What Ukrainian media need in 2025? Frank answers by media teams

Illustration by the IMI

Ukrainian media faced a new challenge in the spring of 2025: US donors cutting the funding for many projects, leaving numerous media outlets in a predicament where they only had enough money to last a month or three.

In our survey "Three months without US funding", the NGO Institute of Mass Information asked media workers to answer an open-ended question: what needs are the most urgent for them right now, and to share their recommendations for the donor community. Not all of the responses were about money. All of them, however, were about survival.

“We do not need strategy: just help us survive”

The IMI survey found that only 14% of the surveyed media can survive over a year with no additional financial support, while nearly half (45,5%) can last the next three to six months. So financial stability and basic survival of media outlets is the primary and most urgent issue to most Ukrainian media teams.

Moreover, 43% of the respondents said they had to cut their staff's wages.

The responses include open pleas: "Help us pay the journalists for their work," "We have no money even for basic expenses: equipment, hosting, rent." At the same time, many media outlets are trying to preserve their independence by abstaining from taking money from politicians or gambling businesses.

Some respondents stress that the 2025 situation is no time for "fundraising strategies" or "capability building consultations". People want to continue working, to be able to pay their journalists' wages and not close down.

• "The media need money. And, first and foremonst, institutional support, not project-based work. I believe that the current situation is catastrophic, as most media outlets are on the brink of survival and journalists work for miniscule wages. It is difficult to say whether we can keep our people, because they are already receiving offers from political organizations. So the media market risks losing both independent media outlets and valuable professionals. To preserve democracy in our country, the media need money."
• “Realize at last that the situation is critical and if we close down, there will be no one to do the teaching, mentoring, etc. We can hardly rely on support from businesses or advertising revenues nowadays. This is a bad position, but the situation is bad as well. Focus mostly on supporting the media directly: with funding and technology. At least until the time peace comes, and a little after that."
• "Ukrainian media find themselves in a state of systematic vulnerability: both money- and personnel-wise. The most urgent needs are stable funding for independent media outlets, especially regional ones. Without it, they go extinct or end up under the influence of political structures or businesses. Supporting stable journalism formats that not just record news but facilitate positive change, such as solutions journalism, local storytelling. Keeping journalists on the job and helping them develop, in particular those living in the regions. Young professionals are leaving the field due to low wages and emotional burnout."
• "As of today, funding is the most acute issue for regional media. We need to look for domestic sources of support so as not to rely on international donors. Coverage agreements or support programs for the regional meidia, approved by local government bodies, may provide an alternative."
• "Local and hyperlocal media outlets still need systematic financial support in the current situation (war, depopulation, decreasing standard of living and spending power, slow recovery of businesses, sharp drop in the advertising market, etc). Say, our team's financial cushion will last us four to five months. We will not be able to fully monetize our media outlet in this time. Yes, we keep working. We launched a community, established an advertising team, increased the amount of ads, we are implementing some commercial projects. But all this still does not cover even 50% of our budget. At least in wartime. Even after the war ends, reaching some level of financial stability will take time. If there are no grants, which small media outlets have been having a harder time winning after the US funding cuts, as even medium-sized and large organizations (who would not even look at 5–10 thousand dollar grants before) are now queueing for European grants, we will have to optimize our expenditures. This means canceling projects, downsizing our teams, producing less unique content. At any rate, we are not even considering closing down. We will keep fighting and persevering 'until the last bullet'..."
• "This period is a challenging time for the independent local media, who command less attention among advertisers. However, as our team's experience has shown, getting ad deals is possible, and we are doing that; the media can also develop other formats or sell services. However, right now donors should focus on the institutional support of the media outlets that have been actively working on alternative sources of profit to support them through this transition period and enable them to build this resilience and stability."
• "Regional media need long-term support that would enable them to work and develop consistently instead of surviving grant by grant. This especially applies to investigative teams who are essentially unable to do their job and be the watchdogs in this situation."
• "Institutional support for independent media is urgent. Content projects can not fully cover the funding needs and taking up many such projects is straining in terms of organization. Developing alternative sources of profit such as advertising is difficult in remote regions where businesses are closing down."
• "Everyone is having it rough. Of course, the severity of the issue very much depends on how close one is to the active combat area. However, Western regions and media outlets that continue working need funding, too. We have been effectively thrown off the boat in terms of our ability to win grants. We ask to change this situation."

