Who and How is Helping Regional Media During the War (Part II)

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An overview of media organizations providing financial, organizational, mentorship, and training support to local and relocated media outlets.

In the fourth year of the full-scale war, the primary challenge facing regional media is the need for donor funding. According to research by the Media Development Foundation, staffing shortages have worsened due to ongoing mobilization and team burnout, while financial instability creates uncertainty about the future of independent newsrooms.

Data from Lviv Media Forum (LMF) shows that nearly 30% of Ukrainian media outlets suspended operations at the start of the war but gradually resumed their work. While substantial and diverse donor support initially saved many outlets from closure, the reduction in American assistance has once again placed media in a difficult position. A lack of funds, material resources, and personnel is forcing newsrooms to cut costs — often resulting in reduced content production or a decline in content quality.

At the same time, the crisis has prompted media outlets to begin transformations: closer engagement with audiences, the launch of new digital formats, stronger oversight of local authorities, and a sharper focus on user needs. There is also a growing understanding that survival and funding require adherence to professional standards and the development of a loyal audience that could potentially support stable monetization in the future. Under different circumstances, advertising might have helped, but due to the war, this is currently unfeasible. As a result, most local and regional media outlets operate with little to no income and rely heavily on donations or assistance from non-governmental organizations. The situation significantly worsened earlier this year when USAID funding ceased.

Nevertheless, several organizations in Ukraine continue to support regional and local media. Detector Media highlights the major ones to systematize information about the aid initiatives currently focused on regional and local newsrooms. This is the second part of the article, read the first part here.

The National Media Association (NMA) is the largest professional association of regional TV and radio broadcasters in Ukraine, currently comprising 64 members. Amid the full-scale war, the association has launched a range of educational and regulatory initiatives.

Types of support provided: educational and expert programs, online training through the UMES and UMA schools, and regulatory assistance.

“This includes participation in shaping media co-regulation, drafting proposals for legislative acts, and representing the interests of regional broadcasters in interactions with the National Council and other state institutions,” the NMA press service explained.

Additionally, NMA involves its members in donor-supported projects through competitive selection, depending on available funding.

The UMES School for media professionals offers specialized courses such as "Media Management," "Digital Transformation of Media," and "Newsrooms in a New Reality," among others.

“This year, due to reduced donor funding, we had to pause the main courses but launched online trainings for journalists, featuring speakers from leading international companies,” the press service noted.

The UMA (Ukrainian Media Allies) project focuses on providing educational grants, relevant content for distribution, equipment, and building a financial support fund. This year, UMA hosted three online events:

Beyond the school, the association offers advisory support in:

The “Format Lab” project, previously supported by the Internews Media Program, focused on developing new content formats. The NMA team designed formats, organized a competition among regional participants, and funded the production efforts of the winners.

“As part of the ‘Format Lab’ program, NMA’s creative team developed eight new TV and radio formats. Fifteen media companies have already implemented five of them, producing 105 episodes. The educational component of the project included the ‘Creative Workshop,’ where participants learned to create original content formats for different platforms, produce engaging content, and attract audiences,” said the NMA press office.

Any media professional can request assistance from the association, though preference is given to NMA members.

With the suspension of USAID programs, competition for donor funding has increased, and grant requirements have become more rigorous. Current donor programs prioritize strengthening media organizations' capacity, including covering operational costs, strategic planning development, and new management practices. There is ongoing support for:

One of the major recent initiatives was the “Transformation of Municipal Media” project.

“It supports local TV and radio companies in transitioning from a formal municipal media status to an actual independent public broadcaster model, as required by the new Media Law. During the project, 12 municipal outlets received over 170 legal consultations, step-by-step reorganization guidelines, and comprehensive support. Four companies have already changed their legal status and updated their charters — the first in Ukraine to do so. The others are still transforming. We hope the project will continue,” the NMA press service said.

Among the most pressing challenges faced by regional and local media, the National Media Association (NMA) highlights the following:

The Media Development Foundation (MDF) has undergone a major transformation since the full-scale invasion, says Executive Director Yevhen Zalavskyi — from “a team of like-minded people to a large institutional organization with a payroll of 250 people.”

At the start of the war, MDF launched a major support initiative for regional newsrooms called Community Leaders.

“Our goal was to help media outlets adapt to new challenges and shifts in audience priorities. Under full-scale war conditions, old strategies stopped working — revenue dried up, staff were leaving, and audiences didn’t want to read about anything except the war. We tried everything to pull people out of the shock of the invasion — we provided psychological support (around 1,500 consultations for local journalists), evacuated them and their families from occupied Kherson region, and bought everything they needed at their new locations, from computers to toilet plungers,” says Yevhen.

