Erste Foundation: Central European Press Again Under Attack
ERSTE Foundation is the largest Austrian savings bank foundation. Using profit from its shares to support development in Eastern Europe societies, the foundation has recently made a bold move: it turned its webpage into a magazine that features civil society voices in journalistically written stories. While other foundations support journalism, ERSTE now both supports journalists and does journalism.
Maribel Königer, head of communications at ERSTE Foundation and the editor-in chief of the Erstestiftung.org magazine, is behind much of that transformation.
She believes that journalism is facing a raft of challenges today. In Eastern Europe, where ERSTE operates, the state of journalism is dismal. News media there are either captured by governments or attacked from all sides if they manage to remain independent. But Königer remains optimistic, saying in an interview with Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) that, in her view, demand for quality journalism will grow. And to have quality journalism you need quality journalists.
This is the reason why the foundation spends its media budget on people, journalists, hoping that every euro will empower them to bring important stories to life.
CMDS: What is your view about the biggest changes in independent journalism today?
Maribel Königer: There are a lot of developments that all lead to big challenges for independent journalism. With the rise of new media, the business model of traditional media has collapsed. Readers no longer want to pay for researched news. Now, companies pay for data about content consumers. Therefore, online media offer articles for free, financed through advertising, mostly to generate user data. That’s why headlines and stories are becoming more and more lurid.
Journalists have also lost some of their authority. Everyone can search the web for information. Populists attack journalists for being members of an elite of opinion leaders. In Eastern Europe, media are a popular investment for oligarchs and entrepreneurs who are not from the [media] industry, but who very often have close connections with the government of their country. Governments, on the other hand, feel increasingly under pressure from independent journalism and question free media per se.
CMDS: Of all these challenges, which ones do you think are the biggest threats to independent journalism in the region where you operate?
Maribel Königer: In Central Europe and Southeastern Europe, media are often owned by oligarchs and are thus instruments of political manipulation. They are either instrumentalized for populist propaganda or, if they express a dissenting opinion, they receive insults from various political parties for being “unpatriotic” or “controlled”, or are accused of unduly “helping the elite”. Some media, not surviving all that, just close down. Those that still exist pay their journalists fees that barely help them survive.
CMDS: How many of these issues are you addressing through your work?
Maribel Königer: On one hand, ERSTE Foundation supports capacity building for journalists and, as part of that, quality standards in the profession. Through well-researched topics, well-balanced facts and interesting stories, journalists can combat instrumentalization and attacks.
On the other hand, we want to increase opportunities for journalists to independently research topics. As part of this effort, we have recently launched a platform where we offer to republish, or publish for the first time, articles in English and/or in German.
CMDS: Which recent developments in media and journalism affected your work and strategy and in what way?
Maribel Königer: When we started the first fellowship programs for journalism in 2007, they targeted Southeastern Europe because we assumed that independent journalism in the Central European member states of the EU will develop well anyway. We therefore wanted to promote especially journalists in non-EU countries in the Balkans.
Today we have to realize that in countries like Poland, Hungary or Slovakia the free press is just as threatened as in Serbia or Macedonia. That’s why we’re planning a new project next year that will give many journalists the opportunity to research stories; and the Visegrad countries [Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia] are definitely part of this project.
In addition, we have completely changed our own communications strategy as a foundation. Instead of classically informing the public about our projects, which we still do, but in a more thorough way than before, we have transformed our website into an online magazine and are now providing a platform for interesting reports and journalistic research. We are also considering publishing a print magazine for Eastern Europe, to provide a medium for the whole region.
CMDS: What is your long-term view on the future of journalism: how do you see it developing in the next decade?
Maribel Königer: In the last two years, we have experienced something new: a growing need for more quality journalism. Seven days after the election of Donald Trump, the New York Times signed up 41,000 new subscribers. In 2017 alone, a good 600,000 more were added. Today, the NYT has 3.5 million paid subscriptions, of which 2.5 million are purely digital. This trend continues. In Switzerland, a referendum on the abolition of public broadcasting fees was rejected.
I therefore believe that in the future the gap between those who consider good independent journalism to be important and are willing to spend money on it, and those who want to get information free of charge, will deepen. An important emerging trend is the rise of journalistic cooperatives, where journalists gather to form cooperatives and readers become sort of co-publishers. Data journalism and fact checking portals connect and change our approach to complex information.
There will be many possibilities in the future to inform yourself. This information will be mostly processed by journalists who continue to be paid for their work, but probably no longer by classical media only, but by various other content providers.
CMDS: Our research shows that, compared to governments and companies, philanthropy is a very small player when it comes to funding journalism. However, sometimes, little money can help some initiatives take off. This being said, and if you agree, what is the niche that you have found in this field that you’re supporting or planning to support?
Maribel Königer: We are a foundation with a relatively small funding budget (compared to big European philanthropic organizations) and a rather large area (Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe) to cover. Therefore, we never invested into media infrastructure or media outlets. We do not own newspapers.
We always invest in people. Capacity building is a catchphrase, but it is really needed in the region we cover. During the past years, we supported various fellowships for journalists: they empowered young reporters from Roma communities, offered time for research in Vienna to journalists with an interest for cultural topics and pushed high-level mid-career investigative reporters to write their best stories.
We firmly believe that quality journalism needs quality journalists; and to them every single euro counts.
Donor profile
ERSTE Foundation
Year of foundation: 2004
Legal status: Sparkassen-Privatstiftung (Foundation)
Countries covered by grants in journalism: Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia
Source of funding: Main shareholder of Erste Group Bank AG
Total yearly budget: €6m
Average spending in media and journalism programs:
Total (2015-2018): €570,000
Yearly spend (2017): €135,000
Grantees in the media and journalism field:
- The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence,
- Milena Jesenska Fellowship for Journalists
- Projects for Roma journalists
- Award for journalism covering poverty
Maribel Königer
The Munich-born Maribel Königer has been head of communications at ERSTE Foundation in Vienna, Austria, since 2007. In the 1990s, she worked as an art critic, writer and freelance journalist in Paris writing for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Focus, Vogue and others. Last year, she developed an online magazine for ERSTE Foundation and, as its editor-in-chief, she builds partnerships with Eastern European media and journalists.