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A short thread on the work that I’ve been doing - with @drdaggers and Kat Davis - on understanding the impact of the @Nesta / @DCMS Future News Fund. Our full report is available here: http://socialspider.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/September2020FutureNewsImpactEvaluationReportFINAL.pdf
The news industry is in big trouble. The DCMS-commissioned Cairncross review (last year) reported that ‘public-interest news’ is vital for democracy but - particularly investigative journalism and reporting on local democracy - is increasingly unviable: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-cairncross-review-a-sustainable-future-for-journalism
Cairncross recommended the creation of a £10m per year innovation fund focused on improving public-interest news, with a particular focus on business models, data & new audiences. DCMS commissioned Future News Fund as a £2m pilot fund running for 5 months: https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/future-news-fund/
Future News Fund provided grant funding to 20 organisations across two focus areas: ‘Reimagining Engagement’ and ‘Improving Financial Sustainability’ - and two tracks: an ‘Accelerator’ supporting business development and an ‘Innovation Sprint’ to test specific ideas.
Flip Finance worked with the grantees to support them in measuring the impact of their work - based on a theory of change and measurement plan - and to ensure that data was collected from each grantee to inform the overall evaluation (via data agreements and impact reports).
Unsurprisingly, the UK’s move into Covid-19 lockdown on March 26th - slap bang in the middle of the delivery of the programme - had a major impact on grantees’ (and programme managers’) work however, despite these additional challenges, the Fund produced lots of useful insights.
The wide range of grantees funded - from national charities to new local groups, bootstrapped startups to businesses with significant backing from investors - reflects the range of different approaches needed to ensure a viable future for public-interest news.
Grantees approached the future of news from a range of angles: some seeking to extend the boundaries of traditional news reporting, others to change the way news is produced & consumed, some doing either or both while seeking to develop/support new sustainable business models.
Our report looks at the impact of grantees’ projects on the future of news in relation to four stakeholder groups: ‘communities in a local area’, ‘the general public’, ‘under-represented, misrepresented or marginalised groups’ & ‘professional journalists or media organisations’.
Given the limited timeframe of the fund combined with a global pandemic, most grantees were not able to gather significant amounts of data suggesting obvious conclusions - however the Fund successfully illuminated and increased understanding of some important challenges.
These included: creating ‘public-interest news’ that the public is interested in; engaging effectively with local communities, supporting wider participation in news while valuing & protecting professional standards, developing business models to support news as a social good.
Based on the insights generated we considered the potential future impact of funded projects based on four key questions: How journalism will be paid for? How journalism will be produced? How journalism will enable better representation? How journalism will support democracy?
As both governments and philanthropic bodies (hopefully) increase their roles as funders of at least some parts of the news landscape, it’s particularly important that we develop a clearer understanding of what it means to generate positive social impact in news.
In the case of Future News Fund, this has been primarily about the scope for positive social impact on & within the business of producing news - however there are equally important (potentially contentious) questions about how we understand the impact of news on wider society.
