Dear reader

It is precious, essential and endangered: the informative public discourse. Philanthropy in particular needs this: those who engage in nonprofit work derive their legitimacy from public, fact-based debate. Nonprofit activities are not something that can be determined within small circles of people; they concern everyone to some extent. With the media crisis, all social actors, including foundations and philanthropists, must increasingly questioning their role.

Media promotion is challenging. The industry is in a state of upheaval – or, in many places, collapse. Digitalisation has eroded the financing model of many media companies. Technological change is changing the work of journalists and media consumption in equal measure. A fundamental change in the way information is handled, combined with technological advances, is driving the production and distribution of fake news. What the media landscape of tomorrow will look like remains to be seen. There is no recipe (yet), not even from the political side. How the state should promote the media is an open question. Discussions have stalled. Philanthropy, on the other hand, has a clear path: our grand survey shows that philanthropists have been working hard on the media landscape of the future for a long time, with increasing enthusiasm. Sponsors are faced with the exciting task of how they can strengthen the independence of the media – without making it dependent on themselves.

Philanthropy has some convincing advantages: it is faster and more direct than state support. Philanthropy can experiment with models and developments that may never make a breakthrough, but even if they fail, they make an important contribution to advancing the market as a whole. In doing so, philanthropy strengthens independent journalism and democracy – a contribution whose value can hardly be overestimated in the current climate.

The Philanthropist team