Business Viability Adviser

Are you a dedicated professional with international development background with an interest in promoting independent journalism in challenging environments? Does business viability, the strengthening of media’s skills, resilience and organisational capacity, excite you?

Then this position might be for you. IMS is looking for an experienced Business Viability Adviser for the Eastern Europe and Global Response Department.

About IMS:

IMS (International Media Support) pushes for quality journalism, challenges repressive laws and keeps media workers of all genders safe, so that they can do their jobs. Through alliances and innovation, IMS helps free, independent media contribute to positive change and better societies. IMS’ goal is to have public interest media that is relevant to and reaches audiences of all groups of society, so that they can discuss, share and act on this content, and to have media and civic groups and organisations – especially women’s and minority organisations – collaborate to bring about this change. In addition, IMS supports the development of inclusive workspaces, free from discrimination and harassment, through inclusive and transformative policies and mechanisms

Job summary:

IMS is seeking a dedicated and experienced Business Viability Advisor to join its dynamic and inclusive team at the Eastern Europe and Global Response Department. As the Business Viability Adviser, you will assist the department in the implementation of technical support to local, regional and community media in the EU 27 Member States, as part of the EU project Local Media for Democracy.

The project consortium consists of the lead, European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), together with the Centre for Media Freedom and Pluralism (CMPF), IMS (International Media Support) and Journalismfund.eu.

Your primary task will be to carry out a needs assessment and provide technical support to selected grantees. The technical support should contribute to building resilience, independence and sustainability of grantees’ (local, regional and community media’s) capacity in innovation, business strategies and audience engagement, in order to reach underserved communities and audiences with new products and services. The position includes coordination and communication with ±30 grantees in a minimum of 5 countries in the EU 27 Member States in so-called “news desert” areas, identified by the research partner (CMPF).

The anticipated grantees are existing local and regional media and also startups and new formations of individuals with a turnover of less than 1.5M EUR. The aim of the project is to build the capacity of both existing local, regional and community news media, as well as local start-ups and collaborative journalism projects, especially to respond in areas identified as “news deserts”.

The Business Viability Adviser will provide technical expertise with their area of expertise. Areas beyond the core competence of the advisor will be provided by consultants. The Business Viability Adviser will, therefore, work closely together with a team of other media experts.

You will coordinate partner relations and regularly follow up with the selected grantees as well as media experts. The media viability advisor will occasionally travel to EU member states to support grantees in capacity building/training.

In this role you will be expected to connect on knowledge exchange with other advisors within IMS’ Journalism Hub (JHub). JHub is IMS’ knowledge and facilitation hub that enables IMS to strengthen partner effectiveness in public interest journalism and media viability. JHub is made up of a group of core advisors and three working groups. Its team of advisors and associates work with programmes to maximise partners’ influence in their communities with evidence-based strategies for sustaining high-quality public interest journalism that has rights-based impact. JHub ties the expert knowledge in the organisation together. By following and scanning global trends, JHub is a nexus that keeps IMS abreast with global developments and improves IMS’ knowledge. It joins up thinking or identify cross overs and will focus on problem-solving, getting feedback on issues and challenges, sharing things that have worked.

The Business Viability Adviser will refer to the Programme Manager at IMS for the project Local Media for Democracy and work closely with Head of Journalism Hub (JHUB) and JHUB colleagues.

Key functions and key responsibilities:

• Carry out a needs assessment for each of the selected grantees
• Provide strategic mentoring – and project management coaching
• Clustering and identifying the needs of the selected grantees
• Deliver capacity building (technical assistance)
• Connect the grantees to relevant consultants/expertise who will provide further technical support within identified areas of needs, which are outside of the competence of the business viability advisor
• Monitoring impact and progress of the grantee’s projects and draft learning briefs

Provide technical support to selected media, depending on the core competence of the Business Viability Advisor, for example:

• Development and identification of new methods and techniques for audience research and knowledge of regional, local and community audiences
• Deep and sustained audience needs analysis, including a focus on women and people in marginalization
• Community engagement and growth: Support to selected media for the development of their audience strategies
• Support for content and editorial innovation in order to find new routes for growth or resilience
• Identification of areas for innovation and agile development of new products or services to answer the challenges identified in the news desert research
• Support and advise on the potential investment of the selected media, in technical automation tools and development (e.g. Artificial Intelligence or Machine learning)
• Identify strategies to gamify or push back against social media platforms
• Development of a sustainable business media plan and coaching on business strategy and planning
• Provide training for the selected media’s journalists, editors and media managers on relevant issues as identified in project application and pre-assessment talks
• Support to business innovation actions (e.g. diversification of revenues)
• Provision of general mentorship as needed
• Experimentation with new revenue diversification as % share of overall revenues
• Support, develop and implement data-driven content strategy together with the selected media
• Advise on how to establish a local media/general advise to start-ups
• Development and application of gender-inclusive and diverse organisational strategies

Partner Relations

• Regular contact with selected media as well as with international partners/ media experts and the consortium to support the project implementation
• Regularly follow up on the selected grantees and provide the input needed to ensure timely and effective technical support
• Carry out strategic project mentoring and coaching sessions
• Carry out post-selection technical assessments of selected media to benchmark baseline needs and review planning
• Extract learnings, reflections and reviews of selected media to feed into learning briefs and showcase outputs

Project Implementation

• Maintain and follow up on decisions and actions agreed upon related to project implementation
• Participate in team meetings and meetings and retreats from JHUB
• Maintain an up-to-date document repository of programme documents and resources
• Support the project manager in the identification of operational and financial challenges with project implementation and propose solutions to mitigate operational risks
• Identify sources and gather data related to political, social and media developments in the local contexts, especially on the topic of news deserts, which is essential for project implementation
• Ensure learning from the project is spread across programmes within the Eastern Europe and Global Response department, JHUB and across IMS

Qualifications:

• A Bachelor’s degree or higher in a field relevant to the position
• Be based in one of the EU member states
• Fluency in English is required
• Proven, well-documented experience of providing technical assistance to media businesses
• Demonstrated media management experience especially in digital
• Have journalistic experience
• Experience in journalism training, particularly political, investigative and election reporting.
• Ability to analyse, interpret and report on media trends in EU member states
• Strong critical thinking and writing skills; excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Duration and location:

The position is full time. Duration is 12 months, with possibility of extension. Compensation commensurate with experience and IMS policies. Duty station: Any of the 27 EU member states with occasional travel across the EU.

Starting date: June 1st 2023

How to apply:

Applicants are invited to submit a written application and curriculum vitae in English no later than 23:59 CET on 13 March 2023.

The written application should include:

• Description of your experience of working with strategic mentoring of media outlets and the change your mentoring has contributed to.
• Outlining your experience of carrying out technical capacity (including technical assessment) of media outlets from a business viability perspective.
• Describe your experience from working with or in local/community journalism.
• Description of your experience in project management.

Please note that only short-listed candidates will be contacted for a follow-up interview. Interviews with selected candidates will take place during the second half of March.

IMS encourages everyone with the required qualifications and skills to apply, regardless of their racial, ethnic, religious and cultural background, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.

To apply, please click here.