My Opinion
In traditional newsrooms, political journalists tend to be those who call the shots. Even in the absence of statistics, it’s safe to bet that the majority of editors-in-chief used to cover politics before rising to the top job. This has shaped pretty much all of journalism. The “he said, she said” variety of news coverage …
Continue reading "Nieman Lab Prediction 2025: Newsrooms Reinvent Their Political Journalism"
The use of artificial intelligence in journalism requires sensitivity toward the audience. Trust is lost quickly. Transparency is supposed to remedy this. But labeling could even have a negative impact. This column discusses what to do. In the case of Sports Illustrated, the issue was obvious. When it leaked out that some columns and reports …
Continue reading "AI Labels in Journalism: Why Transparency Doesn’t Always Build Trust"
Media strategist Lucy Küng regards generative AI as quite a challenge for media organizations, particularly since many of them haven’t even yet mastered digital transformation to the full extent. But she also has some advice in store: “The media industry gave away the keys to the kingdom once – that shouldn’t happen again”, she said …
Continue reading "Trusted Journalism in the Age of Generative AI"
Up to now, the world’s newsrooms have been populated by roughly two phenotypes. On the one hand, there have been the content people (many of whom would never call their journalism “content,” of course). These include seasoned reporters, investigators, or commentators who spend their time deep diving into subjects, research, analysis, and cultivating sources and …
Continue reading "Nieman Lab Prediction 2024: Everyone in the Newsroom Gets Training"
LSE-Professor Charlie Beckett, founder and director of the JournalismAI project, talks about what AI means for journalism, how to tell advice from rubbish, and how the news industry adjusts to the new challenges. Medieninsider: Since the launch of ChatGPT, new AI applications relevant to journalism have been announced almost every day. Which one intrigues you …
Is it okay to laugh heartily even when the situation is serious? Yes, because it is precisely in these situations that humor can help journalism to make formats interesting even for people who might not care otherwise. A plea for more humor – in everyday life and at work. Doom-scrolling rarely works. Research shows that …
The best insurance against misinformation is strong journalism. Professor Alexandra Borchardt explains how climate journalism and the data and verification skills we need to do this properly can transform our newsrooms. It is often said that an abundance of questionable information drowns out facts. In climate journalism, the strategy should be to do the opposite: …
Continue reading "Why climate change should be at the heart of modern journalism"
For the longest time, most newsrooms felt they were doing an okay job covering climate change. They would go all out when reporting on potentially climate-related disasters, cover conflicts about energy, highlight what happened at the big conferences like COP27. But then again, they might not have been so sure. In the 2022 Reuters Institute’s …
Continue reading "2023 Prediction for Nieman Lab: The Year Of The Climate Journalism Strategy"
Many newsroom look at expanding climate journalism as a duty, but not as an opportunity. This might be one reason why just a few media houses have a climate strategy. At the Constructive Journalism Day 2022 organized by NDR Info and Hamburg Media School, I talked about why climate journalism holds great potential for bringing …
Continue reading "Getting climate journalism right means getting journalism right"
While the war in Ukraine and the pandemic have taken up a lot of space and energy in newsrooms recently, there is hardly any issue that will define our future more than the climate crisis: how it’s reported and received by audiences worldwide and how journalism can spur the debate on how to rebuild our …
Digital platforms have fundamentally changed the way we communicate, express and inform ourselves. This requires new rules to safeguard democratic values. As the Digital Services Act (DSA) awaits adoption by the EU, Natali Helberger, Alexandra Borchardt and Cristian Vaccari explain here how the Council of Europe’s recently adopted recommendation “on the impact of digital technologies …
Continue reading "Free speech in the digital age – a constructive approach"
Jay Rosen, journalism professor with New York University, recently joined the Board of the new Bonn Institute for Journalism and Constructive Dialogue. His reasoning: If journalism is to survive in a polarized world, it has to provide perspectives and solutions. In this interview, initially published by Medieninsider, Rosen talks about attacks on democracy, diversity, innovation, …
Continue reading "Jay Rosen: “Journalists have to become more explicitely pro-democracy”"
Scenes like this are probably familiar to many: At a preparatory meeting for an event later in the year one participant suggests that it could revolve entirely around climate change reporting. One of the participants, an editor-in-chief, is skeptical: “Won’t this be a little old by then?” The reflexes work, the man has done his …
Continue reading "Climate Journalism Needs to Mature from Topic to Mindset"
Before Russia started the war in Ukraine, most efforts in the media industry centred around digital transformation. Let’s get that done and then tackle newsroom diversity; this was a common, if not always openly voiced narrative. Then came 24th February when Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine while starting a propaganda war at home. Rightly so, issues of …
On a panel at the 2022 International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Jane Barrett, Global Editor Media News Strategy at Thomson Reuters, made a case for unstructured networking. While Jane knows as we all do that we need to network with a goal in mind at times, I wholeheartedly agreed. Reflecting on the days at the …
