Look, Listen, Local: The Innovation Fund will draw attention to the work of community media with a distinct gender approach.

In South Africa, less than 10% of people speak English at home, yet the majority of the news is published in English. In contrast, the Innovation Fund says that community media is published in all eleven official languages, directly serving the communities they operate within. 

One of the two partners in the fund, The Association of Independent Publishers (AIP), works to ensure community media remains sustainable so that publishing in local languages continues.

The other partner in the fund, Quote This Woman+ (QW+), provides support through gender advocacy. According to the fund, QW+ will use its 50% portion of the fund to continue its work in closing the gender gap in who gets reported in the news as an expert; currently, four out of five experts are men.

The Innovation Fund allows QW+ to dedicate particular focus to increasing the number of community voices on their database of women experts that journalists use to find sources. 

The fund says that AIP and QW+ used the launch of Look, Listen, Local to highlight the issues facing community media and the interventions being proposed by community media publishers with a gender lens.

At the breakfast gala, the stage was owned by four women at the top of their fields:
  • veteran community media publisher Mbali Dhlomo
  • journalist Verashni Pillay
  • economist Mamokete Lijane, and
  • community activist (and former politician) Mbali Ntuli.

Between thought-provoking analysis by the all-star panel, attendees were entertained by local comedy darling Noko Moswete.

"We jumped at the opportunity to support this important fund. Not only are women our priority, but we are particularly aligned to the Innovation Fund's attention to the much under-served group of women in South Africa living in small towns, villages and townships speaking languages other than English," says Seugnette van Wyngaard, head of 1st for Women Insurance, the Platinum sponsor of the fund.

The fund adds that 1st for Women went further and filled the seats at their sponsor's table with young, up-and-coming student journalists from The University of the Witwatersrand (WITS). This allowed them to launch their careers and gain early awareness of the multifaceted nature of the South African media landscape.

The Innovation Fund says many corporates followed in the footsteps of van Wyngaard's support, with Sanlam, Nedbank and Hollard also coming on board as platinum sponsors. AVBOB joined the fund as a silver sponsor and, in a gesture of authentic solidarity with the Innovation Fund's mission, similarly filled its table with an array of Quote This Woman+ experts instead of their corporate team.

The fund adds that Caxton Printers, known for their work in corporate community media, showed their support to the fund as well, an important reminder that the media ecosystem needs both the mainstream and community media.

Other fund supporters present were:
  • the Gauteng City-Region Observatory
  • Workshop17, and
  • the Daily Maverick.

Aiming to raise R2-million before South Africa's next elections, by the launch date, the fund had topped over R800 000.

"The problem with the current news cycle is that it keeps serving the comfortable at the expense of everybody else. Look, Listen, Local is an Innovation Fund to subvert that," says Kath Magrobi, director of QW+.

Magrobi added that QW+ partnered with AIP so that in the lead-up to the 2024 elections, the two organisations could work together to strengthen and democratise news from the grassroots up.

According to the Innovation Fund, both organisations have agreed to use the fund for innovations specific to their roles in the current news context, meaning these will shift over time. In 2024, AIP's executive director Kate Skinner stated that they will prioritise transitioning AIP's members who are not yet online.

AIP is a membership-based organisation of community news publishers that serve thousands of South Africans a month. The AIP boasts a collective circulation of almost eight million readers monthly.

In 2024, QW+ plans to add 25 media-trained community experts to its database, able to bring a grass-roots perspective to political news coverage across QW+'s languages and regions. They will also monitor the South African election news cycle and find women+ experts able to reframe narratives and offer more nuanced perspectives, according to the fund. 

Set to be a yearly Spring event, the launch of Look, Listen, Local: The Innovation Fund was a major success for AIP and QW+, with both organisations looking forward to their first bi-annual report on the fund's activities in six months' time, the fund says. 

Skinner and Magrobi used the launch event to acknowledge their gratitude to all sponsors, especially 1st for Women, Sanlam and The South Africa Media Innovation Program (SAMIP), whose early commitments and seed funding made the event and the fund possible.

Individuals can donate directly to the Innovation Fund by clicking here. 

For more information, visit www.innovationfund.co.za.