KEY INFORMATION

IPI is excited to open its global call to the newest edition of its Local News Accelerator: applications are now open for local media to join this four-month programme.

The programme is open to local media organizations from around the world, as long as your target audience is a specific community, locality or niche serving users with high quality independent journalism. 

“At IPI, we know that quality local journalism is the connective tissue in communities in every part of the world, delivering trusted information about public health, climate mitigation, local elections, and we built this programme to play a small part in ensuring local news survives a rapidly changing industry”, said IPI’s head of innovation and media business Ryan Powell.

Our objective is to help local media organizations take meaningful steps toward financial and editorial sustainability. We will do this by giving you the structure, personalized advisory services, tools and resources mainstream in your organization’s management beyond the project lifecycle and skills development to test and implement new ideas that will help you serve your communities and adapt in the face of a rapidly evolving media landscape.

“The challenges we were facing were apparent, but before the Local News Accelerator we didn’t know how to identify and address them. The programme played a crucial role in our project’s development, as it opened the door to a broad network of experts worldwide, always willing to share their knowledge and experience with us generously. We deeply value that.” – testimonial, Tierre de Nadie, 2023 Local News Accelerator participant

What you will receive as a 2024 Local News Accelerator participant

Successful applicants will take part in a programme of intensive training, personalized advisory services to test and build an editorial or business product or service, and group coaching, speaker sessions, networking and access to an e-learning platform. 

The curriculum has been designed by IPI’s media innovation and sustainability team based on our extensive work with local and regional media. It will cover topics such as identifying and realizing revenue opportunities, learning from and building news products with your audience, what you need in your tech stack for a sustainable, engagement-first media business and how to pitch your media to partners, funders and donors, and more.  

Training will be delivered by IPI’s in-house experts and weekly training and speakers who are currently working in pioneering local newsrooms around the world. You can expect to learn from people with a deep understanding and direct experience of the challenges facing local media.

By joining the accelerator, you will also be part of a global cohort of newsrooms pursuing similar goals, as well as an active community of practice with alumni from IPI’s innovation support activities.

A couple outcomes from the 2023 Local News Accelerator:

• Citizen Matters in India developed a platform, ‘The Change Network’, a ‘forum’ where citizen journalist fellows can provide regular, frequent updates on any particular issue and through users needs assessments, developed better performing local stories, such as recent coverage of the Chennai cyclone and floods.
• In Ecuador, Tierre de Nadie built a new approach to strategy planning for their investigative journalism into corruption in rural parts of the country, building new research units in different cities with centralized operations.
• Jabarnews in Indonesia developed a user-needs research model and based on that, developed political education content during an election that empowered their local audiences in West Java. 

How to apply

The deadline for applications is July 7th, 2024 and you will find the application here. To apply, you will need to share details about your organization, your audience and business model and the current challenge for which you are exploring solutions. 

You will also submit a brief project proposal – tell us about a specific challenge and potential solution you and your team are interested in researching and developing with the help of the accelerator. For example, you might seek to increase subscriber or member retention by developing new editorial channels, or learn how to better serve existing audiences by carrying out user research, or pursue new opportunities for earned income, to fill revenue gaps or to invest in new journalistic talent. 

Please note that the expected time commitment is approximately four hours per week, divided between two participating team members, for the duration of the four month accelerator.

Past experience shows how important it is to build a diverse cohort and we encourage you to reach out if this sounds interesting to you! If you’re not sure if you’re eligible, contact [email protected] or sign up for our upcoming info session here.