Tag: #newsroom

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The Optimist’s Guide to the Digital News Report

If you work in the media industry and want to feed your pessimism, the  Digital News Report 2025 makes it easy for you, because this is what it tells you: influencers are challenging established media brands right and left, news avoidance is at an all-time high, and it is becoming increasingly difficult (and costly!) to reach audiences because they are spread across even more platforms – sorted according to political preferences and educational level.. Welcome to the journalistic dreariness of the propaganda age! However, if you want to pave the way for journalism’s future, the only thing that helps is to look at things through the optimist’s glasses. And through these, the media world looks much friendlier already. Here are a few encouraging findings from the publication by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, whose material media professionals like to dissect and discuss:

Firstly, trust in established media is stable. This has been true for the global average for three years – this time, the report covers around 100,000 online users in 48 markets – but also for Germany, where the long-term study on media trust conducted by the University of Mainz recently recorded similar figures. Yes, things looked even better in Germany ten years ago. But the figure currently stands at 45 percent (Mainz study: 47 percent), which is respectable by international standards. As elsewhere, public broadcasters perform particularly well. In addition, the researchers note that users of all age groups prefer traditional media brands when they doubt the veracity of information. The oft-repeated narrative of dwindling trust in the media cannot be substantiated this year either – although trust in the media and media usage are two different things.

Secondly, attracting audiences to your own platforms – that can be done. At least, that’s what the Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns have proven. Public broadcasters there have invested heavily in their own video platforms and are very restrictive when it comes to posting their content on platforms such as YouTube or X. The Finnish broadcaster Yle now attracts more users to its platform than all other providers in Finland combined. The study tours to Scandinavia by many media professionals are therefore justified.

Thirdly, energetic journalists can benefit from the influencer trend and successfully start their own businesses.Frenchman Hugo Travers (Hugodecrypte) now reaches as many users aged 35 and under in France as established media brands: 22 percent of them said they had heard of him in the previous week. The audience appreciates the (perceived) authenticity and approachability of such personal brands. The fly in the ointment: many demagogues on the political right have benefited from this so far, and the line between journalism and opinion-making is blurred. Research by the news agency AFP has revealed that politicians in Nigeria and Kenya hired influencers specifically to spread false messages.

Fourthly, willingness to pay remains stable – and there is room for improvement. Okay, the percentage of people who pay for digital journalism averages 18 percent – that could certainly be higher. But it’s also quite something to know that, despite all the free content available online, around one in five people are willing to pay for journalism – in Germany, the figure is 13 percent. The researchers believe that the subscription market is far from exhausted. Where paying is already common practice, the key is to intelligently bundle offerings and create more interesting pricing models that cater to different types of users. Incidentally, regional and local newspapers in Germany stand out in international comparison with their subscription rates. On the one hand, the researchers speculate that this is an expression of federalism and the fact that many users strongly identify with their regions. On the other hand, projects such as data pooling in Drive or Wan-Ifra’s Table Stakes Europe may also have contributed to this success; they encourage the exchange of experiences, networking, and a focus on targeting specific audiences and user needs.

Fifth, text lives on – especially in this part of the world. Yes, there are highly respected experts who predict at AI conferences that the future of journalism lies in chat – specifically, spoken chat. People would rather talk and listen than write and read, they say. Elsewhere, media professionals complain that young users only digest short-form video, if they pay any attention to journalism at all. The figures do not support these claims. Text is still the most important format for 55 percent of users worldwide. This is different in some countries in Asia and Africa, which could also have to do with later literacy rates. But it is definitely still worthwhile for media companies to invest in first-class texts. There is ample evidence that young people also enjoy listening to long podcasts or binge-watching series. Only one thing does not work today and will work less and less as AI delivers decent quality: poor text.

Sixth, the audience is smarter than many journalists believe. When it comes to the use of AI, for example, respondents expect pretty much what is predicted or feared in the industry: journalism production is likely to become cheaper and even faster, while factual accuracy and trustworthiness will decline. Young consumers in particular are skeptical about media use and verify a lot. In countries such as Thailand and Malaysia, where journalism is largely consumed via TikTok and Facebook, users are very well aware that they may be exposed to lies or fantasy news on these platforms. When it comes to “fake news,” 47 percent of respondents consider online influencers and politicians to be the greatest threat, which is likely a realistic assessment. And many users worry that they could miss important stories if media companies personalize their offerings more in order to turn these users into loyal customers. 

