Guardian Labs just released a new, larger funding model. This brand-new art and culture-focused content exchange of Guardian Media Group seeks to profoundly deepen its content marketing. Either way, the initiative is intended to be able to receive independent financial support from third parties for both new projects and current productions. This significant expansion is a testament to the nonprofit media organization’s goal of providing the best possible journalism while venturing into new revenue avenues.
Guardian Labs has announced that it will accept third-party funding. This decision is an exciting reflection of SAGA’s mission to improve editorial freedom and bring amazing stories to its listeners. The division’s goal would be to attract outside money to the state to help start projects. Without this funding, these ambitious initiatives would never have come to fruition. This new strategy gives them the power to improve upon material already in production. As a consequence, they’re able to keep the flow of interesting content coming.
Transparency Through Labeling
In order to keep utmost transparency with its readers, Guardian Labs will use the same labeling system across all funded content. Each piece will feature one of four unique labels. These labels will help readers quickly understand what kind of financial support is driving the story. Those labels might read “Supported by,” “Advertising partner/Exclusive advertising partner,” “Paid content/Paid for by,” and “Advertiser content/from our advertisers.” This initiative seeks to clarify the relationship between the content and its sponsors, allowing readers to understand the context in which the information is presented.
The selected labels will be displayed prominently next to the content, helping to support Guardian Labs’ mission to maintain high standards and ethical journalism practices. The organization is very transparent about what is sponsored content. This method goes a long way in establishing trust and transparency with its audience, something especially important in today’s media environment.
Commitment to Quality
Even with the addition of third-party funding, Guardian Labs is still committed to creating editorial-quality journalism. We’ll closely track the outcomes of the projects chosen to receive funding. Our hope is that they make them fit the publishing organization’s editorial style guide. We are deeply invested in keeping our production values high. Of course, all sponsored content will continue to maintain the accuracy, integrity and fairness that you have come to expect from Guardian Media Group.
The collaborative is also proactively generating new revenue sources. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it drastically enriches the cultural assets in media that audiences can access. By utilizing outside funding, Guardian Labs is enabled to experiment with new fascinating forms of storytelling and build a fun varied content playground.