TMF keen to transform media houses

Tanzania Media Fund (TMF) has expressed its readiness to cooperate with media houses in developing creative business models that will transform their operations and products.

Director of TMF, Mr Ernest Sungura

The Director of TMF, Mr Ernest Sungura, said recently that the fund would formulate strategic plans to see media houses through growth and development.

He challenged media owners to do soul-searching as to whether their media houses were appreciated by readers, viewers or listeners, but had a weak professional approach or whether they had credible journalists and editors but were still unable to generate enough revenue.

“You should go further by asking yourselves whether your media houses have existed long enough but still produce poor quality media products; whether they were alleged to lack editorial independence or lacking in organisational and financial capacity,” said Mr Sungura.

He added that TMF had established a transformation grant worth 200m/- for each media house, explaining that the amount was, however, limited to 24 media houses until 2015.


However, the director was quick to caution that the number one qualification for the transformation grant was not the money itself, but that the applicants should be motivated by the transformation or structural change they wanted to bring about.

“You should identify at least one structural obstacle that hinders quality journalism in your media house and that should be your motivation. It is no secret that when we transform our internal capacities, our media will stand firm and be enabled to do its rightful duty of serving and consequently transforming the society,” he expounded.

Mr Sungura said the move would also go a long way to creating safer working conditions and enabling environment for journalists and editors to exercise freedom of the press.

Source Tanzania Daily News

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