Digital transformation has put the business models of news organizations under pressure. More than ever media outlets want and need to make their customers pay for journalism and other products. This is a unique chance to build closer connections to audiences and learn about their needs. But when are they willing to pay? For Medieninsider, …
Continue reading "Interview: There is no willingness to pay in journalism"
Moaning can be a strategy, and the media has been using quite a bit of it in recent years. When the pandemic struck in the spring of 2020, it even felt like there was a competition for the bleakest headline. Who in the industry doesn’t remember Buzzfeed’s reporter Craig Silverman concluding that the coronavirus was …
Continue reading "Forget About Extinction: The Pandemic Has Been A Media Empowerment Event"
Selling journalism is no crime. In fact, only a few reporters and editors are ashamed of the fact that much of what they go great lengths to research, edit, and produce can only be consumed for money. After all, even bread is not for free. However, potential users who are stranded at paywalls at times …
Although news coverage during the pandemic has seen trust in journalism rising, attacks on media have increased at the same time — not only in Germany. Alan Rusbridger knows this very well. In an interview, the journalist, who served as editor-in-chief of the British Guardian for 20 years and has just started as editor of …
This phrase keeps popping up regularly in editorial meetings: Everyone is presenting their topics, and then one of the bosses throws it in: “We have to do something for young people.” Perplexity escapes the eyes of older participants. Maybe something about Tik Tok? About hip music or the approaching high school graduation? Everyone younger than …
Continue reading "Desperately Seeking Youngsters – Seven Insights About a Demanding Audience"
Large tech companies like Google and Facebook have significant power in the digital media landscapes of countries around the world, and it can sometimes be hard to imagine what online life would be like without them. This article I had the pleasure to be part of is a contribution from the participants on a panel …
Continue reading "What if Facebook and Google left your country tomorrow?"
Journalism is serious business. Just recently, a Greek investigative reporter was shot dead outside his home in a suburb of Athens. Even in Germany journalists are increasingly being physically attacked, which is why Reporters Beyond Borders downgraded the country’s state of press freedom from “good” to “satisfactory” in its latest report. Especially in Central and …
Newsrooms can fight “fake news” by identifying it, warning about it and correcting it. But they can also fight it with so much trustworthy, factual and well researched journalism that it drowns out the lies. For most of them it’s not an either/or decision, of course; they try to do both. The European Broadcasting Union …
Even on the European side of the Atlantic, Marty Baron may be a household name to some outside the journalistic microcosm. The reason is “Spotlight.” In the movie, which won an Oscar in 2015, a young, new editor-in-chief drives an investigative team at the Boston Globe newspaper to top performance. The reporters finally succeed in …
Middle management in companies more often than not suffers from its infamous reputation. They are branded as rule-abiding busy bees, nitpickers who stick to processes just as much as they stick to their own chairs, managers, definitely not leaders. If they were, they would have long been promoted to the top – or so it …
When US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg succumbed to cancer recently, the headline race was on once again. Instead of pausing for a moment to honor a great personality for her leadership and stamina in the quest for justice, most of the news media didn’t miss a beat. Who would President Donald Trump nominate …
Continue reading "Beyond the headline race: How the media must lead in a polarized world"
Demographically uniform newsrooms have been producing uniformly homogeneous content for decades, and the lack of diversity in the media has actually worsened in recent decades. The most likely reason is that industry leaders continue to regard the digital transformation as a matter of technology and process, rather than of talent and human capital. MUNICH – …
Continue reading "Going digital means going diverse – not only but especially for newsrooms"
These days it always raises a bit of suspicion, when companies advertise their products naming them something “Corona”. There is no crisis without crisis winners after all, and not everyone deserves to win. Do editors really need “Corona Watch”, for example? The newsdesk tool automatically evaluates important sources on the crisis situation and alerts editors …
Continue reading "Job Title: Robot Reporter – How Automation Could Help Newsrooms Survive"
The printed newspaper has been on life-support for a while, but chances are it might not survive the corona crisis. Now it is critical that the journalism doesn’t get dragged down with it – at a time when it is essential for survival. Clayton Christensen did not live to see the corona crisis. The professor …
Continue reading "Good-bye, Print – Time to Go All Out for Saving Journalism"
Europe’s newsrooms are still predominantly white and middle class, though societies are changing at rapid speed. How to better reflect all members of the increasingly diverse European societies within Europe’s Media and public sphere is crucial. Additionally, diversity is a business case. In digital transformation it is essential to gain access to new audiences. For …
Continue reading "Getting Real About Talent and Diversity – Ten Recommendations"
Every year Nieman Lab at Harvard University asks journalists and journalism researchers around the globe about trends in the industry and what they predict for the year to come. This is what I envisioned for 2020: News deserts were yesterday. In the year to come, journalism will rediscover the communities it’s meant to serve. Several …
Continue reading "Get out of the office and talk to people!"
