Building Sustainable Media Development Projects

CommGAP's work on a toolkit for media development continues - last week our round table of experts, led by Shanthi Kalathil, met again. This time the discussion focused on how to make development projects economically sustainable. Well - or not. Participants agreed that sometimes such projects aren't supposed to be sustainable. In conflict situations, for example, donors may want to establish a short term project that is only active during the conflict. You might remember the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, where the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority issued short-term licenses for local radio, and Internews distributed some 10,000 free radios among the populations for people to find out what had happened and where to get help.

In general, of course, we want media development projects to be sustainable. All too often donors plan their projects for a specific length of time, say a year, build a politically independent news magazine - and then leave before the magazine breaks even. A few years later, there is no independent magazine that could contribute to a diverse and plural public sphere. As one participant put it: Match your goals to a realistic analysis of what is needed and what you can fund. Don’t fund something for two years that is likely to need ten years to get established and break even. Another of our experts suggested that donors work together to find multiple funding sources for media projects, so that the next donor can pick up when the job of the first one is done.

On a different note, our experts argued that sustainability does not necessarily refer to financial survival alone. A sustainable media outlet is able to keep operating, but is also able to maintain its editorial independence. Not least considering this point, it would also be inefficient to swamp a national market with a large number of media outlets that are very unlikely to sustain themselves, simply because there are too many players in a market with too little revenue.

And then there was the issue of new media and communication technology. It is striking how unsure we are - not so much about the role of new media in development, we know why it is paramount and how to employ it. But we don't know what advice to give to donors about how to set up a sustainable new media development project. We're not even sure whether new media should be treated differently to the types of media that have traditionally been funded. This is obviously an area where we need much more expertise, and CommGAP is working hard on building a relevant knowledge base.

Photo credit: Flickr User Indenture