The Fritt Ord Foundation will grant up to MNOK 25 each year for four years to promote journalism-related projects. The MNOK 100 initiative has been entitled ‘Norwegian Journalism’.

For quite some time, the Fritt Ord Foundation has had media and journalism as one of its core target areas. In the demanding situation currently being experienced by the media and thereby by the public sphere as a whole, we aspire to do even more to support and promote high-quality journalism in several fields.

“For that reason, Fritt Ord is allocating up to MNOK 100 over a four-year period to support robust Norwegian journalism projects”, states Grete Brochmann, chair of the Fritt Ord Foundation Board.

The new initiative represents nearly a doubling of the Fritt Ord Foundation’s grants to promote journalism, which have totalled between MNOK 12 and 15 per year thus far. In addition, grants are provided for other important journalism-related fields such as documentary film, documentary photography and journalistic prose. These will continue to be important priorities for Fritt Ord.

Open scheme with no constraints
Over the past three years, Fritt Ord has run a journalism-related initiative involving special allocations of roughly MNOK 10 per year. This scheme has resulted in about 200 grants for projects that are important for the community and for journalism. The scheme has had six areas of focus: Journalism on Norway’s relationship to the EU and Europe; journalism on climate issues; critical journalism and the facilitation of debates in local communities in Norway; journalism for young media users; investigative journalism in fields that are not sufficiently covered and project support for independent columnists who have publication agreements. The new, more comprehensive journalism scheme is completely open in terms of topics:

“It is of the utmost importance to Fritt Ord that the journalists, the editors and the editorial communities themselves are completely free to define their own initiatives. We do not want to place any constraints on the choice of topic and/or content. Our goal is to help facilitate projects that are important for the public sphere, i.e. that mean something to society and the citizenry. We are especially interested in providing funding for very demanding projects. However, the funding provided by the media and users themselves will always constitute the basic funding platform. As a private foundation, Fritt Ord can and will always just be a supplement”, remarks Grete Brochmann, chair of the Fritt Ord Foundation Board.

More about the scheme
The projects are to target the general public. Applicants may use any publication platform, and are encouraged to be multi-medial. Any independent, editor-driven publication with Norwegian media users as its target group may apply. The applicants may be editorial boards or individuals, but all support is to go to named individuals. We are open to new forms of cooperation between several editorial boards/groups of journalists, and freelancers with publication agreements are invited to apply. Our most cogent wish is to support the production of content for publication, rather than providing funding for operating expenses, development projects and technical equipment.

We ask that project outlines be as concrete as possible, covering 3 to 5 pages, accompanied by brief attachments containing a timetable, information about other sources of funding, an overall project budget and a list of project team members with five lines of CV information on each.

Please note! Label the application “Norwegian Journalism” in the title field. Applicants should use the Fritt Ord Foundation’s digital application form, see www.frittord.no and select “Application centre”.

Applications will be processed on an ongoing basis. There are six deadlines each year, see www.frittord.no/soknader. The first deadline is at 3 p.m. on 22 September.

Contact
Knut Olav Åmås, Executive Director, mobile +47 908 68139

The Fritt Ord Foundation is a private non-profit foundation that aspires to promote freedom of expression, public debate, art and culture.

For help with the application process, contact the Fritt Ord Foundation at post@frittord.no.

See the list of projects granted support under the earlier scheme for journalism here.