Free, credible, and independent news media are a pillar of any functioning democracy, essential to enable voters to make informed decisions and to hold elected leaders accountable. Given this, media literacy must be pursued within a broader campaign to improve democratic literacy. OXFORD – Depending on where you get your news, your view of how …
Continue reading "Media Literacy is Critical, But We Need More Democracy Literacy"
The rise of data analytics has made journalists and their editors confident that they know what the people want. Why, then, did almost one-third of respondents to the Reuters Institute’s latest Digital News Report say that they regularly avoid news altogether? The British public can’t get enough news about Brexit – at least, that’s what …
As the media is in distress, being a journalist is becoming less attractive for many. Will the industry loose out on the best and brightest? And how does this influence the declared desire to make newsrooms more diverse? Read our new report on talent and diversity in newsrooms in the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden, …
In an age of unprecedented access to information, true and otherwise, people of all ages must improve their media literacy. But that does not let media organizations off the hook. With the help of an aware and critical audience, they must monitor themselves and one another, as they have done in the past. OXFORD – …
Continue reading "How – and How Not – to Restore Trust in Media"
For two years I’ve been in charge of the leadership programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, a home for those who care deeply about journalism and its role in democracy. Listening to and conversing with media leaders and committed journalists from all over the world has shed …
Continue reading "Two years of bringing media leaders together – this is what I learned"
Why the BBC’s 50:50 initiative has been a success. It could have been a reporter’s feast, that BBC Director General Tony Hall turned up with a black eye when he opened the BBC’s 50:50 project celebration. This is an initiative that has been successful in bringing up “female” content in many of the participating programs …
Continue reading "Leadership matters, men matter, but culture matters even more"
Social media news feeds constantly tout the necessity of turning ourselves into a brand but if we don’t want to can there still be an upside? Women in particular are often asked to position themselves as brands. We are told that this will enable us to circumvent the hierarchies and glass ceilings that have prevented …
Continue reading "Do you really have to be a brand? Don’t worry, some of the best leaders aren’t"
There’s a clear irony in engaging in a lively debate about the impact of big tech companies on journalism as part of a festival largely financed by Google and Facebook. The recent International Journalism Festival in Perugia offered more than one example of this. Welcome to the new media universe, in which powerful platform companies …
Continue reading "Power and pin money: Time for a new deal between big tech and the media"
There is nothing wrong with using technology to solve problems, including those created by technology, or to give a company a competitive edge. But not even the most advanced tech will save the media industry if there is no regard for the people – journalists and audiences – who are asked to use it. OXFORD – …
A new report by the Women’s Media Center on gender diversity tells a discouraging story — across all media types — online, print and broadcast — men get roughly 60 percent of the bylines and women only 40 percent. With some news, one would prefer it was misinformation. But the new Status of Women in …
Continue reading "Don’t stop gender diversity in the news media before it has even started"
The rift between big metropolitan areas and the countryside has grown. Now the urban class is pitted against everything from deep suburbia to the last provincial backwater — and journalism has something to do with it. The political divide used to be between the haves and the have-barely-enoughs. For more than a century, social class …
Looking at the Brexit mess from outside of the UK, it doesn’t take much for observers to conclude at least one thing: the British don’t understand the EU. Leavers display a downright hostility through their portrayal of the EU as some bureaucratic, money gobbling behemoth, determined to cripple Britain’s autonomy, but this completely misses the …
Continue reading "London Calling Brexit: A view from the outside in"
There are plenty of reasons to talk about the media as an industry in crisis. Business models are eroding, political pressures on journalists are increasing, and the need for cultural transformation puts newsrooms under severe strain. However, giving up is no option. So as we approach 2019, let’s focus on the strengths of the industry and …
Continue reading "Why the news media isn’t dead yet – seven reasons for hope"
It’s not technology that is bringing about populism and political outcomes many of us don’t agree with. It’s people. Unsuprisingly, establishing a causal relationship between the means of communication and today’s political landscape is quite common these days. Thanks to intense news media coverage, the general public is getting more media-savvy. People are discussing algorithms, …
The killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a gruesome reminder that the media is under attack. And yet the greatest risk to the profession is not contract killers carrying bone saws; rather, it is mundane concerns like budget cuts and intensifying demands on reporters. OXFORD – The brutal torture and murder of the US-based …
Back in the day, it was all about pornography. “I know it when I see it”, United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward argued in the ground-breaking verdict Jacobellis vs. Ohio in 1964, a ruling that settled much about what was legal and what was not in matters of show and tell. “I know it …
Continue reading "In Institutions We Trust: What Is Quality Journalism?"
