[FoME] Handbook "Building sustainability for media centres"

[Christoph Dietz]

Im Mai 2007 publiziert, aber jetzt erst als PDF-Download verfügbar:

Yasha Lange, Thomas Hughes:
Buidling sustainability for media centres - a handbook on best practices.
Copenhagen: International Media Support, 2007, 52 S.

Download: http://www.i-m-s.dk/files/publications/Best%20Practices_webfinal%201194-2007.pdf

Inhalt:
- Background
- The workshop
- Setting up a media centre
- Limiting overheads and direct expenses
- Forging links with the industry
- Training and education
- Beyond training and advocacy
- Donor funding
- Marketing and branding
- Measuring sustainability

Basiert auf den Erfahrungen von 11 "Media Centres":

- International Press Centre, Lagos
- Liberia Media Centre, Monrovia
- Media Foundation for West Africa, Accra
- Southern Sudan Media Resource Centre, Juba

- Sri Lanka Press Institute, Colombo
- Nepal Press Institute, Kathmandu
- KBR 68H, Jakarta
- Mizzima News Group, New Delhi

- Macedonian Institute for Media, Skopje
- Bulgaria ProMedia Broadcasting Training Centre, Sofia
- Mediacentar Sarajevo, Sarajevo

Since the beginning of the 1990s, media centers have been established worldwide to support the development of independent and professional media. Typically, these centers were set up with international financial support in countries in transition with restricted press freedom.

Today media centers around the world are facing the same challenges in ensuring long-term, financial sustainability after donor support ceases. In order to overcome these challenges, a number of centers have pioneered innovative approaches that ensure financial and institutional viability and credibility, which allow them to successfully evolve into permanent institutions in their own right. Some have taken on a commercial approach, while others seek funding to be able to offer services free of charge or at minimal cover charges.

Others are still struggling to find a sustainable way of running their institutions. IMS is actively engaged in supporting media centers around the world and helping them explore new avenues for sustainability. As a means to accommodating the need for an overview of lessons learnt, IMS called a conference in April 2007, in which representatives of media centers from around the globe participated to share their experiences, successes and failures.

Driven by a mission – not profit

Regardless of their activities, most media centers are “mission-based”. They are not driven by profit (unlike some private educational institutes) and forcefully protect their independence.The “markets” they operate in are usually less developed and the political circumstances occasionally hostile. Consequently, the start-up and running of these centers requires courage, entrepreneurial spirit, innovative skills and dedication from the management.

Evidently, it is complicated to balance a demand-driven approach with a mission to support media freedom and professionalism. And not surprisingly, in some cases, the training and activities have been “supply driven” rather than “demand driven”. Over the years, this resulted in training being organized because the funding was available, and subsequently participants were asked to come. This left little incentive for the media centers to conduct fact-based studies about the kind of training the market or journalists would be willing to pay for.

Sustainability – how?

A lot of media centers are struggling with the question of how the centers, despite - or in light of these constraints may achieve a greater degree of financial independence and thus sustainability, and this was the key issue addressed in the workshop organized by IMS. Furthermore, a handbook published by IMS in 2007 which compiles the experiences shared as well as the recommendations presented in the workshop, takes the departure in the very crucial question: How may media centers achieve sustainability?