đź“®In this week’s newsletter, we recap the Media Labs Days #8 in Vienna that took place on 9 October 2024. Our Projects Officer Nicky Deluggi represented IPI’s Media Innovation and Sustainability at the event, providing an insight into Media Innovation Europe, an IPI-led initiative empowering newsrooms to achieve editorial independence and financial sustainability.

The challenge: Skepticism on Labs/Accelerators

From funders to media organizations, “innovation” has been a sort of buzzword recently. Our team at IPI’s Media Innovation has also done our deal of figuring it out.

The word “innovation” has disappeared from many titles – it got detached from impact and money and has gained a connotation of “playing around” or a pretext for established media to say they’re fresh and trendy.

During the Media Labs Days panel on “What makes for the most efficient innovation process?” with Florian Stambula, Anita Zielina, Alexandra Folwarski, and Noora Alanne, the speakers questioned if innovation how do we make the change instilled in labs/accelerators actually last? What does it take from the part of the organizer and participant? While the money per se does not necessarily drive innovation, what makes a real difference?

The solution: Redesigning the process

In many accelerators, the journalists’ daily work comes in conflict with the accelerators’ processes. The speakers suggest, that for the effect of an accelerator/lab to last, media organizations need:

🔹a dedicated product and/or business person devoted to the project;
🔹this person should have the agency to implement changes;
🔹additional R&D budget allocated beyond the accelerator.

On the level of funders and grants, there is a need for increased connectivity. The solutions to these challenges lie in “radical collaboration”, says Anita Zielina, CEO of Better Leaders. For labs and innovation units to be able to jointly build the foundation for a new media ecosystem Anita Zielina outlined four elements needed in the industry:
  1.  Convenings:  How can we bring people together and create a space that is designed to facilitate actionability and authenticity?
  2.  Capacity building:  Empowering media leaders, journalists, entrepreneurs for the transition
  3.  Co-creation:  How can we exercise R&D muscles in a cross-institutional way?
  4.  Connectivity:  What comes after collaboration? How do we stay engaged in a long-term sustainable way?

👉 As Nicky Deluggi reflects “The way in which we collaborate also needs a redesign. A lot of products (whether developed by accelerator beneficiaries or those who run the accelerators) are likely duplicated in regional or thematic siloes due to a lack of coordination, wasting resources and potential. While collaboration is definitely considered, it’s often a nice to have, rather than a default mindset.“

Next Step Forward: flexibility & impact tracking

🚀 Learn more about IPI’s Approach to Media Innovation

At IPI we believe that media innovation is a critical cornerstone to the organization’s mission of defending press freedom. Each of our flagship 5-8 month-long Accelerator programmes is tailored to the pressing needs of new media, media in transition and local media.

Our methodology includes a unique mix of training, personalized advisory services, strategic advice, core funding and networking opportunities. The curriculum is based on early needs assessments of each media organization and offers an open floor for the media to co-create a programme for increased impact. The programmes are also built on awareness of limited human resources, where journalists and editors often wear many hats and need to fit the innovation process into their day-to-day work.

Since piloting our Accelerator programmes in 2022, IPI’s Innovation programmes have helped 61 media outlets from 32 countries all over the globe to future-proof their editorial and business models.

We keep the improvement cycle going, through our impact-tracking system, to keep up with our mission.

👉 Discover the impact stories

Help us break the silos! Do you have ideas for collaborative projects to strengthen media innovation and sustainability? Do you need a platform to showcase your innovative news product? Get in touch!

Innovation Deck

Call for pitches submissions: Spheres of Influence Uncovered
đź“ŤBosnia & Herzegovina, Georgia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan

Apply by: December 18, 2024

Share your thoughts, reach out to the Media Innovation team and help us shape our media support programmes! Say hi – [email protected].