Independent News Emergency Relief Coordination (INERC) launched to coordinate help during the pandemic

The coronavirus crisis will have a huge impact on the news media, with many independent news media across the world facing potentially catastrophic declines in income and consequently contemplating significant cost-cutting and at worst closing down. The Independent News Emergency Relief Coordination (INERC) launched today is an effort to help funders willing and able to provide significant financial support for independent news media better understand where the need is greatest and coordinate their efforts to make the greatest possible difference in this difficult moment.

The challenges many news organisations are facing are bad news for our societies and our ability to combat the coronavirus. Independent news media are key to helping people understand the crisis and act accordingly to protect themselves and their communities. They are key to both publicizing and scrutinizing how governments and other powerful institutions respond to the crisis.

INERC is based on the idea that better information on the need for and supply of emergency funding relief can help ensure this relief is more effectively distributed globally and avoid a situation where a few well-known news media get a lot of support from many different funders while many more equally important but less well known get little or no support. The purpose of INERC is:

• Collecting data to identify areas of greatest need from independent news media across the world, including both for-profit and non-profit, but excluding government-controlled and state-owned media.
• On this basis, advising funders as to where they can make the greatest possible difference.
• Providing optional overall guidelines for those considering stepping up to provide funding help for independent news media during the coronavirus crisis.

What makes INERC unique is that it directly connects several major funders, networks organizing independent news media, media development organizations, and research capacity to enable more effective and informed coordinated emergency relief. It is a temporary initiative, initially planned for six months, and supplement the important work done by others to coordinate media funding and media development.

INERC is chaired by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) at the University of Oxford working with the Institute's Head of Leadership Development Federica Cherubini, and with support from Luminate. INERC involves a group of charities, foundations, nonprofits, and private companies providing emergency relief in the form of financial support for independent news media.

Founding members include BBC Media Action, Center for International Media Assistance, Facebook, Google, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Luminate, WAN-IFRA, World Association of News Publishers, and one more founding member pending final board approval.

INERC is open to organizations in a position to offer significant financial support to independent news media joining on the basis of support from existing members.

The members aim to coordinate their response to the crisis in part by facilitating collection of data which is anonymized, analyzed, and presented by the Reuters Institute publicly and to the group’s members to enable a better understanding of the coronavirus crisis’ impact on independent news media and to enable more informed decision making among major funders offerings emergency relief for journalism. All the data collected as part of this research is kept strictly confidential and is only available to the Reuters Institute's researchers. INERC members will meet regularly to discuss research findings, coordinate responses, and share ideas, but all decisions about the research are taken by the Reuters Institute.

INERC’s ambition is to help guide tens and hopefully hundreds of millions of US dollars to those independent news media around the world who need the help the most in this difficult situation during the coronavirus crisis.

We hope that this temporary collaboration will also inform and support the creation of the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM) that Luminate and others are working to set up to provide more long-term structure for channelling funding from development agencies, philanthropic donors and platform companies to independent journalism across the world in a way that protects news media’s editorial independence. The founding members have initiated INERC on the basis of long-running conversations in informal advisory conversations around the IFPIM and hope other funders will join the coordination effort. Here's how INERC will operate:

• Day-to-day, it will be run by a small secretariat at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism working with support from Luminate.
• The INERC group members provide input on the work and make decisions about admission of new members and get regular updates on the research based on fully anonymized data to coordinate and inform their funding support for independent news media.
• INERC will work with other organisations on understanding the needs of independent news media and on the data collection.
• Topline findings will be published on a regular basis to help others navigate the crisis.

Please contact the INERC secretariat at inerc@politics.ox.ac.uk if you are interested in submitting data, joining the group, or being considered for possible help by the funders involved.

Please direct all media inquiries to the INERC chair, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen.