Abundance near Perugia

In a culture obsessed with administrative compliance, innovation rarely thrives.

I know none of you will believe me, but I was into Abundance before it was cool.

By that, I mean I follow Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, Matthew Yglesias, Noah Smith, Jennifer Pahlka and various other fellow travelers, and I'm largely sold on the idea that certain progressive/liberal/left political groups have become too focused on process and not enough on results.

I also think some of their ideas around Abundance map neatly onto media (funding) related discussions. Since I read the book mostly on my trips to and from Perugia, get your thought leadership buzzword bingo cards ready, because today I'll attempt to tie Abundance, the International Journalism Festival, and media funding all together in one (hopefully) coherent piece.

A metaphor for a lot of good journalism

I know some of you are skeptical of the media-conference-industrial complex, but I love the International Journalism Festival. It's simply the best environment for gathering inspiration, and I don't mean that in some poetic sense. Perugia becomes a concentration of people with project ideas colliding with people hunting for project ideas. Everyone is eager to tell you what they're working on and/or equally keen to hear what you're doing.

My festival experience typically consists of a marathon of hyper-caffeinated meetings at various bakeries, occasionally interrupted by a panel discussion or a truffle-heavy pasta dish. I invariably leave with at least 15 different ideas and, in a good year, manage to transform two or three into reality. This is all to say I genuinely treasure this event, it ranks in my calendar alongside Christmas and the day after Journalism Partnerships submission deadlines as moments of almost pure joy.

On the other hand, Perugia isn't the most accessible place. Geographically speaking, while there is technically an airport, I've yet to meet anyone who's actually flown in or out of it. I've heard legends of direct flights to Sicily and possibly Manchester, but otherwise, you're looking at a 3-4 hour journey from other major Italian airports, which can make attendance challenging for those with tight schedules. It's located mostly on a top of a hill, but a lot of people stay at the bottom (or a settlement over) which makes getting around difficult at times, even given the various escalators in the city leading up to the old town.

The networking aspect is also entirely self-directed. While this shouldn't be too difficult for most journalists in theory, the reality is more complicated. Since attendance is completely free (and sincere thanks to the organizers for maintaining this policy), you can never be entirely certain who's attending. People tend to be busy, darting between commitments, so if you're not an extrovert like me, maximizing the experience can be a tad daunting. It took me years to develop a decent navigation strategy.

In this respect, I think the festival serves as a near perfect metaphor for a lot of the journalism it showcases: incredibly valuable and potentially empowering, but often a little too difficult to access for some, especially if you are not already into it.

What is the desired result of our work?

(In)accessibility represents a big problem for journalism, because being accessible directly translates into impact. In most cases, accessibility isn't just one factor among many; it's nearly the whole point.

When I talk about accessibility, I'm not referring to absolute audience size. Rather, it's about reaching the relevant audience. For a general news site, that audience might number in the millions. For a media funding newsletter like this one, it might be in the thousands (yes, we've seen some healthy growth recently). Regardless of size, what matters is reaching and engaging people for whom your content is valuable, who can benefit from the information and services you provide.

In the spirit of the abundance agenda, perhaps it's time we moved beyond rigid conceptual frameworks about what constitutes proper, capital-J Journalism and instead focus first and foremost on outcomes: how can we best serve our communities, large and small?

This means being where our audiences are and designing experiences that fit into their lives. It means embracing experimentation and adaptation rather than clinging to tradition for tradition's sake. And, most importantly, it means measuring success by how effectively we meet the needs of the people we aim to serve.

My friend, Patrick Boehler, wrote beautifully and quite specifically about how we can reframe some of our thinking, and while he did not connect it to abundance, I think it works quite neatly. Here is just one of his many brilliant examples:

“Funders and newsrooms could agree on how the service is going to be useful, not in abstract terms but concretely, and define a publishing strategy from there. This means moving beyond vague promises to specific, measurable impacts that matter to real people. What problem are we solving? Who's experiencing it? How exactly will our work make their lives better? These questions could drive both funding decisions and editorial strategies, creating alignment between resources and actual needs.

