Funding programme

Creative Europe is the EU’s funding programme for providing support to the culture and audiovisual sectors.

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Call overview

This call aims to support the economical sustainability of news media.

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Call detail

The European news media sectors play a crucial and valuable role in Europe. Yet, they are facing multiple challenges. Partially as a result of the digital shift, with readers shifting to online sources and traditional news outlets losing advertising revenues, the economic sustainability of professional journalism has come under pressure. Many media at the local level as well as those putting their public interest mission before profits, have had to close down, weakening media pluralism and posing risks for the good functioning of democracy.

Topic 1: Journalism Partnerships - Collaborations aims to support the economical sustainability of news media. It supports cross-border media collaborations focusing, among other aspects, on the resilience of news media organisations. This support shall foster media transformation, trustworthy reporting and skills for news media professionals, for instance by developing new business models and media production standards.

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Objectives  

• Increased innovation and creativity in business models, journalistic production processes and distribution processes; 
• Increased viability of professionally produced journalistic content. 
• Increased interest in professionally produced journalistic content, among various social groups, language groups and age groups; 
• Increased media collaboration. 
• Sector-wide networks for the exchange of best practices among news media organisations and professionals; 
• Knowledge-hubs for sub-sectors around technical formats (written/online press, radio/podcasts, TV, etc.) and/or journalistic genres (data journalism, general topics, specialised journalism, etc.);  
• Acquisition and improvement of professional skills by journalists as well as media business professionals.

Read the News Partnerships call document to check eligibility and requirements.

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Priorities

This topic seeks to help the wider European news media sector become more sustainable and resilient, including small media. Support is foreseen for collaborative projects in and between any news media sector and/or genre that aim to enhance cooperation, help media adapt to new economic and consumption realities and instil systemic change across that sector.

• Projects must focus on ways to develop collaborative transformation, from a business, technological and/or production point of view.
• Projects can aim to develop, inter alia, better revenue and monetisation models, new approaches to audience development, community-building and marketing, development of common professional/technical standards, new types of newsrooms, syndication networks or other models to exchange content/data between news media across the EU, or provide assistance to small media organisations. They can aim to increase efficiency and the quality of reporting through innovative journalistic collaborations. Projects can test innovative production methods and formats, or contribute to high-quality media production standards in other collaborative ways. Projects can aim to increase exchanges of best practices among journalists and optimise workflows for those journalism genres requiring more time and resources.
• Proposals may address one or more of the priorities outlined above, if relevant and based on a needs analysis of the chosen (sub)sector. The proposal should provide this needs analysis and explain how the proposed activities will work towards addressing the identified challenges.

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Eligibility

In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must

- be legal entities (public or private bodies)

- be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:

• Creative Europe Participating Countries: EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs))
• non-EU countries: listed EEA countries and countries associated with the Creative Europe Programme (list of participating countries).

Consortia may include non-profit, public and private media outlets including written/online press, radio/podcasts, TV etc. as well as other organisations focusing on news media including media associations, NGOs, journalistic funds and training organisations focusing on media professionals, etc.

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Consortium composition

Proposals must be submitted by a consortium of at least three applicants (beneficiaries; not affiliated entities), which complies with the following conditions: at least three independent entities from a minimum of three different eligible countries.

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Budget

Total budget: EUR 5 266 270

Project budget (maximum grant amount): €2,500,000 per project.

‍The costs will be reimbursed at the funding rate fixed in the Grant Agreement at 80% of the total eligible costs for Topic 1 News Journalism Partnerships - Collaborations.

The grant will be a budget-based (actual costs, with unit cost and flat-rate elements). This means that it will reimburse ONLY certain types of costs (eligible costs) and costs that were actually incurred for your project (NOT the budgeted costs). For unit costs and flat-rates, you can charge the amounts calculated as explained in the Grant Agreement (see art 6 and Annex 2 and 2a).