Forward Global Summit 2025 | Martin Kotynek, Media Forward Fund

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Martin Kotynek

Founding Director

Media Forward Foundation

play_circle_outline Importance of business model innovation, upskilling the industry for sustainability

play_circle_outline Emphasis on supporting democracy through local journalism

play_circle_outline Value of talent, resurgence of truth in journalism, evolving business models

play_circle_outline Goals for the year: find good grantees, upskilling program rollout, reach 25 million euros funding

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Martin Kotynek, Media Forward Fund

Martin Kotynek

Founding Director Media Forward Foundation

Martin Kotynek, the founding director of the Media Forward Fund and a renowned Knight journalism fellow, joins us at the Forward Global Summit 2025 in Los Angeles. With a distinguished background as a former editor-in-chief, Kotynek now spearheads a transformative initiative in Europe aimed at revitalizing journalism. This discussion, conducted by John Furrier of theCUBE, explores the innovative strategies the Media Forward Fund employs to support sustainable business models for news organizations across Europe.

In this session, Kotynek shares insigh... Read more

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What is the current situation with the business model in journalism and why is there a need for innovation and upskilling in the industry? add

What is seen as one of the main pillars of democracy, and how can people support it through Press Forward? add

What are your general thoughts on where the business model for journalism could be headed in the future? add

What is the purpose of the non-profit organization mentioned in the passage? add

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Martin Kotynek, Media Forward Fund

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>> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE here in Los Angeles, for the Forward Global Summit 2025. My name is John Furrier, host of theCUBE, and we are here as part of the think tank, I call it. All the best minds are here working on the hardest problems, but as a community, as a collaboration, it's the conference, great talks, journalism, democracy, all the discussions, climate change, you name it, it's being discussed, but it's entrepreneurs, it's inventors, it's financiers, it's philanthropists, all working together in a community. We've got Martin Kotynek, who is the founding director of Media Forward Fund and a Knight journalism fellow, former editor-in-chief for multiple years. Experienced journalist now running a fund in Europe that's deploying capital to save journalism, one of the top topics here at the show. Martin, great to see you. Thanks for coming on.

Martin Kotynek

>> Thanks for having me.

>> Well, congratulations on your new fund. Great to see you getting out from behind the digital desk, or virtual desk, physical desk from your job as editor and running newsrooms to changing the world, and journalism. Thank you for doing that, and congratulations on your newly minted fund. I know there's more coming, so congratulations on that. What's the vision? Take us through the media fund. First of all, I love the name, Media Forward. It rhymes with the Q Global Forward Initiative, we should call it. Tell me all about the fund, Media Forward. You're looking forward, not back.

Martin Kotynek

>> Exactly. Right now, media is in a big crisis, and there's a transformational crisis. It's an existential crisis for journalism, and we have to help journalism to get to the next level. The Media Forward Fund is funding news organizations that are willing to do the next step and find a new business model for journalism that's actually viable and that can support journalism sustainably.

>> The Pew Foundation, the Pew Research, they do all the great market research. They gave a talk yesterday around some of the things, and they had the normal study, money in politics, all that stuff, and they gave all the list of things that people were worried about, but what got me was the global survey. It's a global crisis of confidence in the public, number one, because politics, no one knows what to believe. Number two, the industry business models we know have failed and are now retooling. What is the problems that you guys see in Europe? Here, it's the news deserts, newsrooms are cratering at local levels, Press Forward is addressing that. We had them on, they're doing amazing work. What are some of the challenges? What's similar in Europe, and what's different and unique to Europe?

Martin Kotynek

>> What's different, we don't have news deserts yet. We have savannas. They're developing. There are studies for Germany, especially in Eastern Germany or in Switzerland, the western part. We see desertification, but it's not as bad as it got over here. The plan is to keep it there, to not get it where-

>> Keep it on life support, save the patient.

Martin Kotynek

>> But we are not World Wildlife Fund, so we don't protect those which might extinct at some point. We fund those which will fill the gaps if those who didn't invest, reinvest in their own organizations when they might probably die at some point. We are there for new organizations, or people in journalism who are willing to try out new stuff, to fund their risky ideas.

>> You're looking for people who are declaring themselves as saying, "Hey, we want to do it right. We're open-minded to new opportunities, change, landscape changes, market conditions."

Martin Kotynek

>> Try out new stuff.

>> What are some of the things you're working on now? Can you give some examples of the kind of projects you're looking for? What would be a template, or what would be a signal to you that that's a good deal?

