100 Million: "Media with a Future" Association Calls for an Innovation Fund for the Media

This fund is intended to serve as an indirect form of media support to facilitate the development of new technologies and business models. The Swiss media landscape urgently needs a significant dose of innovation so that journalistic media can continue to fulfill their democratic function in the future, the VMZ wrote in a statement released on Wednesday.

The DETEC should allocate 100 million Swiss francs annually to the fund to help individual media outlets and media groups navigate the transformation and transition to the digital media age. This amount is deliberately set to match the sum intended to indirectly support print delivery, or rather, newspapers. If print media are indirectly subsidized, digitally distributed media offerings should also be supported to the same extent, the association writes. The newspaper model, which is in part in decline, should and can be subsidized. However, an equal amount must be invested in forward-looking, digital media diversity.

Funding must focus on the development of a digital infrastructure. Today, this is particularly costly and labor-intensive for small, regional, and local media providers. Projects could, for example, involve the development of content management systems, infrastructure services, apps, AI solutions for the targeted distribution of content, or algorithms designed to benefit users, as well as more differentiated value creation among media providers. According to Wednesday’s announcement, these funds should, in principle, be available to all media providers committed to journalism. The Press Council or media quality research organizations could monitor compliance and, if necessary, impose sanctions in the event of violations.

We must break new ground! In light of the current revision of the RTVG and twenty years of media digitization, one thing is clear: Traditional newspaper publishers are neither technically nor financially capable of meeting the requirements necessary for a diverse, independent media landscape. »At the same time, the publishing houses that still dominate the market today are hindering the growth of new, digital media,” the report states.

Currently, the largest transformation fund for Swiss media is financed by a private provider that also benefits from the content produced by media companies worldwide: The «Google News Initiative»—or, since 2018, the «Digital News Innovation Fund»—supports projects in this area and, in 2018, funded twelve Swiss projects (mostly from traditional newspaper publishers) with a total of 3.9 million Swiss francs. In a direct democracy, the technical media infrastructure should not be provided exclusively by commercial data marketers, writes the Association for Media with a Future

The Innovation or Transformation Fund, like the subsidy for newspaper delivery, should also be understood as indirect media support. The fund’s primary goal is to promote and, in the future, ensure journalistic coverage and competition in content among independent cantonal and regional media providers.