Call for Global Cohort of Local Media Organizations

 Deadline Date: July 07, 2024

 Donor Name: International Press Institute (IPI)

 Grant Size: Not Available

The International Press Institute (IPI) is excited to open its global call to the newest edition of its Local News Accelerator to help local media organizations take meaningful steps toward financial and editorial sustainability.

They 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.

What you will receive as a 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 the 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.

Key Activities

• One month of direct needs assessments to identify your challenge, problem statement and roadmap solutions.
• Intensive training focused on tools and skills that can be transferred to your newsroom well beyond the duration of the accelerator, focused on problem solving and identifying solutions, audience research, strategic planning, journalism formats built for user engagement, digital business models and diversifying revenue models.
• One-on-one personalized advisory services bespoke to the needs of your newsroom, with flexible, on-demand industry-experts as coaches during the accelerator.
• Access to a networking platform with the current cohort, expert coaches, all programme alumni and a network of local news practitioners.
• Access to an e-learning platform with training modules and recordings from industry-leaders. Monthly “Ask-Me-Anything” sessions allowing attendees to directly pose questions to industry experts.
• Group coaching sessions with peers developing similar projects.
• Speaker sessions based on themes determined in the needs assessments.

Who can apply?

• 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. 

For more information, visit IPI.