This week on Media Finance Monitor
A major funder isn’t talking about journalism. I’m pleased.
The MCP server and the Nazi party membership records
Meta is making the case for European alternatives
California’s new tax credits for local newsroom jobs
32 active calls (14 new)
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A major funder isn’t talking about journalism. I’m pleased.
(by Peter)
In the mid-2000s, I was an avid World of Warcraft player (priest main, hunter alt, if you must know). Typing /played told you exactly how much time you had spent playing that character, down to the second. I’m not particularly proud of this, but there was a year, probably around 2005–2006, when I spent roughly 20% of my waking hours in the game.
I don’t play anymore, but between Google Calendar and Notion, I keep fairly close track of my time. These days, I think I spend about the same proportion trying to get more resources into public-interest information. This involves working with public funders, private philanthropies, investors and media ventures, and considerably less PvP.
So when Ford Foundation announced a new strategy putting democracy at its center, I was pleased and when I read its information section and found no mention of journalism, I was even happier.
One of Ford’s seven priorities is “Defending Information as a Public Good.” It talks about the information environment, technology and power. Language is not everything, and a strategy document is not a grant agreement, but I think this is a useful starting point.
Journalism can deliver enormous value. I often identify as journalist and I spent most of my adult life in newsrooms full of messy desks and big personalities (other people: I was always famously tidy and amenable).
Still, when allocating resources, I would start with what information people need, whether it reaches them, and what prevents that from happening. Sometimes the answer will involve a newsroom and Journalism. Sometimes it will involve something else.
Markets serve some information needs well. Others generate benefits that providers cannot fully charge for: exposing corruption can help people who never read the investigation. Freely available information can be shared without being used up. There are good reasons for philanthropy and public funding to support its production and distribution.
The complication is that we have already put considerable philanthropic and public money into journalism, and I am not always sure how well we understand what it achieved. Funding something socially important does not automatically make it useful to the people it is supposed to benefit.
Social value and individual value are different, though I think they are connected. Helping people understand their rights, navigate services or make better decisions can produce both. But as regular readers will know, I worry that we have become so fluent in explaining what society needs that we have stopped asking specific people what would help them.
Our last edition, explaining new EU funding calls, brought in more paid subscriptions than any previous edition. Apparently, helping people find money is a service people will pay money for.
If subscriptions were my only consideration, I would write about funding calls constantly. Instead, here is a think(ish) piece about Ford Foundation. But the signal matters. This newsletter is a small part of our business, but it is a part of it. We have to find a balance between what we want to discuss, what a funder would like us to cover (see our last item) and what you find useful and are willing to pay for.
The Capital Stacks research suggests one resolution to this dilemma. We studied 21 successful ventures: 16 for-profits, four nonprofits and one cooperative. We found quite a few grants in their funding histories, more than I expected. They were often important early on, with earned income becoming more important as organisations matured.
Early investment in information ventures can combine considerable risk with limited financial upside. Patient philanthropic or public funding can lower/absorb risks commercial investors cannot justify, giving organisations time to discover an audience, develop a product and build revenue.
Where possible, I think that support should help them become less dependent on it. And this is not just about money. Earning revenue directly from the audience also means developing relationships with people and creating some welcome accountability to the end users.
Payment reflects ability to pay, and markets can reward things with little public value. Some information services may need permanent subsidy, just as we accept continuing public funding for education or healthcare. A subscription target should not push an organisation away from people who need it but cannot afford it.
Still, I think we have given up too easily on some markets. A disappointing response to a familiar news product can become a verdict on whether people will pay for useful information at all. I suspect there is more room to build viable products and services than much of our industry believes, if we are willing to change what we make, who it serves and how we deliver it.
This is one of the things I would like philanthropic funding to make possible: the time and room to discover those markets. Ford’s broader framing leaves space for that.
The MCP server and the Nazi party membership records
(by Peter)
Ulrike Langer’s News Machines newsletter has some excellent, practical reporting on AI and media. Her latest piece describes in great detail an experiment at Der Spiegel that I think every publishers should pay attention to.
Since October 21, people have been able to search Nazi party membership records through Claude using a free Spiegel account. The publisher built an MCP server, a connection that lets the assistants search its database, retrieve original scans and provide context from Spiegel articles. Readers can investigate family histories by asking questions and following up on what they find.
The underlying scans are public. Spiegel’s contribution is making the material searchable, connecting it to reporting and helping people interpret it. On Spiegel’s website, the research tool is behind the paywall; access through chatbot is free with registration during the experiment. Spiegel supplies the records and journalistic context, but it does not control everything the chatbot says around them.
