Journalism with local impact

Run by IPI, the Accelerator supports digital transformation in local journalism by providing coaching and training. It will bring newsrooms along a media-first design and innovation journey, focusing on supporting newsrooms’ editorial, technology and business strategies. Over a five month-period, the project team will work closely with each newsroom to coach and provide the necessary resources to implement its transformational business or product strategy. The Local News Accelerator will provide training and coaching for two types of projects:

• The development of audience-centric products or services, with a focus on news gathering, crowd-sourcing revenues, and the creating or distribution of an outlet’s reporting with the goal of revenue diversification and building deeper engagement with target audiences. 
• Strategy for digital transformation in an existing newsroom or other organizational plans leveraging innovation for sustainability and increased competitiveness that ultimately grow the quality of independent news ecosystems worldwide.

The Accelerator consists of five main activities:

Needs Assessment: One month of direct needs assessments to identify your challenge, problem statement and roadmap solutions.

An introductory meeting: Here, all selected participants of the accelerator will exchange information in a video conference about their projects, set and share audience, newsroom and business goals, and meet the accelerator trainers, coaches and other experts.

Structured learning phase: A series of training sessions, consisting of pre-recorded online lectures by prominent media experts and subsequent  “Ask-Me-Anything” sessions with the trainers. The lectures will cover:

• Human-centered design for local journalism
• Practical audience research methods for local news
• Product management skills and methods for local journalism
• How to diversify revenue: identify and build philanthropy, sponsorships, events, programmatic advertising, branded content, digital subscriptions, advertising to businesses, non-profits and governments, and more
• Reader revenue: how to successfully implement a membership, subscription and/or donation mode
• The latest in storytelling formats
• Audience engagement – from surveys and comments to subscribers and CRM management 
• How to pitch your media to partners, funders and investors

One-on-one coaching: Accelerator participants will be offered one-on-one coaching sessions with experienced newsroom practitioners and trainers. Each participant will be paired with coaches that are able to provide the most value in terms of skills- and knowledge gaps identified in the needs-assessment. The participants are expected to attend coaching sessions biweekly.  

Guest speakers: Throughout the accelerator, participants will be exposed to the latest innovations in journalism delivery and business diversification from experienced leaders in the industry. 

Additionally, accelerator participants will be expected to produce and publish a promotional or descriptive post or story that describes what went right or wrong in their innovation journey. This can be in the form of an individual or series of stories, podcasts, videos, newsletters or other journalistic formats. The journalistic product can be related to the accelerator in one of two ways:

• It highlights how the organization applied the learning on innovation in their newsroom;  
• An editorial informing readers about the changes the organization went through in the accelerator, explaining how these changes will better serve its audiences.

The Local News Accelerator is open to small to mid-sized local newsrooms  seeking to transform their journalism, products or business by investing in audience research, experimenting with new revenue models, deepening audience engagement, or investing in new content and distribution products based on user needs, among other strategies. Newsrooms are welcome to apply if they have:       

• a clearly identified challenge or problem they want to solve; 
• a plan on how to address the challenge or problem they face;
• recently conducted audience research or other market testing activities;
• willingness and a plan to reach out to new audiences with quality content. 

To apply, you must have a team of two staff members declared that will participate through the accelerator’s duration of five months.

This call has no geographic or publishing language limitations. In fact, our previous cohort included media from Ecuador, Uganda, Yemen and more, publishing in multiple languages. While the main programme will be conducted in English, we try to accommodate match our trainers and participating organizations to communicate in their preferred language during the one-on-one sessions. 

The Local News Accelerator takes place for five months. Participants will have the opportunity to extend mentorship and will remain involved in the network.

No. We are happy to welcome media at various stages of development. However, it would be beneficial for your organization to provide a clear overview of the team’s experience and background in the application.

Your vision for the future can be tailored specifically to your organization. If you are currently operating on six-month or year-long cycles, that is perfectly acceptable. The timeframe depends on the operational dynamics of your organization.

Media organizations are expected to invest about 3-4 hours per week in the programme, completing asynchronous learning modules and attending live speaker sessions.

While we are unable to offer grants for the implementation of product prototypes, we can facilitate connections with potential funders. Our team is committed to supporting your organization in seeking alternative options and will allocate human resources to assist you in this.