A construction kit for media organizations: NeueMedien.org
We believe in good journalism as a business model and have developed an open construction kit. It helps to build a robust media organization.
The idea for NeueMedien.org for media organizations was born during our Journalism Camp in early summer 2023. The event took place as a response measure in the context of the massive job cuts at Gruner + Jahr and RTL to give affected journalists and media professionals a perspective.
Martin Wiens from the business magazine Neue Narrative was there as a speaker and asked himself afterwards: What could we do to strengthen the media? "When Neue Narrative was founded, we often had the feeling that we were starting from scratch and didn't know any shortcuts," says Martin, co-founder of Neue Narrative. Accordingly, the team had a lot to learn in the first few years. "The idea was then to open up our entire organizational operating system so that other people could use it to build their own organization," says Martin.
Media organizations should have these 5 building blocks in mind
The result is NeueMedien.org, the first version of a toolkit that is structured into five building blocks. Each building block contains learning paths that help founders and media professionals to progress step by step in the relevant area:
1. basics: Here are the building blocks you should start with
2. organizational development: In a start-up, external and internal circumstances change incredibly quickly. You should therefore create structures early on that can grow flexibly with you.
3. content: In the beginning, it is important to enable good quality content with few resources. You can achieve this with lean content processes and clear responsibilities.
4th Product: Your product is more than just your content. Media organizations need product expertise.
5. marketing: In this module, we help you to develop a functioning marketing funnel and plan campaigns.
Templates to copy or replicate
You'll soon notice: There are an incredible number of emojis and icons in the construction kit! One reason for this is that we love emojis. But there's another reason too. The product was implemented on the infrastructure of Notion, a pretty powerful workspace for organizations. Notion is where the Neue Narrative team spends its organizational life.
All the useful tables, boards and lists you find in the learning paths can be duplicated in your own Notion space in the template area. And if you don't work with Notion, you can of course recreate them in the project management tool of your choice. Or draw them in your notebook.
Our goal is to empower media and provide media makers with the tools to help them build a real small (or large!) organization out of their project.
If you have any feedback on the first version of our media kit, please send us an email to:
