https://zimbabwe.misa.org Impact of Covid 19 on Media Sustainability and that this is something all journalists need to contemplate. ownership has proved effective in Namibia not in Zimbabwe. Trust ownership was used for the English-language press during apartheid as well. Local trusts could mobilize State funding, donor funding, individual donations to support media. The key is total transparency. Transparency is also needed in state funding of media, and here the push should be for greater transparency and accountability of budgets, especially on spending. South Africa often comes in the middle of various ratings and rankings of countries but excels in budget transparency, being right at the top of the Open Budget Index.127 All countries in the region need to improve their transparency and accountability on state spending. This is particularly pertinent to the way media is funded by the state, since state funding of media should be equitable rather than a means of control through skewed advertising or other support. The use of advertising as a means of supporting media is not justifiable anyway, because government advertising should be justified on the grounds of achieving state goals such as, for example, job advertising to find the right person for the job. What donor funding does not achieve is creation of organisations with a capital base and a sense of ownership, two things that from my own experience I think has helped the Mail & Guardian, formerly the Weekly Mail, news organisation survive the disappearance of funding for what was called “alternative” news media in the 1980s. Other alternative publications such as Vrye Weekblad closed their doors. A company enables the sale of equity to raise capital. As a company, The Weekly Mail could sell a stake to the UK Guardian group (hence the name Mail & Guardian). A strong capital base is also important in protection of news organisations against strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) legal suits or law fare. In the straitened circumstances news media find themselves in the region, a lack of capital could mean a winner-takes-all consolidation, reducing media plurality. Stateowned organization can turn to the state for recapitalization and where the state is major or only shareholder, it is incumbent on the state to set aside such money. Donors must consider funding for-profit media and all media must look at hybrid models that allow donor funding in emergencies. Perhaps a regional fund for journalism could be set up after careful consideration of how to insulate it from political pressures, with a mandate for enhancing financial sustainability, including looking at trusts. The trust model of Contributions to a properly independent body which could then decide on funding according to a formula could be an option. However, one argument against state funding is that it does not make space for startups providing media plurality at the organizational level and experimentation creating diversity at the audience level. The Dutch government devotes money specifically to innovation and is an idea worth pursuing.128 127. “Open Budget Survey (OBS) 2019 Key Findings” (International Budget Partnership, 2020). 128. “What the Dutch Journalism Fund is here for,” Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek (blog), accessed August 7, 2020, https:// www.svdj.nl/dutch-journalism-fund/. 39