Here's what that could look like:

• Not: Funding generic climate change reporting

• Instead: Funding reporting to "help me feed my family nutritious meals we can afford"

Direct benefit: Price comparisons across local markets, inspirational profiles of great cooks, reporting on affordable food options, investigations into price fluctuations, and experiences of any shared food initiatives;

Indirect societal benefit: Creates transparency in food pricing while perhaps even advancing awareness of climate change impacts on food systems and promoting sustainable consumption patterns;”

Writing stories on red tape

Through the tale of Katalin Karikó (a fellow Hungarian) and the system of NIH grants, Abundance describes a mind-numbingly bureaucratic system where accessing institutional resources requires endless months of completely unnecessary admin. It's a world where innovative ideas are rarely selected for funding in favor of "safe", predictable projects that bring little novelty, where the applicant's status and diplomatic skills matter more than the quality of the actual application.

If you can already guess where I'm going with this, you're not alone. I was sitting on the three-hour bus ride from Perugia to Rome next to a very successful CEE media executive, describing Abundance with some enthusiasm, when he looked at me and said: "So it's about media grants."

I truly believe few areas connect to the problems described in Abundance better than the systemic issues we see around institutional funding for journalism. Every element resonates from highly bureaucratic application processes to unnecessary progress reports and rigid frameworks that often favor safe, easily quantifiable approaches instead of taking risks and allowing for experimentation. The parallel is perfect, right down to the results: projects supported by institutional funding sometimes sustain outdated systems that may deliver on certain metrics but miss meaningful impact as described earlier.

My excellent business partner, Miklos Rozsa, often describes to new clients the disconnect between what he calls "grant reality" and "everyday reality." Forecasting budgets may require you to tell a funder exactly how much you'll be spending on a specific piece of equipment or person 18 months in the future. This is difficult to predict in any sector and requires considerable experience, yet often still misses the mark.

But this forecasting becomes almost impossible for most types of journalism, where agendas and priorities can change in minutes. You may need to invest long hours and resources into leads that ultimately yield no meaningful results (I was an investigative reporter in a previous life). The nature of journalism is inherently adaptive, responsive, and sometimes unpredictable, qualities that rigid funding frameworks struggle to accommodate.

What journalism desperately needs are flexible funders who understand these dynamics and programs that encourage experimentation. Instead, we often get the opposite: increasingly complex application processes, rigid reporting requirements, and predetermined outcomes that must be achieved regardless of changing circumstances.

Achieving abundance, one EP resolution at a time

Not to plug our own work too much, but this is a big part of why we think the EU needs to reform the way it funds journalism. We want more spending (that would be very nice) but we also want to make sure that funding goes to meaningful projects and is accessible even if you don't have a three-person grant writing department. We want the policy equivalent of spray-painting “innovation doesn’t thrive in a culture obsessed with administrative compliance” onto the side of the Berlaymont.

On this note, there's a important date coming up: the BUDG Committee of the European Parliament will vote on their MFF resolution, otherwise known as the "Report on A revamped long-term budget for the Union in a changing world" next Thursday. The LIBE committee introduced new amendments, including proposals to reference journalism support, which is certainly a welcome development. Keeping our ears to the ground, we're cautiously optimistic that journalism will be mentioned in some way in the final text adopted. (Read our detailed post about the negotiation process and the importance of the BUDG committee's resolution here.)

Because I want to include the results of the vote and final text as it relates to our sector, the next issue may arrive in your inbox Friday instead of the usual Thursday morning.

Here are the active calls, with the largest at the top:

Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV)

• Who: European Commission

• How much: EUR 75,000 - 8,000,000

• What is it for: Counter disinformation, information manipulation and interference in the democratic debate

• How long: 12 - 24 months

• Deadline: April 29th, 2025

• Eligible countries: EU member states (including overseas countries and territories), countries associated to the CERV Programme or countries which are in ongoing negotiations for an association agreement and where the agreement enters into force before grant signature

European Network of Fact-Checkers - NEW

• Who: European Commission

• How much: EUR 5,000,000

• What is it for: Increase fact-checking capacity and coverage across the EU

• How long: Between 30 to 36 months

• Deadline: September 2nd, 2025

• Eligible countries: EU member states (including overseas countries and territories), as well as candidate and accession countries and countries that are associated to the Digital Europe programme.