Incidentally, what respondents worldwide want from journalism is: more impartiality, factual accuracy, transparency, and original research and reporting. Media researchers couldn’t have put it better themselves.

This column was published in German for the industry publication Medieninsider on 17th June 2025.

 

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Anne Lagercrantz, SVT: “Journalism has to move up the value chain”

Anne Lagercrantz is the Director General of SVT Swedish Television. Alexandra talked to her about how generative AI has created more value for audiences, SVTs network of super users, and what will make journalism unique as opposed to automated content generation. 

Anne, many in the industry have high hopes that AI can do a lot to improve journalism, for example by making it more inclusive and appealing to broader audiences. Looking at SVT, do you see evidence for this?  

I can see some evidence in the creative workflows. We just won an award for our Verify Desk, which uses face recognition and geo positioning for verification.  

Then, of course, we provide automated subtitles and AI-driven content recommendations. In investigative journalism, we use synthetic voices to ensure anonymity.  

I don’t think we reach a broader audience. But it’s really being inclusive and engaging. 

In our interview for the 2024 report, you said AI hadn’t been transformative yet for SVT. What about one year later? 

We’re one step further towards the transformative. For example, when I look at kids’ content, we now use text to video tools that are good enough for real productions. We used AI tools to develop games then we built a whole show around it.  

So, we have transformative use cases but it hasn’t transformed our company yet.  

What would your vision be? 

Our vision is to use AI tools to create more value for the audience and to be more effective.  

However – and I hear this a lot from the industry – we’re increasing individual efficiency and creativity, but we’re not saving any money. Right now, everything is more expensive.  

Opinions are split on AI and creativity. Some say that the tools help people to be more creative, others say they are making users lazy. What are your observations?  

I think people are truly more creative. Take the Antiques Roadshow as an example, an international format that originated at the BBC.  

We’ve run it for 36 years. People present their antiques and have experts estimate their value. The producers used to work with still pictures but with AI support they can animate them.  

But again, it’s not the machine, it’s the human and the machine together.  

You were a newsroom leader for many, many years. What has helped to bring colleagues along and have them work with AI?  

I think we cracked the code. What we’ve done is, we created four small hubs: one for news, one for programmes, one for the back office and one for product. And the head of AI is holding it all together.  

The hubs consist of devoted experts who have designated time for coaching and experimenting with new tools. And then there’s a network of super users, we have 200 alone in the news department.  

It has been such a great experience to have colleagues learn from each other.  

It’s a top-down movement but bottom-up as well. We combine that with training, AI learning days with open demos. Everyone has access and possibility.  

We’ve tried to democratize learning. What has really helped to change attitudes and culture was when we created our own SVTGPT, a safe environment for people to play around in. 

What are the biggest conflicts about the usage of AI in the newsroom? 

The greatest friction is to have enthusiastic teams and co-workers who want to explore AI tools, but then there are no legal or financial frameworks in place.  

It’s like curiosity and enthusiasm meeting GDPR or privacy. And that’s difficult because we want people to explore, but we also want to do it in a safe manner. 

Would you say there’s too much regulation?  

No, I just think the AI is developing at a speed we’re not used to. And we need to find the time to have our legal and security department on board.  

Also, the market is flooded with new tools. And of course, some people want to try them all. But it’s not possible to assess fast that they’re safe enough. That’s when people feel limited. 

No one seems to be eager to talk about ethics any longer because everyone is so busy keeping up and afraid of missing the boat. 

Maybe we are in a good spot because we can experiment with animated kids’ content first. That’s different from experimenting with news where we are a lot more careful.  

Do you get audience reaction when using AI?  

There are some reactions, more curious than sceptical.  

What also helps is that the Swedish media industry has agreed upon AI transparency recommendations, saying that we will tell the audience that is AI when it has a substantial influence on the content. It could be confusing to label every tiny thing.  

Where do you see the future of journalism in the AI age now with reasoning models coming up and everyone thinking, oh, AI can do much of the news work that has been done by humans before? 

I’m certain that journalism has to move up in the value chain to investigation, verification and premium content.  

And we need to be better in providing context and accountability.  

Accountability is so valuable because it will become a rare commodity. If I want to contact Facebook or Instagram, it’s almost impossible. And how do you hold an algorithm accountable?  