Martin Kotynek

>> The first four news organizations we are funding, they all want to broaden their funnel to subscriptions and memberships. One of them is based in Zurich, in Switzerland, and they are already on the local market, and instead of going broader, and being bigger on a national level, they're a local news organization, they decided to go deep into a very specific topic that's relevant to their community in their city, so a hyper-local deep topic. I don't know if this has been done before, but they are trying to be as relevant as possible for this community, and then of course, get additional membership.

>> Talk about hyper-local, because I know that word's been kicked around. It's been a buzzword, people use it as a cliche sometimes, but it means something. Tell me if I've got it right, hyper-local means every community has a distinct thing. It could be a town that has a factory in it, a semiconductor fab or service industry. Does hyper-local mean they get deep on it? What does that mean? What does hyper-local mean?

Martin Kotynek

>> For them, it means that to be relevant to your, you said the word community, your audience, you are very user-centric. That's a big difference to some legacy news organizations. These new outlets, they know exactly what the users are, what their needs are, and then they create news products for them specifically. In this case, in Zurich, it's housing. The housing market in Zurich seems to be horrible, so they found out that their audience is very interested in digital information, deep information on the housing crisis. That's what they're going for.

>> Housing crisis as in, there's not enough homes, or prices are up?

Martin Kotynek

>> They're very expensive.

>> Prices are up.

Martin Kotynek

>> Not enough and very expensive.

>> Two problems, affordability, pay inequality is probably a big one. Talk about the scope right now. I know you're a new fund, newly minted, you've got an association, you're a Knight fellow, so you get the lay of the land of how the philanthropy world's working, and how news is working. What's the initial scope of your go-to-market, your strategy? What is your range right now?

Martin Kotynek

>> We are a philanthropic collaboration, so 18 foundations from four countries came together to fund the Media Forward Fund, and our plan is to go to 25 million euros first. We started in three countries, in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and we have a European vision, of course, but we realized, let's start at these markets. We are half a year old, and the model we are using is the Press Forward model, which is big here in the U.S., and we are the European version of that.

>> They have a great goal. They want to be in all 50 states, and they have 36 states now. Certainly, it's working. Dale and the team there are doing an incredible job, so shout out to Press Forward. Congratulations again. The European expansion is one of them. What's the focus for your plan? Is it, from an operating cycle standpoint, deploying capital? Is there a thought on what you're thinking on how much, how many, what frequency amounts? What is the goal?

Martin Kotynek

>> We are funding in the growth phase, so there has to be a proof of concept and you have to be a product market fit. After that, we try to be the bridge between the idea phase, and then, if impact investors and others come in. We help them really grow their business model.

>> Do you slice and dice the focus on local versus national/country? Sovereignty is a huge discussion in Europe. How do you view that, or you don't care? You look at local as just part of the overall, country-specific?

Martin Kotynek

>> We have a general funding line, which is for local and national, and we have a pool for all three countries. All three countries have the same criteria of selection, one jury that decides for all three countries, but we also have thematic funding lines, now, for science journalism, because they have specific needs, specific problems. We tailor that to their special needs.

>> I'm sure science is probably up there big time. A lot of content coming out of science. The three countries are?

Martin Kotynek

>> Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

>> And the other countries coming online later, you're thinking?

Martin Kotynek

>> Well, we are thinking about France and Belgium next, but let's see.

>> You're going to go adjacent, get your sea legs, as they say, or in this case, land-locked legs, but you're inside Europe, and just Europe for now?

Martin Kotynek

>> Right now, it's Europe, yeah.

>> Okay, so what's your learnings being an editor? Not to look backwards, but you've got to look backwards to go forward. What did you learn newsrooms in terms of what we know doesn't work, and what you think is buildable on top of going forward?

Martin Kotynek

>> Well, the business model has completely changed. The print model is really under pressure, so you have to find new models which replace the big old model. It won't be one, you have to have more. In journalism, for a long time, there was no investment in business model innovation. It stayed the same for a long time, and it was very profitable, so perfect. But now, there are not enough ideas, so we fund business model innovation so that we might have more business models later to finance journalism. When we did our first call, 136 applications, and we went through them, I was really surprised that the level of business know-how in these news organizations, some of them is really low. We can't only fund, we can't only give money, we also have to upskill the industry, to help especially the business side with the business model generation.

>> Dale from Press Forward, she brought that up in her interview here on theCUBE, on our deep dive on her project. She said back office business training is a huge thing, too.

Martin Kotynek

>> There's a global talent crisis in media management on the business side.

>> Okay, so now, AI's out, AI is multimodal, so you get text, video, data, all part of it. That should help the human in the loop. What's your vision on how AI can help potentially propel the industry?