Advice for donors

Ukrainian media's addresses to the donor community clearly show a demand for long-term institutional support that would enable the media not just to survive a prolonged crisis but to develop stable financial models such as content monetization, advertising, and creating high-quality analytical products.

The respondents say that short-term grants provide no stability and make it impossible to launch resource-consuming but socially important projects such as investigations. The situation is especially critical for regional media, which are often on the brink of closure and can not count on their audience's support due to the economic exhaustion of the population.

Besides funding, the respondents point out structural inequality in the grant ecosystem: donors focus on supporting large players. This sometimes leads to smaller independent media outlets being excluded, resulting in more news deserts. In view of this, the respondents call on donors to invest not just in the topical subjects or events but in systemic resilience of local media. There is also a demand for prompt response (emergency aid) and support for media outlets that have already proven their effectiveness in wartime, are influential within their community and able to transform and adapt.

Some of the responses clearly show a tiredness of "development" programs that fail to take media outlets' real needs into account. Offers to complete another training course or attend a webinar on "building a loyal audience" are perceived as ironic when there is no one on the team to write a news story or edit a video. Many media outlets would like to receive support in the form of wages for employees: editors, designers, producers. No people — no content.

• "The urgent need is to preserve independent media so that Ukrainians have access to objective reporting, reliable fact-based information. I would advise to offer institutional support for one to three years that would be ultimately aimed at developing effective funding mechanisms for the media, content monetization and attracting advertisers."
  
• "Advice for donors: to focus on financial support for the media through content as opposed to holding events that may not be very relevant in a financial crisis."
• "Most competitions right now are short-term or for grant sums that are enough to fully resume a media outlet's operations for several months. This does not help teams stabilize their work and does not allow them to launch investigative projects, especially video content. So our request is more competitions for long-term (no less than a year) projects, with real sums for serious projects."
• "The media need to survive. Building independent journalism from scratch in a remote region is more difficult than supporting media outlets that already exist. I would recommend processing applications faster, if possible, and giving emergency support to media outlets on the brink of survival."
• "To develop competitions or programs aimed at supporting regional media. What matters here is that the suppport should not be for several months or a year, but specifically long-term projects that would allow media outlets to plan their work and develop organizationally instead of just searching for means to survive for a few months. Unfortunately, getting support from readers seems unrealistic to us so far, because most donations go to the Security and Defense Forces. Seeing as Ukrainians' incomes leave much to be desired, it is very difficult for people to allot money to supporting a regional media outlet."
• "1. For donors: to support independent media in the regions where news deserts risk emerging or have already emerged. 2. For donors: to monitor and ensure diversity in grant funding distribution, because there is a risk of grant monopolization even in the independent media community, which may lead to other independent media outlets being absorbed/dismantled, and then raided/sold to persons or organizations affiliated with the state. 3. For donors: to introduce support programs for content that is not investigations per se (as this is a very resource-consuming genre), but contains critical reporting: analytical reviews, multisided interviews/discussions, etc."
  
• "What would I advise? For the donor community: long-term support programs (one/two years or more) with a focus on development/improvement/fine-tuning the funding and business models, both for national and regional media."
• "What would I advise the donor community? To donors: to invest not just in topical content, but in the institutional resilience of local media outlets. To offer grants for long projects, training, technological modernization."
• "The main idea I would like to convey to donors is that they should be funding stable and robust projects that have had a breakthrough in the past three years. If a media outlet failed to grow quality-wise in the three years of the war, if it is not influential within its community, it is not very useful. Because with the influx of money that we all saw in 2022–2023, it would take some skill not to evolve."

Advice for the state

Addressing the state, the media community clearly articulated a need for consistent, independent, and institutional support for the media, which should be provided without political pressure or demands for loyalty. What is needed is not one-off grants or projects intended to uncritically parrot official statements but a long-term state mechanism such as an independent media foundation analogous to the UCF (Ukrainian Cultural Foundation), which would provide financial support to media outlets in moments when aid from donors is arriving late. Otherwise, our country risks losing professionals and undoing years of progress of independent journalism.

• "Urgent need: institutional support. For state bodies: to support professional media financially without loyalty demands."
  