One common assumption about the internet goes like this: because everybody can access information, news, and knowledge freely, the web is making society more democratic. So much for the fiction; the fact is that the opposite might be true. At least this is what a recently published study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of …
The Panama Papers investigation was a momentous task. The multi-award-winning international collaboration led by German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung was mainly about manpower. Reporters spent an entire year sifting through data, looking for anomalies and following up on sources. But did it really need to be so laborious? Some journalists who are hopeful about the advancement …
Continue reading "We Can Use Robots But We Still Need Journalists"
How can we protect democracy if we only speak to Siri or Alexa but not each other? Democracy is based on the premise that everyone can express themselves, but it also implies other people are listening. Maybe it’s time for a real-life conversation. In the language of journalists, you might call this a scoop: getting the German President to preside over a …
It used to take quite an effort to manipulate people. Considerable amounts of skill, knowledge, engagement and financial means were needed to sway public opinion, influence elections, create a popular uprising or sell low-value products at high cost. Not any longer. And now social media can do it for everybody. Creating divisive content, lies, fake …
After years of bad news for the news business, recent data suggest that consumer confidence is slowly returning. To sustain this trend, journalists must continue producing quality content, and governments should explore new ways to support those who cannot pay. OXFORD – After years of ill health, the news industry is finally showing signs of …
In a fast-paced world attacked by rampant capitalism from one side and authoritarianism from the other, the institutions of democracy must be nourished. Public service media is one way to do it. Imagine if there was a war and there were no pictures of it. This is the thought that comes to mind when visiting the …
Don’t worry, this won’t be another think-piece interpreting Melania Trump’s choice of wardrobe, this will be about media. A very unhealthy part of current media dynamics, that is. For those of you who don’t live on this news planet and missed it, I am referring to Melania Trump’s visit to one of the infamous migrant children’s …
Continue reading "Melania’s Jacket or What’s Wrong With Media Dynamics"
A comparative study by the European Journalism Observatory (EJO) revealed what has been obvious all along, but now it has some tough numbers to back it up. 41% of all stories published in eleven countries’ major newspapers were written by men and only 23% by women. This is not just another report about gender inequality, …
Continue reading "Get the Data and Get it Done: How to Tackle Gender Imbalance in Newsrooms"
There are many similarities between the trust deficit that still plagues the financial sector and the one that is beginning to undermine technology companies. Firms like Amazon, Facebook, and Google should study five lessons that most banks never learned after the 2008 crisis. OXFORD – The predictions were wrong: the global economy didn’t collapse after …
The loss of freedom in the digital age seemed inevitable even before the Cambridge Analytica scandal with its massive breach of data privacy. Citizens appear destined to live in one of these two worlds: Number one is the world of monopoly capitalism, where they are primarily regarded as customers. These customers’ sole purpose is it …
Continue reading "Our Digital Futures: Where Europe Could Come In"
In a democracy, the rights of the many cannot come at the expense of the rights of the few. In the age of algorithms, government must, more than ever, ensure the protection of vulnerable voices, even erring on victims’ side at times. OXFORD – Germany’s Network Enforcement Act – according to which social-media platforms like …
OXFORD – In the debate over the future of journalism, “fake news” has taken center stage, with storylines featuring a ranting American president, Russian communication “bots,” and betrayal and subterfuge competing for public attention. But in an era of diminishing profits and shrinking audiences, is fake news really the biggest threat that traditional media face? …
With business models under pressure and competition for audience and advertising dollars increasing, media organisations inevitably search for innovative new ways to attract audiences, tell stories or earn revenue. Yet newsrooms often rush into innovation projects, expecting journalists to participate, or even to lead them, without explaining why, what the project is for, or how …