Support for Civil Society Organisations in the Republic of Moldova in 2025 - NEW

• Who: European Commission

• How much: Up to EUR 2,500,000 (Lot 2)

• What is it for: Building civil society capacity for EU integration engagement (counter hate speech, disinformation, and harassment online)

• How long: Between 28 to 42 months

• Deadline: May 5th, 2025

• Eligible countries: Republic of Moldova

CREA - TV and online content

• Who: European Commission

• How much: Up to EUR 2,000,000

• What is it for: Boost audiovisual producers' capacity to develop projects

• How long: Up to 36 months

• Deadline: May 14th, 2024

• Eligible countries: Creative Europe participating countries (EU member states and non-EU countries associated to the Creative Europe Programme)

Cooperation with EU citizens and Youth in the United Kingdom - NEW

• Who: European Commission

• How much: Up to EUR 600,000

• What is it for: Strengthen EU–UK ties through citizen and youth dialogue

• How long: Up to 36 months

• Deadline: June 17th, 2025

• Eligible countries: EU member states or UK

European mini-slate development - NEW

• Who: European Commission

• How much: EUR 60,000 - 310,000

• What is it for: Support to develop documentary, fiction or animation for commercial release in digital platforms, cinema, or TV

• How long: Up to 36 months

• Deadline: September 17th, 2025

• Eligible countries: EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories), listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Creative Europe Programme.

Boosting Fact-Checking Activities in Europe

• Who: European Media and Information Fund

• How much: Up to EUR 55,000

• What is it for: Support fact-checking to counter 2025 election disinformation.

• How long: Up to 12 months

• Deadline: June 30th, 2025

• Eligible countries: EU, EFTA and UK

Legal Defense Fund

• Who: IFCN

• How much: Up to USD 40,000

• What is it for: Support fact-checkers facing legal or harassment threats

• Deadline: Ongoing

• Eligible countries: Global (IFCN verified signatories)

Visegrad Grants

• Who: Visegrad Fund

• How much: Up to EUR 30,000

• What is it for: Media literacy, disinformation, transparency

• How long: Up to 18 months

• Deadline: June 1st, 2025

• Eligible countries: V4 countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia). * Consortia required.

Visegrad+ Grants

• Who: Visegrad Fund

• How much: Up to EUR 30,000

• What is it for: Media literacy, disinformation, transparency

• How long: Up to 18 months

• Deadline: June 1st, 2025

• Eligible countries: V4 countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia), Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia) and the Eastern Partnership regions (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

Business Continuity Fund

• Who: IFCN

• How much: Up to USD 20,000

• What is it for: Support for fact-checkers disrupted by disasters/conflict/repression

• Deadline: Ongoing

• Eligible countries: Global (IFCN verified signatories)

Professional Development Grants for Environmental Journalism

• Who: Journalismfund Europe

• How much: Up to EUR 20,000

• What is it for: Capacity building of environmental investigative journalists

• How long: Up to 12 months

• Deadline: May 22nd, 2025

• Eligible countries: European countries

Environmental Investigative Journalism

• Who: Journalismfund Europe

• How much: Up to EUR 20,000

• What is it for: Conduct investigations about Europe's environmental affairs

• How long: Up to 12 months

• Deadline: May 22nd, 2025

• Eligible countries: European countries

New Media Incubator

• Who: International Press Institute

• How much: Up to EUR 15,000

• What is it for: Support early-stage European media to grow and scale their news product

• How long: Up to 8 months

• Deadline: June 6th, 2025

• Eligible countries: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden or Ukraine.

Pluralistic Media for Democracy

• Who: Journalismfund Europe and IMS

• How much: Unclear (call amount: EUR 700,000)

• What is it for: Support media in "news deserts"

• Deadline: June 12th, 2025

• Eligible countries: EU 27 countries, including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia.

Global Reporting Grants

• Who: Pulitzer Center

• How much: Up to USD 10,000

• What is it for: Support in-depth, high-impact reporting on critical issues

• Deadline: Ongoing

• Eligible countries: Global

Strengthen the Role and Capacities of Investigative Journalism in Kosovo - NEW

• Who: BIRN Kosovo

• How much: Up to EUR 10,000

• What is it for: Investigative reporting on rights, governance, disinformation, and social issues

• How long: Between 8 - 15 months

• Deadline: April 29th, 2025

• Eligible countries: Kosovo

Audience-Engaged Journalism Grants - NEW

• Who: BIRN

• How much: Up to EUR 8,000

• What is it for: Produce audience-engaged stories

• Deadline: June 18th, 2025

• Eligible countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia.

Science Misinformation Journalism Grant

• Who: Pulitzer Center

• How much: Depends on project’s scope and size

• What is it for: Journalism combating science denial and misinformation

• Deadline: Ongoing

• Eligible countries: Global

Until the next issue (potentially next Friday instead of Thursday), thanks for reading and take care.

Peter Erdelyi and the rest of the Center for Sustainable Media team