Support provided: Mentorship from strategy to goal implementation, covering media management, content creation, and distribution.

“We’re definitely not just a donor organization,” says Yevhen. “We work directly with specific media outlets on the changes they want to implement. If we agree to help someone build a YouTube channel, we’ll do it to a national-level standard. I believe we offer the strongest expertise in media management — including leadership methods, HR, marketing, ad sales, and other monetization strategies. Every organization has its own management style, and it’s important not to break it.”

MDF’s approach emphasizes planning and forecasting before launching media projects. For example, the foundation has developed up to ten key tools with its partners — such as strategic planning and operational or mid-term content planning. These are implemented using the “senior partner–mentor” model.

“Our experts are practitioners — they work on their own projects and can support local teams from strategy to execution. For instance, we launched YouTube projects with Kordon Media, TV-7, Raiyon.in.ua, and others. We also worked on audio and text-based formats. Our mentors essentially serve as remote editors,” Yevhen adds.

Over the past three years, MDF has worked with 75 media outlets, and 15 new projects were launched this year alone. According to Yevhen, there are around 1,200 active media outlets in Ukraine’s regions, meaning MDF has supported nearly one in ten of them.

MDF’s assistance has a specific focus — for example, it rarely works with print newspapers.

“We have joint projects with a few print outlets, but we don’t work with newspapers that are unwilling to go digital or modernize their content. We just wouldn’t be able to help them. We primarily focus on online media — whether it’s video content for social media and platforms, or podcasts and other audio formats for online use (although we’ve worked with Nakypilo). We work with TV less often, but we have successful cases of transition — for example, Tochka Skhodu,” says Yevhen.

To participate in MDF programs, it’s important not to miss announcements about new projects. However, if a media outlet has “the ambition to be an independent community leader in its region,” the foundation is ready to help achieve that goal at any time, says Zalavskyi.

The main donor of MDF is the European Union. New large-scale programs are scheduled to launch in summer and autumn.

“In our view, the quality of political journalism in Ukraine has significantly declined,” Yevhen says. “There is a lack of understanding of how local authorities function during wartime — how they spend money, what schemes allow for possible abuses, how they prepare for elections, and how they interact with the central government. No analysts are working in this niche, and no one is offering a comprehensive picture of who is actually running our cities.”

That’s why MDF is launching a support program specifically for political journalism.

Another program is called “1000 Fans.” The idea is that if a media outlet gathers a thousand subscribers, each paying 250 UAH per month, it can become fully self-sustaining. Yevhen is convinced that every local media outlet has at least 1,000 people who open its website and read the news daily:

“And we’ll help these media outlets find their 1,000 fans. Now is the time to find an alternative to donor funding, which is clearly going to decrease year by year. Until the advertising market recovers, our only hope is our readers.”

Zalavskyi says that during the war, a window of opportunity opened up for Ukrainian local journalism, but it lasted only until USAID funding stopped:

“The kind of leap that happened during the full-scale war has never happened before. The war created an opportunity for independent media that want to hold authorities accountable. They grew from a few city ‘weirdos’ into fully functioning teams that now have influence, an audience, and a meaningful presence in society. All of our local media raise money for the army and gain the military’s support in return. They sit with soldiers in the trenches, travel to stabilization points. This builds deep trust from the military. Our media also cover business, including veteran-owned businesses, and help them survive and sell — earning their trust as well. Local media are part of the cultural fabric — they write about local culture, and that earns them the support of both the audience and the cultural sector.”

According to him, this transformation is already affecting local authorities, who are starting to notice — and fear — these outlets because journalists now understand how public tenders work, making it harder to carry out shady schemes behind the scenes:

“Each of our media outlets has a list of tenders that were canceled thanks to their investigations — and that’s a great example of how public money and resources for recovery are being protected. That’s why I believe that after the war, our media will finally become a fully-fledged fourth estate and take hold of the information space,” Yevhen adds.

Before the full-scale invasion, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) had 18,000 members. However, due to the war, occupation, migration, and economic crisis, some of them stopped working or lost contact with the organization. As of May 2025, NUJU estimates its membership at 10,000–12,000 people.

The support provided includes: financial aid, legal consultations, mentoring, technical equipment, and individual humanitarian assistance.

NUJU runs two key projects focused on supporting regional media:

The first project was launched at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. These are physical locations equipped with generators, power stations, and autonomous internet access. According to Lina Kushch, the First Secretary of NUJU, the network currently includes six spaces in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk.

