Appendix 1 - Methodology

Published 16 March 2021.

REPORT - Sustainability & journalism support in Lebanon

Aims

• To better understand what sustainability (or viability) means in the Lebanese context.

  • Which business models (if any) are working for which kinds of media organisations targeting which audiences?

• Gain insight into what effective media development interventions aiming to improve the sustainability or viability of news media might look like.

Scope

• Seven interviews took place with ten participants (in three interviews, two representatives of one organisation participated).

Who was interviewed?

GFMD interviewed:

• Five representatives from three international media development organisations that work with and provide funding to Lebanese media and Lebanese media development actors.

• Two representatives from a Lebanese media and media support organisation.

• One representative of a media from the MENA region.

• One Lebanese media business consultant.

• One representative of a regional (MENA) media organisation.

When were the interviews conducted?

• Between 5th and 19th February 2021.

How are the responses presented?

• For the purpose of this report, the responses are anonymised and organised under the key themes that emerged.

Researchers notes:

The initial aim of this research was to focus on specific projects from practitioner and donor perspectives on media assistance and sustainability. However, participants tended to speak more generally about their overall experiences in regards to media assistance.

Reluctance to provide templates and reports

In the invitation for the interview, GFMD indicated that we would appreciate it if the organisations would share evaluation reports. In the questions sent ahead of the interviews, we also asked if project application, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting forms could be shared.

One donor organisation has sent public links to information, tools, models, indicators, and assessment tools used. Other organisations have not provided these templates, perhaps because they do not exist or because they are not willing to share them.

GFMD will consider what incentives could be put in place to encourage knowledge-sharing, including whether this information could be shared on the condition that the participants’ insights would be anonymised but the learning and insights would still be shared.