{"id":33008,"date":"2022-12-07T13:31:04","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T11:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/?p=33008"},"modified":"2022-12-08T08:33:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T06:33:18","slug":"the-future-of-local-journalism-in-search-of-the-holy-grail-of-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/the-future-of-local-journalism-in-search-of-the-holy-grail-of-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"The future of local journalism: in search of the Holy Grail of funding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The last panel of this year\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/wpi2022.aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New Horizons in Journalism<\/a> conference, hosted by World Press Institute and the Association of European Journalists \u2013 Bulgaria on December 1st in Sofia, was dedicated to the decline of local journalism \u2013 and the potential ways to stop it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"New Horizons in Journalism Conference 2022 (live)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nDUVWbJRt8w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The moderator Camilla Bath kicked off the discussion by outlining the problem at hand: news coverage used to cater to the needs of each individual community, but the disruptiveness of the internet shook up this model to the core, and there does not seem to be a replacement discovered yet. \u201cWhen local news declines, so do local communities. News deserts compound governance issues, people become less prosperous, voter turnout drops, costs of governance rise,\u201d Bath summarized, adding that journalists have to find solutions to this crisis \u201cfor the good of our communities, profession and democracy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-33026\" src=\"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-1.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-1-696x464.jpg 696w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-1-1068x712.jpg 1068w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-1-630x420.jpg 630w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bulgarian contributor to this panel, Emilia Dimitrova, who is the publisher and editor of the local news website Sevlievo Online, gave a first-hand account about these trends. She described how the predominance of state and municipal funding has put local journalism in a \u201cmedically induced coma,\u201d with loyal newspapers receiving enough funding to survive, while independent outlets surviving by a thread. Critical media outside of Sofia do not get invited to press conferences, do not receive press releases, questions they send to the institutions are left unanswered\u2026\u00a0 reporters have received humiliatingly low pay, have to suffer harassment by pro-government outlets and the only thing that keeps the independent media alive is the motivation of their owners. What does local journalism need to start breathing back on its own? Several things, according to Dimitrova: well-trained journalists, independent funding and courage. \u201cI would say that not only are people not ready to pay for quality content, they are not even willing to check the quality of content, to distinguish between good and cheap journalism,\u201d she concluded.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-33028\" src=\"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-2.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-2-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-2-696x464.jpg 696w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-2-1068x712.jpg 1068w, https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/reg-2-630x420.jpg 630w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to International Consortium of Investigative Journalists senior editor Dean Starkman, a lot of what Emilia Dimitrova said about Bulgaria applies to local outlets around the world. And the short explanation for how it came to be is: \u201cit\u2019s a money problem.\u201d \u201cThe collapse of the print advertising model has hollowed out local newspapers across the US. We are now 15 years since the breakup of this business model and have to stop crying about it and find a way to go,\u201d he said. According to Starkman, the media needs stable platforms of journalistic production, reporters with enough time and resources on their hands. In what he called the \u201csearch of the Holy Grail of funding\u201d for journalism, every option (that does not go against the ethical principles of reporting) is allowed: merchandise, events, philanthropy. \u201cWhatever is ethical and keeps the lights on, you have to use,\u201d Starkman underlined, adding that readers&#8217; support is simply not enough. Finally, he proposed an unorthodox solution &#8211; public subsidies for the media. The idea has an unlikely origin \u2013 a Hungarian tax provision that allows people to pay 1% of their taxes to an NGO of their choice, and has been keeping some of the last remaining independent outlets in the country going in the past few years. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last panel of this year\u2019s New Horizons in Journalism conference, hosted by World Press Institute and the Association of European Journalists \u2013 Bulgaria on December 1st in Sofia, was dedicated to the decline of local journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aej-bulgaria.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}