In addition to offering coworking space, this project provides regional media outlets with access to bulletproof vests, helmets, legal advice, technical support, and psychological assistance. It also offers mentorship for grant applications and educational webinars.

“Over three years, the network has handled more than 8,000 requests from Ukrainian and international journalists,” says Lina.

Beneficiaries include:

In addition to the aforementioned projects, the Union provides emergency financial assistance in cases such as evacuation from combat zones or occupied territories, damage to housing or property, or replacement of equipment destroyed by occupying forces. Thanks to a memorandum of cooperation signed between the Ukrainian Federation of Food Banks and NUJU, media workers in vulnerable categories can receive food packages, hygiene products, and sweets for children.

NUJU also supports local print media in frontline areas.

“Over the past three years, we’ve helped restore 32 publications from the Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions. The Union provides funding to print the first issue of a revived publication and continues to work with donors to support these media outlets,” says Lina Kushch.

In 2024–2025, local media from various regions of Ukraine received assistance — with more than 70 editorial teams supported in total.

Among them are the newspapers:

As well as the channels:

Financial support and technical equipment (laptops, cameras, video cameras) are primarily provided to affected newsrooms and journalists, especially from frontline regions and de-occupied territories. Personal humanitarian aid, according to Lina Kushch, is offered to veteran journalists, displaced colleagues, large families, families of fallen journalists, and others in need.

NUJU projects are or have been funded with the support of the International Federation of Journalists, UNESCO (with support from the Government of Japan), Civil Rights Defenders, Free Press Unlimited, Fondation Hirondelle, Ukrainian Media Fund, and Reporters Without Borders. The areas of support include: safety, training, content production, events, and digital transformation. According to Kushch, some foreign journalists' unions also made donations to support Ukrainian journalists.

She notes that media support evolved throughout the full-scale war: In 2022, it focused on emergency aid for newsrooms affected by hostilities and economic collapse, as well as evacuation and restarting operations. In 2023, the emphasis shifted toward building technical capacity and resilience.

A NUJU study revealed a critical situation among local media outlets. The most urgent needs include:

The financial sustainability of media is alarmingly low:

“Due to the suspension of USAID funding in early 2025, many media outlets were pushed to the brink of closure — especially in frontline areas, where they are often the only source of reliable information. Their absence creates a vacuum filled by Russian propaganda. More than a quarter (26%) of editorial teams continue working without pay, driven only by journalists’ dedication,” says Kushch.

The media organization DII-Ukraine, which, among other things, runs the Donbas Media Forum, also supports relocated and regional newsrooms.

The support provided includes grant search assistance and audience engagement strategies.

Liubov Rakovytsia, head of the NGO DII-Ukraine, shared that since the beginning of this year, she has been working on the creation of a Cluster of Relocated Media.

“The idea to unite the efforts of editorial teams facing similar challenges due to the war and the temporary occupation of their home regions has existed for a long time. But the financial crisis that swept through Ukrainian media after the termination of grant support from USAID, the largest donor, pushed us to accelerate. Our goal is to help media outlets both financially and organizationally — many regional media face difficulties accessing official information sources, getting responses to information requests, and so on. We aim to act in a coordinated manner to address this problem,” says Liubov.

Another area of focus is supporting media work with audiences in occupied territories.

“Most often, this involves crisis communications. We plan to exchange experience on how to effectively communicate with our people who, for various reasons, remain under occupation — to formulate joint messages and produce analytical reports on various topics,” she adds.

The organization has already published an analysis of media funding issues in the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. According to Rakovytsia, it is essential that the flow of information about the problems faced by people under occupation does not stop — and equally important are signals from the authorities to Ukrainians in non-government-controlled areas. These communications must be effective, timely, and free of propaganda.

“Our main task now is to find a funding model that can help relocated editorial teams stay afloat. We're working on it,” she concludes.

According to co-founder Lera Lauda, the ABO Media Development Agency, when it was established in 2017, initially focused on local media. However, over time, the organization began launching its own projects.

“Local media was one of our focus areas. In 2022, we provided maximum support to regional outlets and redirected all our efforts there. In 2023–2024, while it was still possible, we continued applying for grants. These were projects that united several editorial teams. We do continue providing this support, but it’s no longer our core direction. When USAID support stopped, we deliberately did not seek grants specifically for regional media because we needed to save the rest of the organization,” Lera explains.

Currently, the agency is submitting grant proposals and looking for opportunities to support regional media.

Main photo: knowex.com