Eye-opening new report mapping US philanthropic funding for the global information space

15 active calls and OpenAI's curious ideas about content and copyright.

Welcome!

This week on the Media Finance Monitor:

• US philanthropies spent 21 billion dollars on healthy information ecosystems, 90+ percent domestically

• Freefall: referral traffic from platforms is disappearing

• OpenAI has some very curious ideas about content and copyright

• Is it okay for news publishers to accept money from the fossil fuel industry?

• 15 active calls (7 new)

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US Philanthropies Spent $21 Billion on Healthy Information Ecosystems, 90+ Percent Domestically

The Trust, Accountability, and Inclusion (TAI) Collaborative released an eye-opening report on the amount and distribution of support for healthy information ecosystems by US charities between 2017 and 2021. According to their findings, $21.3 billion was spent over the five years in question, most of it domestically in the US, with only 6.2% flowing to aid recipient countries. Even when the funding was intended to go abroad, many of the direct recipients were intermediary organizations in the Global North. The top 10 looks like this:

1. United States

2. United Kingdom 

3. India 

4. Kenya

5. South Africa

6. Switzerland

7. Nigeria

8. Brazil

9. Netherlands

10. Canada 

While these figures may be mildly to moderately upsetting to some, they align with larger trends in this space.

Big funders, both governmental organizations like the European Commission or USAID and large private charities, rely on intermediaries to distribute funds effectively. There are very few news/media organizations engaged in public interest journalism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) or the Global South that can absorb millions of dollars in support without being overwhelmed. If a funder wants to support a wider range of newsrooms, not just the largest players, they need to scale their intervention accordingly. They either build their own complex bureaucracies to dispense smaller sums or bring in intermediary organizations, which have the capacity and hopefully the local expertise to distribute the funding.

Relying on intermediaries is not inherently problematic, but I wish there were more organizations outside the Global North trusted by funders. There is more relevant expertise on the South Asian or Eastern European media environment in South Asia or Eastern Europe than in the UK, US, or Switzerland, and it is somewhat anachronistic to assume otherwise.

It's also worth looking at the top US grantmakers; the list reads like a who's who from the nightmare of every authoritarian populist from CEE and beyond:

1. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: $667,669,492

2. Open Society Foundations: $121,252,615

3. Ford Foundation: $67,717,090

4. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation: $55,656,666

5. The Rockefeller Foundation: $52,448,655

(On a slightly related note, I came across this post shared by Dessi Lange-Damianova COO of Bellingcat, on the average age, gender ratios and diversity of the boards of major Dutch foundations, including some journalism funders.)

Freefall: Referral Traffic from Platforms is Disappearing

The Press Gazette extensively documents the decline of referral traffic from Google and Facebook and its effect on the news industry.

• First Google core update of 2024 brings bad news for most news publishers

• Facebook’s referral traffic for publishers down 50% in 12 months

For Google, the BBC is among the worst affected, losing 37% search visibility between early March and mid-April. The Standard lost 32%, The Independent 16%, The Guardian 10%, The New York Times and The Financial Times 8%, and The Economist 7%. Very few publishers were able to increase search visibility over the same period.

Facebook traffic is also down, affecting smaller sites the most.

This directly affects revenues and, at times, the very existence of smaller outlets.

Wherever you are right now on the curve, the direction this is all heading is clear: every newsroom and publisher needs to accept that referral traffic from large platforms is disappearing (and it's happening sooner rather than later) and start working on strategies to mitigate the effects.

One answer may be newsletters, and there is a fascinating story (also) on Press Gazette about 1440, the 5th largest email newsletter in the world (see the global top 16 ranking here). 1440 signs on around 250,000 new subscribers a month, with an average acquisition cost of $3 per user, and sells ads to make the money back, and presumably more. While I tend to be skeptical about schemes where an outlet “buys” users to sell ads against them, I believe this is an experiment worth keeping an eye on.

OpenAI Has Some Very Curious Ideas About Content and Copyright

OpenAI seems to be successful in buying off some news publishers (their pitch deck for preferred newsrooms leaked last week), the company recently announced a new partnership with the magazine giant Dotdash Meredith.

This deal is interesting because it’s not just about licensing content for training, but also includes the publishers in-house developed cookie-less ad targeting solution, D/Cipher. The solution, which is already producing promising results, will be further developed with the help of OpenAI’s technology. The devil is, of course, in the details, but this deal seems to make more long-term sense than pure content licensing, as it may enable Dotdash Meredith to develop its own critical, revenue-generating technology further. (Newscorp made a USD 6 million AI deal with Google, which they also insist is not about content licensing.)

However, copyright, content and licensing remain the key issues in this debate (/fight/relationship/war).

The Dutch Data Protection Authority released new guidelines at the beginning of May, clearly stating that scraping content without permission is “almost always illegal” and that “publicity is not consent”. This position (and potentially similar national and international guidelines to come) will strengthen the legal case of news publishers against AI companies.

OpenAI is trying to address this (not the specific Dutch ruling, but the general issue), and I have to say their response may need some further polish.

A little over a week ago they released a post titled “Our approach to data and AI” that outlines their take on content and creators. It promises a new “Media Manager” tool for 2025 (not in a rush, apparently), that 

“will enable creators and content owners to tell us what they own and specify how they want their works to be included or excluded from machine learning research and training”

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I doubt an opt-out system like this is going to cut it at this stage.

Imagine a well meaning criminal organization telling the people they already stole from that starting next year, the crew will hand out little stickers for the victims to put on their belongings, and from then on, the properly stickered stuff will not be stolen anymore.

And to top it all off, 404 reports that Reddit received a copyright complaint over the ChatGPT subreddits' unauthorized use of the OpenAI logo.

Is It Okay to Accept Money from the Fossil Fuel Industry?

Matthew Green, global investigations editor at DeSmog, has an interesting post about the relationship between Thomson Reuters and the fossil fuel industry. It claims Reuters has accepted at least USD 8.4 million from oil/gas companies for publicity and services since late 2020.

With the news industry in (perpetual) crisis, I'm unsure if it's okay to accept money from the likes of Shell, BP, Aramco and others, and if so, under what circumstances.

This is not just an abstraction: if you’re on the board of a small, struggling non-profit (unlike Thomson Reuters), sponsorship from companies like these can mean the difference between keeping the lights on for another quarter, continuing to deliver public interest journalism to your audience, or having to let people go, or even closing up shop completely. So you tell yourself: as long as there is a clear separation between advertising and editorial, why not? However, despite strict policies, agencies and clients may overstep, negotiate, and try to push the boundaries between what was agreed upon and what is published. And even if everyone plays by the book, the funding may affect you, your thinking and/or your coverage in small, unconscious ways

I’m very interested in what you think, so consider voting in this poll or replying to this email about how you negotiate these relationships and dilemmas. I’d be very happy to publish perspectives anonymously or otherwise.

Now, here are the active calls, with the largest at the top.

Pan-European audiovisual reporting - EU affairs

• Who: European Commission

• How much: Up to EUR 8.000.000 

• Funding rate: 95%

• What is it for: Content production

• How long: 12-14 months

• Submission deadline: 24th of May 2024

• Eligible countries: EU member countries

Pan-European audiovisual reporting - Underserved languages

• Who: European Commission

• How much: Up to EUR 3.000.000