• "For state bodies: to thoroughly review the list of media organizations affiliated with the local government or individuals representing it, or ones funded from various budgets (communal, state-owned, etc. media outlets still exist); to monitor the content of such media outlets for covert advertising, representation of alternative opinions, etc.; to develop and apply a mechanism to penalize and ostracize these media outlets for unbalanced presentation of information, preferential attitudes in reporting, covert advertising, etc. — these steps may help imporove the situation and make the news landscape more balanced."
• "The state should at last create a media foundation analogous to the UCF. Donors operate slowly and media outlets can not stop working; most face increasing cash gaps, go into debt, which leads to the media quickly losing professionals they previously invested a lot of resources to train and evolve. All earlier efforts and progress may be undone by lack of funding and certainty of the future."
  
• "What would I advise? For the state: to create a legislative basis for introducing percentage philanthropy, specifically: to bring bill No. 7500 (28.06.2022) to a vote, to develop alternative bills to introduce this idea to Ukrainian society, so that every citizen can allot a share of their taxes to support a non-profit of their choice."
• "What would I advise the state? To the state: to guarantee real protection of freedom of speech, to investigate instances of pressure on journalists, to ensure transparency in accessing public information. They should also invest in society's media literacy: from school level to programs for adults."

Local media in frontline regions and their resources

The situation faced by hyperlocal media outlets in frontline regions is especially alarming. They remain the only sources of reliable local information in small towns and villages. They often work under constant shelling, risking their lives with no insurance or appropriate safety precautions.

These media outlets call on the donor community to support not just digital media, but print press as well; to supply journalists with equipment for mobile work; to invest in media outlets with no political beneficiaries and to take the stable audiences and trust maintained by local news outlets into account.

• “It is important that European donors respond proactively to the USAID funding freeze. Even though competitions opened quickly, they alone can not meet the needs of independent media, because the funding amounts are very limited and donor organizations mostly focus on well-known national projects. This may 'kill' independent investigative journalism in the regions. Moreover, the US funding freeze put a stop to the operations of some organizations offering free legal aid to journalists. Producing high-quality reporting has become much more difficult without them. So, in my opinion, grantors should focus more on supporting such organizations."
  
• "Financial incentives for journalists and aid in the technological modernization of media outlets: it is important that journalists with frontline media outlets have access to powerful multifunctional laptops that would enable them to edit and typeset content in a field environment, so to speak, away from the newsrooms, and to state-of-the-art smartphones that could sometimes replace voice recorders, photo and video cameras, producing high-quality footage and recordings."
• "To pay more attention to print media in the border regions. Printing is very expensive and we can no longer afford to supply newspapers to the de-occupied and frontline territories as we used to do while we had US funding. I would also like to advise them to pay attention to the stable audience and high trust that some local and hyperlocal media outlets enjoy."
• "Evacuated media outlets are the last social platforms available to people in the temporarliy occupied territories. There is effectively no active NGOs left in the Bakhmut district to monitor the work of the local government, survey the locals' opinions and convey them to the authorities: our independent media outlet plays this role instead. If we do not do this, the public oversight of corruption risks and abuses of office will not be consistent. There will maybe be sporadic coverage by large national media outlets."
  
• "The biggest issue we have faced lately as a print news outlet is the decreased accessibility for our readers in the district. The reason is reforms at Ukrposhta. We turned out to be very dependent on them and there is no alternative."
• "Sorting out Ukrposhta deliveries, lowering the printing costs for the media through state support. Financial aid to regional news outlets on the brink of shutdown, which can not even participate in grant competitions because they only have one to three people on the team."
• "To support independent media working in investigative journalism and human rights topics, in particular reporting on the issues in the occupied territories, those faced by vulnerable groups, etc. These topics are rarely top-ranking or a priority for commercial funding, but their reduced presence in the media landscape will lead to the collapse of democracy as a whole."
  
• "To us, personally, financial support for paying wages and printing newspapers is critically important. We would advise donors and state bodies alike to focus as much attention as possible on the media operating in the 'hot spots'. We have far less advertising opportunities while the people in our localities feel the influence of Russian propaganda much more acutely, so our media landscape has to be filled to the maximum. Our news outlet in particular, being a print newspaper, also provides a platform for the elderly."
  