But it is quite easy to reach an editor or reporter. We are close to home and accountable. Journalists will need to shift from being content creators and curators to meaning makers.  

We need to become more constructive and foster trust and optimism.  

Being an optimist is not always easy these days. Do you have fears in the face of the new AI world? 

Of course. One is that an overreliance on AI will lead to a decline in critical thinking and originality.  

We’re also super aware that there are a lot of hallucinations. Also, that misinformation could undermine public trust, and that it is difficult to balance innovation with an ethical AI governance.  

Another fear is that we are blinded by all the shiny new things and that we’re not looking at the big picture.  

What do you think is not talked about enough in the context of journalism and AI? 

We need to talk more about soft values: How are we as human beings affected by new technology?  

If we all stare at our own devices instead of looking at things together, we will see loneliness and isolation rise further.  

Someone recently said we used to talk about physical health then about mental health, and now we need to talk about social health, because you don’t ever need to meet anyone, you can just interact with your device. I think that’s super scary.  

And public service has such a meaningful role in sparking conversations, getting people together across generations.  

Another issue we need to talk more about is: if there is so much personalization and everyone has their own version of reality, what will we put in the archives? We need a shared record.

This interview was published by the EBU on 16th April as an appetizer for the EBU News Report “Leading Newsrooms in the Age of Generative AI”. 

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Kasper Lindskow, JP Politiken Media Group: “Generative AI can Give Journalists Superpowers”

Kasper Lindskow is the Head of AI at the Danish Politiken Media Group, one of the front runners in implementing GenAI based solutions in the industry. He is also co-founder of the Nordic AI in Media Summit, a leading industry conference on AI. Alexandra spoke to him about how to bring people along with new technologies, conflicts in the newsroom, and how to get the right tone of voice in the journalism. 

Kasper, industry insiders regard JP/Politiken as a role model in implementing AI in its newsrooms. Which tools have been the most attractive for your employees so far?  

We rolled out a basic ChatGPT clone in a safe environment to all employees in March 2024 and are in the process of rolling out more advanced tools. The key for us has been to “toolify” AI so that it can be used broadly across the organization, also for the more advanced stuff.  

Now, the front runners are using it in all sorts of different creative ways. But we are seeing the classic cases being used most widely, like proofreading and adaptation to the writing guides of our different news brands, for example suggesting headlines.  

We’ve seen growing use of AI also for searching the news archive and writing text boxes.  

Roughly estimated, what’s the share of people in your organization who feel comfortable using AI tools on a daily basis? 

Well, the front runners are experimenting with them regardless of whether we make tools available. I’d estimate this group to be between 10 and 15 percent of newsroom staff. I’d say we have an equally small group who are not interested in interacting with AI at all.  

And then we have the most interesting group, between 70 and 80 percent or so of journalists who are interested and having tried to work with AI a little bit.  

From our perspective, the most important part of rolling out AI is to build tools that fit that group to ensure a wider adoption. The potential is not in the front runners but in the normal, ordinary journalists. 

This sounds like a huge, expensive effort. How large is your team?  

We are an organization of roughly 3,000 people. Currently we are 11 people working full-time on AI development in the centralized AI unit plus two PhDs. That’s not a lot. But we also work for local AI hubs in different newsrooms, so people there spend time working with us.  

This is costly. It does take time and effort, in particular if you want high quality and you want to ensure everything aligns with the journalism.  

I do see a risk here of companies underinvesting and only doing the efficiency part and not aligning it with the journalism. 

Do you have public-facing tools and products? 

In recommender systems we do, because that’s about personalizing the news flow. That’s public facing and enabled by metadata.  

We’re also activating metadata in ways that are public facing just for example in “read more” lists that are not personalized.  

But in general, we’re not doing anything really public facing with generative AI that does not have humans in the loop yet. 

What are the biggest conflicts around AI in your organization or in the newsroom? 

Most debates are about automated recommender systems. Because sometimes they churn out stuff that colleagues don’t find relevant.  

But our journalists have very different reading profiles from the general public. They read everything and then they criticize when something very old turns up.  

And then, of course, you have people thinking: “What will this do to my job?”  

But all in all, there hasn’t been much criticism. We are getting a lot more requests like: “Can you please build this for me?” 

What do you think the advancement of generative AI will do to the news industry as a whole? 

Let’s talk about risks first. There’s definitely a risk of things being rolled out too fast. This is very new technology. We know some limitations, others we don’t.  

