Call for Journalism Partnerships – Pluralism and Journalism Partnerships – Collaboration [CREA-CROSS-2025-JOURPART]

Independent media play a crucial and important role in society and contribute to upholding the key principles of media freedom and pluralism, as well as civic engagement.

Through this call, organizations with experience in the media field will be able to establish and distribute funds to news media entities operating in media sectors of particular importance to democracy. This includes local and regional media, community media, investigative journalism, or media specialized in public interest news.

The budget for the call is €5.2 million, with a maximum of €2.5 million available per selected project. The maximum EU co-financing rate is up to 90% of the total eligible project budget. Therefore, applicants must co-finance their project activities from other sources.

The call covers two topics: 1. Journalism Partnerships and 2. Collaboration

1. Call for Proposals for Journalism Partnerships – Pluralism

Objectives:
The aim of this call is to maintain and strengthen media pluralism through support to local and regional media, investigative journalism, and media that provide public interest news.
This topic focuses on preserving media pluralism, which is crucial for democratic debate and civic participation, and particularly targets:

• Local and regional media that often lack the resources to adapt to digital transformation;
• Investigative journalism and media that offer news of public interest (e.g., media focusing on transparency, legal issues, or civic engagement).

Project proposals must include a funding programme targeting other media organizations, with funds allocated to activities that support transformation of the targeted groups, such as:

• Innovation in editorial work (e.g., formats, content), news coverage, and revenue models;
• Improving news distribution and outreach;
• Developing strategies and involving audiences in building community strategies;
• Development of technical tools applicable to the above themes;
• Trainings related to the above topics.

Eligible applicants:
Eligible applicants can be individual organizations or consortia composed of at least two applicants from Creative Europe participating countries. Legal entities such as:
media associations, NGOs, non-profit organizations, civil society organizations, public bodies, international organizations, universities, research centers, journalism funds, media training organizations, foundations, and others may apply.

Expected impact:

• Increased innovation and creativity in business models, journalistic production, and distribution processes;
• Improved sustainability of professionally produced journalistic content;
• Increased public interest in professionally produced content across different societal, linguistic, and age groups.

Specifically, this call aims to:

• Increase resilience, pluralism, and editorial independence at the EU level, particularly among local, regional, and community media, investigative journalism, and public interest media;
• Enhance the resilience of organizations active in targeted media sectors and safeguard the media landscape;
• Promote gradual adoption of new technologies in targeted media sectors as long as they support media pluralism and diversity;
• Encourage the creation of knowledge bases about media sectors delivering public interest news (e.g., mapping content-scarce areas or regions where media pluralism is at risk).

2. Call for Proposals for Journalism Partnerships – Collaboration

Objectives:
This support targets cross-border cooperation between news media organizations across the EU to improve economic sustainability and foster innovation in revenue models, audience development, and technical standards.

Applicants are invited to establish cross-border media cooperation. Proposals may focus on: developing better revenue and monetization models; new approaches to audience development, community building and marketing; development of common professional/technical standards; new editorial types, syndication networks, or other models for content/data exchange among newsrooms across the EU; providing support for small media outlets, among others etc.

Project activities may include: events, online trainings and workshops for media professionals, exchange programmes, mentoring schemes, mapping best practices, development of technical standards for the sector, editorial guidelines, practical handbooks, testing platforms or technical solutions for idea sharing, promotional campaigns, and other actions aimed at sector sustainability, encouraging best practice exchange, and supporting media outlets lacking the capacity to adapt to the digital environment.

In terms of content, projects should aim to enhance efficiency and quality of reporting through innovative journalistic collaboration. They may test new methods and production formats or contribute to high-quality media standards through other forms of cooperation. The goal can also be to increase best practice exchange among journalists and optimize working procedures for resource-intensive genres of journalism.

Eligible applicants:

Legal entities, including non-profit, public, and private media outlets (print/online, radio/podcasts, TV, and others), and other organizations focused on news media (e.g., media associations, NGOs, journalism funds, training bodies for media professionals, etc.).

Project proposals must be submitted by consortia comprising at least three partners from at least three different Creative Europe participating countries. Since the call aims to impact the entire sector, applicants are encouraged to involve as many media actors as possible in their activities.

Transnational consortia of media organizations are invited to join forces to support media transformation, reliable reporting, and skills development in the news sector. Examples of focus areas include development of production standards, new business models, new media types and journalism formats, best practice exchange, etc. They may focus on a media (sub)sector (e.g., TV, radio, print, etc.) and/or journalism genre (e.g., data journalism, specialized reporting, etc.).

Project duration: up to 24 months.

Preparing and submitting project proposals

• Proposals should be prepared in accordance with the conditions and criteria outlined in the call document: NEWS - Journalism Partnerships (CREA-CROSS-2025-JOURPART), Version 1.0, 22 October.

Links to the call and documentation can be found here and here.

• Applications are processed and submitted electronically via the Funding & Tenders Opportunity Portal (F&TP). More information on how to access F&TP can be found here.

An online info session for this call will be organised by the European Commission on 14 November 2024, from 14:00 to 15:30 CET. To register for the info session, please follow the link here.