Journalism Partnerships is brutally competitive. We analyzed every winner since 2021, here’s what the data says
The “magic number” for consortiums, the Netherlands’ dominance, and why applying alone is statistically a waste of time. Plus 26 active calls
Welcome and Happy New Year!
This week on Media Finance Monitor
We analyzed every successful Journalism Partnership project from 2021 to 2025.
We share the magic numbers on success rates (falling drastically), grant amounts, and consortium size.
Plus: 5 additional tips regarding budgets and formatting that we learned the hard way.
And as usual, we list 26 active grant calls with 4 new opportunities.
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I have vivid memories of one trip to Germany a few years ago, supposedly a holiday, that turned into a multi-day budget emergency because a €1.7 million Journalism Partnerships proposal was missing €0.64.
Due this year on February 4th, Journalism Partnerships is probably the single largest and most important media funding opportunity in Europe. It also doubles as a psychological experiment in the Milgram tradition, except instead of electric shocks, you spend days trapped inside a Commission budget table made of static cells and quiet despair.
So if you’re staring down an unruly budget, negotiating a consortium where everyone has excellent ideas about what the other partners should do, or trying to describe an activity that made perfect sense until you had to fit it into EU prose - this edition is for you.
We analyzed every project funded under Journalism Partnerships since the call launched in 2021. This dataset covers 5 years, 33 “Collaborations” projects and 9 “Pluralism” actions. If you are currently debating whether to add that sixth partner or how much budget to ask for, here is your benchmark.
1. The “Magic Number” is 6.03
The eligibility criteria set the floor at three partners for Collaborations. Some applicants may aim for this minimum to keep coordination simple. The data suggests this is a strategic error.
Average Consortium Size (Overall): 5.29 partners.
Average for Collaborations: 6.03 partners.
The ceiling: The largest successful consortium had 11 members.
A consortium of 5-6 partners appears to be the “sweet spot” for evaluators. It is large enough to demonstrate genuine cross-border/cross-sectoral impact and diversity, but small enough to avoid the operational paralysis that plagues double-digit consortiums. If you go much larger (10+), you risk looking unmanageable; if you go smaller (3), you risk looking unambitious.