• "Advice: to support independent media, especially print newspapers with small print runs. These newspapers are very important. People in the rural areas often have no access to the Internet, the elderly do not know how to use smartphones, and newspapers are the only source of news for them. Running a newspaper is a costly endeavour (printing, paper, delivery service, which is low quality), so they should be preserved and can not be allowed to shut down. And, as practice shows, people need print newspapers specifically, because some things they can only read in a newspaper and not online. As of today, regional print newspapers are on the brink of closing down and have no prospects, they are holding on through sheer enthusiasm but this will not be the case for long, because journalists need mononey to buy food, pay for utilities, raise their children. I wish more grant funds were being allocated to print media, which are going extinct nowadays. Especially since people trust these small newspapers more than they trust the Internet; people lack media literacy. As for state bodies, it seems like the government has no need for newspapers and destroying the print press is a deliberate policy."
• "As an editor at a denationalized print news outlet I wish donors listened and helped this kind of organizations, which have no beneficiaries among politicians, businessmen or officials who would fund them and influence the editorial policies accordingly. Very few of such media outlets are left, they were 'killed' by the territorial administration reform, which resulted in the emergence of so-called 'heralds': newspapers that are being distributed free of charge and straight-up promote the authorities for local budget money. I advise the state bodies to sort this matter out and order local communities to prioritize working with official print media outlets instead of creating 'heralds' registered as individual entrepreneurs or not legally registered at all."
  
• "Denationalized media outlets urgently need financial aid to buy paper and pay for printing services. Without external support, newspapers will go completely extinct, which is not good at all in terms of Ukraine's European integration, since in European countries print press operates normally, enjoys state preferences and contributes to the highly developed state of modern democratic society."

Despite this, regional media outlets are the ones receiving the least support. Their applications "drop out" of competitions due to poor English or a lack of communications staff. Nonetheless, it is these media outlets that ensure the presence of truth in regions where bot-ridden Telegram channels are trying to replace it.

Other advice and requests

The responses to the IMI survey highlight a need for Ukraine to introduce a real mechanism to protect whistleblowers, fund the work of the media on the battlefield and in "hot spots", develop analytical reporting, essays, and investigations, as well as to exempt journalists from the draft. There is also criticism of some state structures who cite security concerns while effectively limiting access to important topics. Working is made even more difficult by the lack of transparent information, red tape, and a shortage of qualified managers to work with advertising, grants, and communities.

• "It is important for journalist investigators to have the whistleblower institution, which mostly exists virtually/on paper, really launched in Ukraine."
  
• "We sorely lack advertising managers. We are trying to recruit someone for this position, but have been unable for a long time. If media organizations could help by searching for a qualified professional who would, say, provide their services to several regional media outlets, it would be invaluable. 2. I also feel a great fatigue on the part of the team and there is a big demand for an opportunity to rest (I realize this may sound like poor timing, as always, but it is what it is). Individual mental health therapy sessions would be very helpful as well. 3. Individual grants for journalists could be another valuable source of support, as it would provide them with additional income, since with the rapid inflation the wages leave much to be desired."
  
• "There is a need to develop a new type of partnerships with various foregin media outlets, which could offer their support and share interesting experience, content, and inernships."
• "Support from the donor community in the form of equipment, subscriptions to pay-for services that journalists use in their work. Attracting donors to organizing free training classes and retreats for journalists from frontline areas for their mental recovery."
• "Training for advertising managers is sorely needed: there are few to no qualified professionals in the workforce, we have to train them from scratch, which is what we are doing, but we could really use some training, mentoring by experienced colleagues (with relevant experience) to develop our sales departments. Same applies to building communities. Now our media outlet needs to invest in this, but we have nothing to invest. A subscriber community can not even pay off the community manager's wage: this is a problem faced by many local media outlets in our bubble, which is why communities often remain an afterthought and are less effective than they could have been."
• "Funding independent media outlets by the sector: analytics, investigations, culture, essays. Monitoring organizations should especially be considering every media outlet's integrity so as to screen out those that should not be funded despite their positive history."
  
• "Grant writing training."
• "For the SES, UAF: to 'concern' themselves less with journalists' safety. Sometimes working on site is straight up impossible. Lots of red tape, disingenuous 'concern' for the lives and health of photographers and camerapeople. Reporting on some topics that were easy to film news on as recently as 2022 is now nearly impossible. This especially applies to the SES, to a lesser degree to the UAF and the National Guard."
  
• "Draft exemptions for employees, grant support for projects in progress dedicated to socially important topics."
• "Funding for the work of journalists on the battlefield, in frontline municipalities. This is the number one priority."