The user flow is a little clunky, especially for people who don’t have experience with AI connectors, but it does work. I was able to find a friend’s father who I knew was the member of the Nazi party back in the 1940s in about 2 minutes. And it did make me create a free Spiegel account.
I recently participated in a webinar for funders and others working on AI and public-interest information. One thing I argued for was support for experimentation: give people access to the tools, time to use them on real problems, and opportunities to share what they learn. Buy some compute, let newsrooms build cool stuff.
Spiegel’s project is a great example of what that can produce. It takes material with public value and offers a new way for the audience to use it. The interesting questions are practical: do people connect their accounts, find what they need, understand the sources and come back? Spiegel says interest has exceeded expectations. That does not yet prove there is a durable business here, but this is exactly how you start finding out.
We should pursue compensation for publishers and challenge how AI companies acquire and use their work. We should also learn to build useful services with these tools. Spiegel is experimenting with this connection while maintaining strict bot blocking elsewhere.
Being curious about the technology does not require being relaxed about the companies. And understanding what these systems can do is easier when you have tried to make one do something useful for a reader.
Meta is making the case for European alternatives
(by Peter)
Another point from that webinar: we should pursue compensation from AI companies without budgeting for a windfall. I expect payments for scraping general content will disappoint publishers when they eventually arrive. Agents buying access to specialised information could be a more substantial business, after all, that is a customer paying for something useful, with software handling the purchase.
Then there is Meta’s approach to acquiring permission.
Its proposed commercial terms seek broad authorisation to scrape websites associated with businesses using its platforms. Meta says this concerns advertising and business products and that publishers can block crawlers. Publishers want those assurances written into the contract: having a Facebook page should not become permission to help yourself to the business behind it.
On Wednesday, Oslo District Court granted Norwegian publishers an interim injunction against the changes, pending a final determination of their legality. This is not a final judgment, but I would bet against this surviving intact in Europe, and am skeptical it will in the US.
What fascinates me is the confidence required to even try this.
We all live downstream of technology, and these companies have grown used to everyone else adapting. Over the past year and a half, Washington has reinforced their position, using trade pressure and other means to push back against European tech regulation on their behalf.
I think this could become quite the expensive hubris. European dependence on American platforms has been convenient enough to survive speeches about digital sovereignty. The more those platforms assert sweeping rights, backed by political pressure, the harder that dependence becomes to tolerate.
My optimistic bet is that this will actually help attract investment into alternatives, eventually costing the incumbents customers and revenue. Europe still has to build things people want to use, but Meta seems determined to help with the motivation.
California’s new tax credits for local newsroom jobs
(by María)
California has approved a new scheme to help local newsrooms cover one of their biggest expenses: journalists’ salaries. The Community NEWS Act (AB 2222), signed into law on September 30, will offer tax credits for existing staff and additional incentives for new hires. Starting in 2027, the five-year program is projected to provide more than $200 million in public support.
Publishers can claim $20,000 a year for each of their first five qualifying full-time journalists, $15,000 for any beyond that, and another $15,000 for every net new full-time position. Part-time journalists are covered too, at $7,500 per position. For example, a newsroom with three full-time journalists could receive $60,000 annually. Because the credits are refundable, even nonprofits and other outlets that owe no income tax can receive the money.
The program has no overall spending cap, which Steven Waldman, founder of Rebuild Local News, sees as an important advantage. He told Dick Tofel that this gives publishers and donors greater certainty when investing in newsroom expansion, since they can anticipate receiving public support toward those additional staffing costs. To help finance these incentives, the law also expands existing restrictions on corporate tax deductions for executive compensation above $1 million.
But some smaller publishers may struggle to benefit. Freelance contractors don’t count toward the credits, while qualifying full-time journalists must earn an annualized salary of $35,000 or more. Tracie Powell, CEO of The Pivot Fund, points out that many hyperlocal founders pay themselves less than that. Even outlets that qualify must pay salaries before the money arrives.
A similar tax-credit program is already operating in Illinois. By July 2026, it had awarded $4.3 million to 55 news organizations operating 130 outlets, according to Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative. As in the previous year, retention credits were used more extensively than incentives for new hires: the $4 million allocated to retaining journalists was exhausted, while more than two-thirds of the $1 million available for new hires remained unclaimed.
(This piece is part of a series focusing on local and community journalism and is supported by the LimeNet project and the European Union.)
Here are the 32 active calls (14 new), with the largest at the top: