The 2025 Local News Accelerator, now in its third edition, is part of IPI’s media innovation portfolio, which supports digital innovation in local and niche news organizations around the world, assisting each media’s near and long-term viability through editorial innovation, and operational and business development. This year, we received a record number of 143 applications from over 59 countries and territories.
The final 10 participating media are serving local and niche audiences around the world, from Afghanistan to the Maldives. They represent a range of business models, formats, and niches, focusing on news deserts, feminism and empowering underserved communities, among others. The selected newsrooms stood out to the jury with their strong commitment to bringing local news to diverse audiences, and their demonstrated capacity to transform their media businesses through audience research and product development.
The IPI’s Media Innovation team, along with our coaches and trainers, look forward to working with these 10 teams during the Local News Accelerator. By the end of the programme, we will share the lessons we have learned together with our global network.
Get to know the 2025 Local News Accelerator cohort
Maldives Independent (Maldives)
Maldives Independent is an award-winning news outlet relaunched in 2025 to provide independent journalism in the Maldives. Their tagline is “Real Stories. Real Maldives.”. They offer high-quality reporting and an innovative approach that blends daily news, investigations, podcasts, and multimedia storytelling. Their objectives for the accelerator are to build products that serve a more narrow set of audiences as well as take steps towards diversifying income streams. The team will research and test their reader revenue funnel and run experiments with new formats accustomed to younger audiences.
Zan Times (Canada/Afghanistan)
Zan Times is a women-led investigative newsroom reporting on human rights violations affecting women and LGBTQI+ individuals in Afghanistan. Their objective is to serve as a catalyst for change by raising awareness, fostering empathy, and inspiring action. In the accelerator, their team will work with IPI on a holistic approach to strategic planning, role division, and setting goals in order to pursue their ambitions of depending less on social media for traffic, increasing the reach of the Zan Times brand and ultimately to grow their newsletter and reader donations.
acidade on (Brazil)
acidade on services hyperlocal coverage in five cities in the interior of São Paulo, amplifying often-overlooked voices and promoting public debate. Acidade On’s multimedia content spans platforms, using accessible language tailored to diverse audiences in each city. As an organization, they are social-first and maintain active listening channels to ensure their coverage reflects the real needs of the community. In the accelerator, they will pilot “Fato & Gente”, which aims to develop a replicable model focused on expanding access to information in cities classified as news deserts.
Today FM 95.1 (Nigeria)
Today FM 95.1 is a radio station with a listenership of 12 million listeners in Rivers State of Nigeria. Today FM provides a platform for community concerns while offering timely news, talk shows, sports, business, technology and entertainment. Their project will seek to future-proof their newsroom, focusing on organizing their team to respond to digital content production strategies. The team will learn and test collaborative workflows for digital publishing that maintain quality editorial oversight and verification.
VIEWdigital (Northern Ireland)
VIEWdigital is a digital-first non-profit committed to producing and publishing original social affairs journalism, based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The team delivers a participatory model of journalism, co-created with disadvantaged and marginalised communities, including migrant women and disabled people, publishing on the VIEWdigital website and in VIEW magazine/ezine. Currently, they offer sponsorship, media training and consultancy. VIEWdigital’s approach to the accelerator is two-fold: improving the performance of their non-profit business model, including donations, and reinventing their platform strategy with a focus on video content.
Anfibia (Argentina)
Anfibia is a digital magazine based in Argentina, whose mission is to create new ways of narrating and understanding the modern world by combining academic rigor, narrative journalism and artistic experimentation. As they pursue greater financial and operational sustainability without sacrificing editorial independence or the capacity for innovation, they will further invest in their reader revenue model. This will include setting goals and standards for managing their team and reducing dependency on international donors.
Radio Somos Todos Primos (São Tomé and Príncipe)
Radio Somos Todos Primos (RSTP) is the first digital radio station in São Tomé and Príncipe, created to inform, educate, and empower citizens, with a strong focus on young people. RSTP seeks to both build deeper relationships with its audience and provide training and mentoring to the next generation of journalism, video production and digital media talent in São Tomé and Príncipe. Their team seeks to increase offline audiences, especially those in rural areas, by expanding from digital to FM.
Room24 (Mongolia)
Room24 is Mongolia’s first bilingual, feminist, community-driven newsroom, founded by five women journalists who believe that an equal society requires inclusive, representative media. They seek to fill a gap in the media ecosystem in Mongolia by building a news product that is dedicated to feminist journalism.. Room24.mn is in the process of launching and growing its membership model to both safeguard independence and keep content free to read and republish. During the accelerator, Room24 will continue to refine its reader revenue model.
THE COAST MEDIA (Kenya)
The Coast Media Group covers six counties along Kenya’s Indian Ocean coastline, with correspondents in Taita Taveta, Kilifi, Mombasa, Kwale, Lamu and Tanariver. They cover coastal communities engaged in fishing, small-scale farming, and tourism as a source of livelihood. They have successfully digitized their print newspaper, driving audiences across The Coast’s website and WhatsApp channels, and will now focus on refining their business model to support this strategy..
Sudvest (Romania)
Sudvest.ro is a digital-first medium covering the region of Oltenia with independent, interactive journalism tailored to Gorj’s community. During the accelerator, they seek to grow their community and build a team that responds to the needs of users in Otenia.
What’s next?
The cohort of local and niche media will follow five months of learning design, training and advisory services that support local newsrooms getting started or pivoting their business with the structure and support to identify and deliver solutions that will advance their organizations toward financial and editorial sustainability.
During the last week, these 10 newsrooms will receive business and editorial audits from IPI’s in-house media innovation experts and be paired with specialist coaches able to respond to their unique needs. The coaches will support each team throughout the whole duration of the programme.
The format is based on IPI’s innovation learning journey, piloted through our 2023 Local News Accelerator, in which publishers from around the world achieved measurable benefits such as growth in readership, doubling of subscribers, building new onboarding tools and engagement channels and launching membership models with impactful crowdfunding campaigns.
By the end of the Accelerator, the participants will have the opportunity to extend mentorship and will remain involved in the IPI Local News and Innovation Network.
IPI’s Local News Accelerator is made possible with support from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.
