ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Media Governance and the Public Sphere
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1578463
This article is part of the Research TopicUnderstanding Media Policy in the 21st Century: Affirmation, Challenge, Re-ConstitutionView all 5 articles
Subsidized news-media innovation: evidence and effects
Provisionally accepted
Aske Kammer*
Mark Blach-Ørsten- Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
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Digital disruptions have put an emphasis on innovation as a means for survival for news and journalism in uncertain times. As a response, Denmark introduced a targeted subsidy instrument for news-media innovation in 2014 to support both the establishment of new news media and the development of legacy media. This study analyzes the first decade of this subsidy instrument (2014-2023), where a total of 23,573,219 EUR was allocated. Guided by studies based on innovation-policy impact assessment, we map and evaluate the news-media innovation subsides with a focus on outputs, outcomes, and impacts. The analysis shows that 52 % of the subsidies has been allocated to legacy media, the rest to new news media. Furthermore, we find that new news media predominantly do innovation aimed at content and market development, whereas legacy media pursue product development. One outcome is that 44 new news media have been established with the support of the subsidy instrument, 31 of which still exist. Finally, in terms of impact, the analysis shows that of the 31 new news media, only few are both widely recognized and used by the Danish population.
Keywords: innovation, media systems, policy, state subsidies, news media
Received: 17 Feb 2025; Accepted: 09 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kammer and Blach-Ørsten. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Aske Kammer, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
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