Martin Kotynek

>> Well, right now, it's mostly used for efficiency, mostly on the business side for distribution. At some point, and some organizations already experiment with that, at some point, AI can help journalists to just make better investigations, and to be faster, digging deeper into data, and also using that for distribution. This is just being done, and it's mostly done at large news organizations. The smaller ones just don't have the money for that. If someone comes up with an idea that's AI-powered, we're happy to fund that.

>> That's awesome. I've got to ask you about Forward Global. What do you think about the organization, their mission?

Martin Kotynek

>> I've just heard about it two weeks ago, and I'm very grateful that I was invited at the very last moment. I came here, and it's a great community, especially compared to Europe, where everything is much smaller in that space. They just bring in hundreds of people from philanthropy and from projects, and you meet people all the time, and there are so many ideas and inputs, I really enjoy it.

>> My brain is full, as they say. It's so great to get third-party perspectives outside of your focus area, because it opens up the mind to what's possible, but also, there's collaboration here. Is there anything that you've heard in the hallway conversations or meetings you've had, or sessions that speaks to you and your mission? Obviously, news and journalism is top of mind, and democracy is a big discussion point. It's a major pillar here. What have you heard? Is there any cool news, things they go, "Well, okay, I'm on the right side here, at least," or areas that you are concerned about, or areas you want to work on coming out of the event?

Martin Kotynek

>> It's very encouraging to see how many people here care for democracy, and what to do about it, and that they see that journalism, especially local journalism, is one of the main pillars of democracy. I think someone called it, journalists are the frontline workers of democracy, and to help them also helps democracy. I've spoken to many people here who are willing to do that via Press Forward, or if they want to have global impact, Press Forward and Media Forward Fund, that's very encouraging, of course.

>> I can tell you, from our SiliconANGLE perspective, had our heads down for 15 years, one thing that I learned was, this reaffirmed my vision and our team's vision that talent, journalists, reporters, investigative, news, are super valuable, and we see a comeback to truth, and the value that people are weighing on it. The surveys all show that the audience wants that bad. They don't want to see the Substacks, although they're emerging. I call it a homeless crisis, because why stand alone in a silo when you can be part of a platform? I think you're going to see journalism come back. Now, the question is, where is the business model, which everyone's working on? Your thoughts, general thoughts on where the puck could be skidding through where the puck might go. What's your thoughts on business model, outside of subscriptions? Subscriptions are great for premium services, we've seen that, but open source content, which we believe is going to happen, might change, but the audiences want the quality, and you've got to pay for it.

Martin Kotynek

>> Right now, we see this magic triangle of events, podcasts and newsletters, and if you have an audience, and you know it and their needs, then you can provide for the newsroom. It's decent money, but you really have to execute it in a really good way, and you have to find the a market.

>> The golden triangle.

Martin Kotynek

>> Yeah, we see that in many applications. That seems to be one where you can go, but it won't be one business model. We can't replace the print business model was just another one, big business model. You need more revenue streams. We see events, one of our grantees does live theater. Others use social and other means for that. You have to just broaden your funnel.

>> Yeah. Well we got lucky with theCUBE. We go to all the events. We've been doing it for 15 years. That's where the community is, too, by the way. I think community will be a big thing. Civic minded people, Press Forward cracked the code on this, in my opinion, again, another shout out to them, where they're starting to see evidence that the user generated participation as the production system is actually valuable.

Martin Kotynek

>> Absolutely.

>> Your thoughts on that? Do you agree?

Martin Kotynek

>> We see that news organizations that focus on the users, and who have a back channel to their reporting, that they are winning.

>> Yeah, awesome. Final question. What's your goals for the year? What do you hope to accomplish this year?

Martin Kotynek

>> We want to find really good grantees, so we just started our second call, and we also realize that we need this upskilling program for the industry. We want to roll that out to everyone who's potentially fundable. Also, we want to go to 25 million euros.

>> And you can collect money from philanthropy? You have a vehicle for that? That's the fund?

Martin Kotynek

>> Yes. It's a non-profit, it's also registered in the U.S. It has an equivalency determination, so we are set up.

>> Martin, great to have you on theCUBE.

Martin Kotynek

>> Thank you.

>> Looking forward to partnering with you. If you're a philanthropist out there, donate to the Forward Fund Media Fund. Great initiative. Of course, there's a lot going on to get involved in, looking at the innovators, the ones that are leaning into the change. Even though it might feel like we're swimming upstream, the tide will turn. Martin, great to have you on. Thanks for watching theCUBE. I'm John Furrier. Bring all the action here at Forward Global to you, all the innovators, the thinkers, the donors, everyone's getting together to solve the problems in an integrated, communal way. Of course, we're bringing you all the data. Thanks for watching.