So, it is important to roll it out responsibly at a pace that people can handle and with the proper education along the way.  

If you roll it out too fast there will be mistakes that would both hurt the rollout of AI and the potential you could create with it, impacting the trustworthiness of news.  

Another risk is not taking the need to align these systems with your initial mission seriously enough. 

Some organizations struggle with strategic alignment, could you explain this a bit, please?  

Generative AI has a well-known tendency to gravitate towards the median in its output – meaning that if you have that fast prototype with a small prompt and roll it out then your articles tend to become dull, ordinary and average.  

It’s not necessarily a tool for excellence. It can be but you really need to do it right. You need to align it with the news brand and its particular tone of voice, for example. That requires extensive work, user testing and fine-tuning of the systems underneath.  

If we don’t take the journalistic work seriously, either because we don’t have resources to do it or because we don’t know it or move too fast, it could have a bad impact on what we’re trying to achieve. Those are the risk factors that we can impact ourselves. 

The other risks depend on what happens in the tech industry? 

A big one is when other types of companies begin using AI to do journalism. 

You mean companies that are not bound by journalistic values? 

If you’re not a public service broadcaster but a private media company, for the past 20 years you’ve experienced a structural decline.  

If tech giants begin de-bundling the news product even further by competing with journalists, this could accelerate the structural decline of news media.  

But we should talk about opportunities now. Because if done properly, generative AI in particular has massive potential. It can give journalists superpowers.  

Because it helps to enrich storytelling and to automate the boring tasks? 

We are not there yet. But generative AI is close to having the potential for, once you have done your news work with finding the story, telling that story across different modalities.  

And to me that is strong positive potential for addressing different types of readers and audiences. 

We included a case study on Magna in the first EBU News Report which was published in June 2024. What have your biggest surprises been since then? 

My biggest positive surprise is the level of feedback we are getting from our journalists. They’re really engaging with these tools. It’s extremely exciting for us as an AI unit that we are no longer working from assumptions but we are getting this direct feedback.  

I am positively surprised but also cautious about the extent to which we have been able to adapt these systems to our individual news brands. Our tool Magna is a shared infrastructure framework for everyone.  

But when you ask it to perform a task it gives very different output depending on the brand you request it for. You get, for example, a more tabloid-style response for Ekstra Bladet and a more sophisticated one for our upmarket Politiken.  

A lot of work went into writing very different prompts for the different brands.  

What about the hallucinations everyone is so afraid of? 

This was another surprise. We thought that factuality was going to be the big issue. We had many tests and found out that when we use it correctly and ground it in external facts, we are seeing very few factual errors and hallucinations.  

Usually, they stem from an article in the archive that is outdated because something new happened, not because of any hallucinations inside the model.  

The issue is more getting the feel right in the output, the tone of voice, the angles that are chosen in this publication that we’re working with – everything that has to do with the identity of the news brand.  

This interview was published by the EBU as an appetizer for the News Report “Leading Newsrooms in the Age of Generative AI” on .8th April 2025.

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Managers, Talk About Your Fears!

Supposedly, the days are over when newsrooms resembled macho hives, war reporters were the cool guys with armoured souls and journalists could only guess a colleague’s burnout by the length of a sick leave. At least that’s how Phil Chetwynd, Global News Director at the AFP news agency, sees it. While 10 to 15 years ago newsrooms were dominated by a culture of “don’t ask, don’t tell”, since then not only has the discussion about mental health in the workplace reached a different level; appropriate structures have also been put in place, Chetwynd said on a panel at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. This was necessary, he added, as journalists worldwide were facing unprecedented pressure.

In fact, just scrolling through the festival program provides a good overview of all the pain points: Eroding business are squeezing budgets and AI is accelerating the pace of innovation, while authoritarian politicians and their vassals are discrediting journalism, threatening journalists and sowing mistrust or even hostility towards the profession among the population, which is expressed both online and offline. Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that some media executives have not yet understood this with all its consequences.

In fact, business models can only be made resilient if you take care of those who are supposed to do so. And for all the reasons mentioned, the media industry has lost its appeal. Many journalists and media managers are questioning their career choice or leaving for calmer waters if they can. And the next generations don’t even feel tempted to join. In editorial offices that operate according to the old principle “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”, things could soon become breezy. Starting your own business is an alternative. However, it is more suitable for workaholics and self-exploiters, as was made clear on one or two other panels. So even in start-ups, there is no harm in thinking about mental health at an early stage.

