Giving Compass' Take:

• Miguel Castro, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Senior Officer for Global Media Partnerships, discusses why it essential for philanthropy to fund strong journalism.

• Among the major takeaways here is that philanthropy and journalism can have a symbiotic relationship, whether it's through solutions reporting or fighting misinformation. In what ways can we develop these partnerships?

• Learn how journalism can be an ally to the people and responsive governments.

Since its founding in 2000, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent more on media partnerships than almost any other philanthropy. With a $40 billion endowment (2018), the foundation is the largest private philanthropy in the world and concentrates its spending on portfolios dedicated to global development, global health, global growth and opportunity, and education and poverty eradication in the U.S. The Foundation is slated to spend $20 million on media grants in 2018 with additional funding going to an insights team that conducts media research. Much of the budget for media grants is administered by the foundation’s Global Media Partnerships and often directly subsidizes reporting on less frequently covered topics such as health and development.

In recent years, Gates Foundation funding made it possible for the South African newspaper the Mail and Guardian to launch the largest health desk on the African continent and also enabled the U.S. edition of the Guardian to run a solutions-oriented series of stories on homelessness in the United States. The Global Media Partnership has also collaborated extensively with other major outlets such as Der Spiegel, El Pais, the Financial Times, and Al Jazeera.

Read the full article about Gates Foundations' media partnerships by Ian Graham of MediaPowerMonitor on Medium.