.

After the quasi organic growth of the portfolio, we now have a clear strategy. The foundation worked on its overall strategy and one of our goals for the next few years is a healthy media ecosystem in CEE that upholds democratic values, combats misinformation, and empowers communities with reliable information. We therefore invest in and support sustainable and independent free media and fact-based critical journalism. This is how a single project topic developed into a consistent programme portfolio. The consequence was that I changed my position. As of July 2025, I am the Director of Journalism and Media. After 18 years as Director of Communications with the journalism projects as my second task, I switched focus.  

In what other ways do you support journalism?

 In Vienna, together with Presseclub Concordia and the Forum für Journalismus und Medien (fjum), we organise in-person and hybrid press briefings with researchers and experts from our other programmes. Journalists get firsthand information on the political, economic or societal situation in other countries, often just before elections in a given country.

Through the funds we support, we also offer capacity building. The Media Forward Fund, for example, is not only funding the development of business ideas in media but is also coaching to develop business skills.

What is the most important lesson you have learned from these programmes?

I have two lessons in mind. Firstly: Most journalists are passionate about and very good at their job, but many of them have no idea about the business side of media. New media outlets with a great mission will die very quickly when no one looks at target groups, funnels, revenue plans, and the like. Even proper accounting or having a business plan is not a given. This lack of basic business skills or appropriate competent personnel in young media is so obvious that, today, many foundations or intermediaries offer tools known from the start-up world: media accelerators and incubators. Media viability became also a very important topic in conferences.

This brings me to the second lesson: Why is it so important to build a sustainable business model? Because relying on a single resource – be it a donor, be it public funds of your community, be it, well, USAID – can have fatal consequences. In January it became clear that a full focus on a single source, as generous as it might have been in the past, causes real problems. Sustainable business models (meaning also diversification of revenue streams) are crucial for media viability but also for media pluralism.

What were the biggest challenges you have had to face so far?

One big challenge is to explain to people why the media are in such a problematic situation at all. Just 10 or 15 years ago, people founded newspapers to make money, and not to be funded. Today, classical public interest media have lost their business model. But there are still big, powerful media groups, for some it is still big business. So explaining why some media need funding is a challenge.

Fortunately, we haven’t had challenges such as smear campaigns yet. But everyone knows that independent media and their funders are under constant threat of authoritarian attacks. It has become a risky business to be a foundation supporting what should be the most natural thing in the world in a liberal democracy: free media.

How do you assess the success of your programmes? Is there a particular success story related to supporting journalism?

Usually, our projects include process assessment and impact measurement. The Media Forward Fund, for example, is constantly assessing its brand new processes and results. It just started one year ago, and one term is two years. If the grants have had a real impact on the businesses of the grantees, we will soon see, with the first cohort ending the programme in one year. The application process was also assessed and some selection criteria have been changed in the second round. For example, we wanted the business part and editorial part to be clearly separated. That works for the New York Times, sure, but if you are a three-person, brand new, young organisation, then it is not possible. So we changed this criterion. Now you must agree that these entities will be separated once the medium has grown…

These seem banal things, but it is important to realise when something does not work and change it. The real success will be, in two years, to have businesses that double their subscription base, or make money on theatre stages with their concept, whatever they applied with.

Whether our funding has societal impact is, of course, very difficult to measure. I would take Pluralis as an example which pooled philanthropic investment in media matters. Gremi Media, the publisher of Rzeczpospolita in Poland, is part of Pluralis’ portfolio. Having kept one of the biggest Polish newspapers as a free, independent one is very important. It is a centre-conservative paper with fact-based reporting. This also shows that our goal is not to support a certain agenda. It is about the quality of journalism and media pluralism. In Slovakia, Petit Press, publishing the daily SME, has in Pluralis an owner that is backing the editors in a very hostile public environment.

Do you have any special advice for organisations that have not funded or supported journalism yet, but are thinking about doing so?

 First of all, I would ask them to imagine that there is no more media where they can talk about their main topics, be it climate, culture, environment, equality, or whatever. People would get their information only from social media, from influencers, from AI bots. If you think that this might be a really bad situation, then start supporting media and journalism.

My advice for newbies would be to start with a pooled fund. You don’t have to fund media directly, trust in experts. My other advice is that, if you are unsure what kind of pooled fund you should turn to, then come to the Journalism Funders Forum. This is a peer group of foundations which are happy to give anyone advice about the risks, realistic goals, about what you can gain, et cetera, by funding journalism. Or look for foundations that already support journalism, everybody is happy to share their knowledge. The main thing is: do it.