Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund Regional Grant Opportunity

Overview

The Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund (the Innovation Fund) has been established by the Government to support regional and small publishers to transition to and compete more successfully in the evolving media environment. The Innovation Fund will preserve and improve the viability of Australia’s regional and small news publishing industry in the current period of transition. The Regional Grant Opportunity (the Opportunity) is a new grant opportunity under the Innovation Fund that is targeted at regional publishers of public interest journalism. The objective of the Opportunity is to provide regional publishers with the financial security to conduct their business in the medium term so that they can take calculated risks to reorient their business models to adapt to the digital age. The grants are designed to assist regional publishers who can demonstrate a solid business case to increase the sustainability of their publishing activities, including news gathering, production, and distribution. This objective recognises the specific challenges faced by regional publishers in comparison to metropolitan publishers. The intended outcome of the Opportunity is to improve the sustainability of successful applicants by at least one of the following measures relating to their news publishing activities: increases in advertising or subscription revenue; increase in other revenue that supports the production of public interest journalism; increases in readership or distribution; or the reduction of operating costs through more efficient business practices.