Critical infrastructure for civic intelligence

The Plus Hub is a shared services initiative from Plus that gives information and news providers access to shared, enterprise-level technical support and services they can’t afford on their own. Our goal is to provide critical infrastructure for civic intelligence – information that helps people make sense of the world and act constructively to shape it. 

The Plus Hub tackles the existential crisis faced by individual operators and small organisations working with minimal in-house resources while dealing with complex technical challenges and increasingly sophisticated digital threats. These aren't knowledge gaps – they're resource gaps that training and even direct funding alone can't bridge.

The result? The credible independent voices we depend on are disappearing. 

How it Works

The Plus Hub’s shared services model lays the foundation for information providers to deepen and sustain their work, and ensure that more reliable, relevant and actionable news reaches the people who need it.

Beyond access to experts and tools, news providers need implementation and troubleshooting support that they can access at the ready. The Plus Hub offers both infrastructure as a service and crucial “last mile” co-implementation. The Hub ensures that organisations don't just acquire theoretical knowledge, but build actual working systems.

Services

The Hub offers layers of shared services in these key areas:

• Foundational
  • Market Validation: Strategic guidance to identify market gaps, benchmark competitors and position content
  • Audience Development: First-party data strategies and tools to understand target audience needs
  • Publisher Stack: Digital systems setup, including CMSes, analytics and speed optimisation
     
• Innovational
  • AI Automation: AI-driven workflow automation for production efficiency and cost reduction
  • Surface Strategies: Optimisation across digital touchpoints where audiences (apps, newsletters, social channels, podcasts, etc)
  • Revenue Systems: Sustainability modelling, business development support and revenue planning
     
• Institutional
  • Backend Systems: Expert support and template to customise HR policies, governance frameworks, contracts, access to legal counsel matching and more
  • Operational Security: Customised solutions and rapid-response hotlines to counter digital security breaches and harassment 
     
• Editorial
  When publishers need additional specialised content support:
   
  • Forensic Expertise: OSINT and other methodologies to detect disinformation campaigns, safeguard elections, trace illicit financial flows and more
  • Fact-Checking Workflows: Streamlining fact-checking into diversified accountability journalism products
  •  Observational Tools: Access to remote sensing technologies including drones, environmental sensors, satellite imagery for coverage of climate and health issues

Process

Information providers follow a four-stage journey:

1. Resources: Baseline orientation, support using self-assessment tools, guided application of playbooks and toolkits, access to a resource/tool library
2. Activation: Foundational consults, group workshops, tool setup, platform configuration, peer learning, etc
3. Implementation: Custom solutions, direct consulting, tool deployment, hands-on support, testing and optimisation
4. Hotline and Network: Self-led implementation, rapid response hotlines, expert troubleshooting, peer-support through a community of practice

Cohorts

The Plus Hub works with groups of information providers who share common challenges, starting with five cohorts:

• Investigative journalists: Teams holding the powerful accountable are receiving enterprise-grade security and sophisticated digital forensics and analysis tools
• News creators: Content creators and civic information providers are getting the technical backbone needed for audience analytics, revenue optimisation and content management systems
• Exiled media: Journalists and providers operating from exile are receiving secure communication tools, transnational operations and audience development strategies that help them maintain impact despite displacement
• Grassroots media: Hyperlocal frontline media are getting support in granular market research, audience data analysis, product design and institution building support
• Feminist organisations: Frontline groups confronting tech-facilitated gender-based violence (tfGBV) or other gender biases receive forensic investigation tools, AI development infrastructure and tailored operational security

Why Us?

The Plus Hub draws from the expertise and frontline experience of the four organisations behind Plus. Code for Africa is a civic tech powerhouse that has built Africa’s largest shared services infrastructure serving 350+ newsrooms. ICFJ brings a global media network connecting tens of thousands of professionals across the world and deep journalism expertise. PROTO, a systems builder, has extensive experience in technical implementation for under-resourced contexts. The European Journalism Centre has a track record in solutions journalism, climate and science reporting and data journalism.

The Plus Hub is seed-funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a longtime supporter of ICFJ, with an initial three-year investment. The initiative is also supported by the Google News Initiative (GNI). 

Plus welcomes additional partners to expand our Plus Hub, and is particularly interested in exploring collaborations with organisations in the civic information space. If you are interested in learning more, please reach out to communications@icfj.org.