A Fundamentally Altered Landscape
Independent media across the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region face a crisis of viability. The donor-dependent model that sustained outlets over the past decade is quickly transforming as available funding shrinks, political pressures in the country on foreign funding intensify, and revenue opportunities remain constrained. Other factors that are contributing to this transformation include the shifting political priorities that weigh down on available funding for media; some crisis-driven funding cycles prioritise emergency response over strategic investment; and restrictive funding parameters limit organisational flexibility.
This roundtable convened media actors, media support organisations and donor representatives to examine how both sustainability strategies and funding approaches must evolve to respond to the new reality. The fundamental question has shifted: it's no longer whether media can supplement donor funding with income generation, but how current structures can adapt to support genuine financial independence and scalability.
Key Insights from the Discussion
Service provision, such as training, editorial work, and content production for third parties, emerged as the most successful revenue stream, but must leverage existing organisational strengths rather than requiring new capacity. Additionally, when crises hit, income generation collapses first, making lean budgets critical. Multiple participants questioned whether traditional grant-making remains appropriate or whether investment models better serve scaling needs.
The strongest theme was shifting from supporting individual actors to nurturing the wider ecosystem through cooperative structures and resource sharing, especially on the non-editorial level. It was also noted that audiences, including Gen Z and diaspora communities, show a willingness to pay for content, but nevertheless, the value of public interest media must be renegotiated with the targeted audience. This puts the responsibility on the media to renegotiate its relationship with the audiences it serves.
Actionable Recommendations
1. For Donors and Media Support Organisations
Transform funding approaches:
• Provide flexible spending across budget lines, realistic overhead recognition, and long-term core funding.
• Maintain support in crisis contexts rather than withdrawing when stability is most needed (i.e. continuing core funding to independent outlets during crisis, as ad revenue and local subscriptions collapse but the need for reliable information is at its highest).
• Remain open to exploring and funding higher-risk and more innovative budget lines that might allow media to experiment with income-generating activities, even when there is a risk of financial loss initially.
• Explore investment models in addition to traditional granting to drive scaling beyond survival.
Invest at the ecosystem level:
• Support cooperative media structures and resource-sharing frameworks (inspired by best practices around the world).
• Having the understanding that funding non-media infrastructure development for at least five years is essential to building foundational sustainability capacity.
• Enable and foster synergies and streamlined operations across organisations.
Recalibrate expectations:
• Revise monitoring and evaluation indicators to reflect realistic sustainability pathways given regional constraints and local contexts.
• Accept that a significant investment must precede profit in income-generating ventures, and that more than one stream might need to be piloted.
• Recognise that media working in difficult contexts require sustained and additional support, not abandonment.
Maintain constructive dialogue:
• Keep information flowing between donors and media actors through regular exchange.
• Address misalignments between the support offered by donors and the actual sustainability needs of media partners.
• Bring diverse stakeholders to the table, including institutional back-donors (the foundations, governments, or agencies that fund the donors typically present in these discussions).
2. For Media Actors
Strategise income generation:
• Focus revenue activities on organisational expertise: services that leverage existing strengths without extensive new capacity.
• Learn from regional experiences: services and merchandise sale work best, memberships require careful design and extensive marketing budgets, and advertising faces structural challenges outside the control of media outlets.
• Develop content that can be monetised across platforms where audiences already pay for subscriptions, such as YouTube.
• Engage diaspora communities strategically based on a feasibility assessment, with practical payment mechanisms and clear value propositions.
Build organisational resilience:
• Design lean, agile budgets (with reduced overhead) capable of withstanding periods when income generation decreases, or donor support shrinks.
• This could include shifting towards a smaller permanent core team, supplemented by freelancers, contributors, and fellows hired per project or season.
• Build a simple cash-flow calendar that maps grant disbursement timelines against monthly expenditure to anticipate gaps early and plan accordingly.
• Develop crisis management protocols that maintain core operations during funding disruptions.
Cultivate audience support:
• Renegotiate the value proposition of public interest media with audiences.
• This could include moving away from abstract claims ("we hold power to account") toward specific, tangible impact statements: stories that changed a law, exposed a corrupt contract, or prompted an official response.
• Offer audiences a visible role in setting editorial priorities, through surveys, open pitch processes, or community votes on investigative topics.
• Raise awareness of communities that quality journalism requires financial sustainability and clearly communicate what would be lost if such media outlets no longer existed.
• Build membership and support models that respect audience economic realities while demonstrating impact: What matters most to the target audience being monetised? Different target audiences might require different incentives.
Embrace ecosystem collaboration:
• Shift from competition to complementarity with other media outlets.
• Explore cooperative structures for shared resources and reduced costs on the non-editorial level.
• Engage in honest experience-sharing about successes and failures.
• Pursue co-production arrangements that maintain quality while distributing costs and enhancing reach.
Think entrepreneurially within mission:
• Accept that moving toward financial independence requires operating with profit logic.
• Break free from donor-world limitations while maintaining editorial integrity. This may mean grounding decisions in the outlet's own vision and editorial priorities rather than accommodating donor agendas that may be disconnected from the context on the ground, particularly during crises. This may mean turning down project funding that doesn't fit, but it produces a media strategy that is more coherent and sustainable in the long run.
• Attract and retain talent through both professional incentives and meaningful mission alignment.
Looking Ahead
The conversation revealed a clear consensus: the region requires an ecosystemic shift that nurtures cooperation over competition, recognises diverse organisational needs, and builds structures capable of supporting independent media beyond donor dependency. This does not diminish the importance of donors; on the contrary, their role at this stage is critical to building and shaping this new reality. Success requires donors to rethink funding mechanisms and invest at the ecosystem level, while media actors must pursue strategic sustainability grounded in their strengths and contexts.
The path forward demands honest dialogue, shared risk-taking, and recognition that building sustainable independent media in SWANA is a collective endeavour requiring patience, flexibility, and commitment from all stakeholders.
