Media Forward Fund announces jury for new funding line

Berlin / Vienna / Zurich – 3 June 2025: The Media Forward Fund (MFF), the first transnational fund dedicated to strengthening public-interest journalism and democracy in the DACH region, launched its second round of funding on 10 March 2025. In addition to the call for the General Funding Line, a new funding line for Science and Data Journalism (SCI) is being offered for the first time. The MFF’s advisory board has now appointed three new jury members for this new funding line.

113 applications from across the DACH region

With 113 applications (Germany: 59, Switzerland: 34, Austria: 20) and a total requested funding volume of 28 million euros, the current call for applications across both funding lines once again generated strong interest from the DACH region. Following 29 initial interviews, 16 media organizations were invited to submit full proposals, including eleven from Germany and five from Switzerland. The selected grantees from both calls will be announced in mid-July following the jury's decision.

No Austrian media were invited to submit full proposals this time, as the applications were not competitive in comparison with the rest of the DACH region. A notably large share of Austrian applications focused on traditional print products without transformative business models. One reason for this is a provision in Austria’s national media funding scheme, which states that transformation funding is only available to media outlets that produce a print publication. “This effectively forces innovative digital media to adopt a print product in order to be eligible for public funding,” criticized Martin Kotynek, founding director of the MFF. “Austria’s public media funding leads innovative media down the wrong path. It urgently needs to be reformed.”

Three new jury members from Germany

For the jury of the new Science and Data Journalism (SCI) funding line, three additional experts in science and data journalism were selected in cooperation with the German Wissenschaftspressekonferenz (WPK) and appointed by the MFF’s advisory board for a two-year term. All three jury members are based in Germany and bring many years of experience in entrepreneurship, journalism, and the natural sciences. For compliance reasons, media organizations with which jury members are affiliated are not eligible to apply.

> Christina Elmer, professor of digital journalism and data journalism at TU Dortmund. She previously held various editorial roles at Der Spiegel, most recently as deputy head of development. From 2017 to 2019, she was part of the Spiegel Online editorial leadership. She is a shareholder of AlgorithmWatch and serves on the board of the investigative journalism network Netzwerk Recherche. In 2016, Medium Magazin named her Science Journalist of the Year. She worked as a data journalist on the investigative teams at Stern magazine and the DPA. She studied journalism and biology at TU Dortmund.

> Jakob Simmank, Chief Health Correspondent at Zeit Online, studied medicine in Hamburg, Leipzig, and Buenos Aires. After early placements at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and Zeit Wissen, he became an editor in the science section of Zeit Online in 2018. In 2021, he co-founded the health section. Since 2025, he has served as Chief Health Correspondent at Zeit Online. In 2020 and 2021, Medium Magazin named him one of the ten best science journalists of the year. In 2023, he received the media award of the German Nutrition Society.

> Helmut Schönenberger, aerospace engineer and, since 2020, Vice President for Entrepreneurship at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In his thesis comparing Stanford University and TUM, he recommended the establishment of a center for entrepreneurship at TUM. This idea led to the founding of UnternehmerTUM in 2002, which has become Europe’s largest center for entrepreneurship and innovation. UnternehmerTUM supports startups, entrepreneurs, and researchers through all stages – from the initial idea to a successful product. Since 2017, he has been a member of the supervisory board of the German Energy Agency.

To ensure consistent evaluation criteria across all funding lines, Eva Schulz (DE), Evelyn Hemmer (AT) and Lucy Kueng (CH) complete the six-member jury for the Science and Data Journalism line. Together with Yves Daccord (CH) and Maria Exner (DE), they also continue to form the five-member jury for the general funding line.

Two-stage funding procedure for the Science and Data Journalism line

The Media Forward Fund is taking a two-stage approach for this new funding line. In the current call, one-year “Launch Grants” of 75,000 euros each are being awarded to media organisations aiming to bring untested product ideas to market and demonstrate product–market fit. In the second call for proposals in 2026, the Fund will – as in the “General Funding Line” – award two-year growth grants of generally up to 400,000 euros, to science journalism media projects that can already demonstrate initial success on the market and now want to expand their sources of revenue in order to become more financially viable.

The Science and Data Journalism funding line is supported by eight German foundations: Joachim Herz Stiftung, Klaus Tschira Stiftung, Madsack Stiftung, Rudolf Augstein Stiftung, Schöpflin Stiftung, Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, VolkswagenStiftung, and ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS. It is implemented in cooperation with the Wissenschaftspressekonferenz (WPK).

About the Media Forward Fund

The first transnational fund for the promotion of journalism in Germany, Austria and Switzerland is committed to more high-quality independent media with viable business models, which publish strong, trustworthy content and are sustainably financed. The aim is to strengthen diversity in public-interest journalism, and thus democracy.

Media Forward Fund was established on the initiative of the Schöpflin Foundation, Mercator Foundation Switzerland, Volkart Foundation, Rudolf Augstein Foundation, ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS, Allianz Foundation, Stiftung für Medienvielfalt, ERSTE Foundation, DATUM FOUNDATION for Journalism and Democracy, MacArthur Foundation (USA), the impact investor Karma Capital Group and Publix - House for Journalism & Public Sphere. As part of the new Science and Data Journalism funding line, five additional German foundations joined the MFF in January 2025. In March, the German Postcode Lottery also came on board. The development of the fund was supported by a project grant from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. To date, the Media Forward Fund is endowed with 10 million euros.

The first general funding call took place in the second half of 2024. Four media outlets, two from Switzerland and two from Austria, were selected by an independent jury to receive grants of up to 400,000 euros each.

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