Journalist and consultant Hannah Storm – on stage with Chetwynd – has published a book on the subject in 2024. “Mental Health and Wellbeing for Journalists” is based on 45 interviews with media people and trauma experts from all over the world. Key is to create safe spaces for conversations about the topic, said Storm. And anyone who thinks of post-traumatic stress disorder primarily in terms of war correspondents is underestimating the extent of the issue. For example, those who view disturbing footage day in, day out may be more affected than those who work in the middle of the action, said Storm. Vicarious trauma is the technical term for this. Psychologist Sian Williams has developed some recommendations for newsrooms on how to deal with this.

Such guidelines should also be of interest to local editors, as colleagues who frequently report from accident scenes or are confronted with gruesome details when covering the courts generally receive less attention than those who are sent to crisis areas. And fact-checkers are particularly threatened online – to an extent, as Chetwynd reports, that they no longer sign their texts with their names at AFP. The non-profit company The Self Investigation has put together a toolkit on mental health specifically for this group.

For some it’s not the news that causes burnout, but the accelerated pace in newsrooms coupled with economic pressure and concerns that AI could make the job redundant – all this on top of the normal madness of family management that keeps many colleagues busy in key career years. And this is not only true in cultures where self-fulfilment and leisure time play a major role. At a change management workshop for a media company in Malaysia – I led the seminar – participants brought up work-life balance and mental health as top challenges for the industry.  

Emma Thomasson, now a consultant and previously a bureau chief and senior correspondent at Reuters, addressed the topic proactively at the news agency and met with such a positive response that she set up a corresponding internal program. Today, she is involved in the journalist helpline of the Netzwerk Recherche, which offers help to all those who feel that the stress of their job is getting too much for them.

But managers are not doing their job if they leave such offers solely to external bodies and the initiative of those potentially affected. It is important to create a culture in which employees can talk about such experiences without fear, said Chetwynd. This includes managers also showing themselves to be vulnerable. This challenge must be taken up by all those in leadership positions. At AFP, with its 150 offices around the world, that’s a lot of people, but that’s the only way it works. Chetwynd: “The only barriers to a potentially unlimited amount of work are the managers.”

Experts consider two things in particular to be important to alleviate stress: good preparation and regular breaks. Not every journalist, for example, is suited for every assignment simply because of their character and personal history. And managers should address the potential risks proactively before someone takes on a task – be it a disaster assignment or moderating online comments. Adjustment helps. AFP, for example, only lets crisis reporters go to the front lines once they have become familiar with the environment and culture in less exposed roles. And after a few weeks, they must take time off to breathe. This sounds simple, but in many traditional newsrooms as well as in start-ups, it is part of the culture to quietly let workaholics do their thing if they get unloved work out of the way or increase the fame of the brand. This may work in the short term, but in the long run such negligence can be expensive – not to mention the human cost of it. 

Media companies are generally well advised to think proactively about the current and desired corporate or editorial culture, put it in words and communicate it precisely to employees. Lea Korsgaard, editor-in-chief of the widely praised Danish news brand Zetland, presented clear principles on another Perugia panel. Everyone who joins the company gets an hour with her, “and then I explain the culture”, she said, adding: “If you want to create a human-centric product, you need a human-centred culture.” Any news organization who wants to play a part in the battle for talent should listen up.

This column was written for and published by Medieninsider in German (“Chefs, redet über eure Ängste!”) on 15th April 2025.

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Nieman Lab Prediction 2024: Everyone in the Newsroom Gets Training

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 usually don’t want to be bothered by “the rest.”

On the other hand, there has been “the rest.” These are the people who understand formats, channel management, metrics, editing, products, and audiences, and are ever on the lookout for new trends to help the content people’s journalism thrive and sell. But with the advent of generative AI, taking refuge in the old and surprisingly stable world of traditional journalism roles will not be an option any longer. Everyone in the newsroom has to understand how large language models work and how to use them — and then actually use them. This is why 2024 will be the year when media organizations will get serious about education and training.

“We have to bridge the digital divide in our newsrooms,” says Anne Lagercrantz, vice CEO of Swedish public broadcaster SVT. This requires educating and training all staff, even those who until now have shied away from observing what is new in the industry. While in the past it was perfectly acceptable for, say, an investigative reporter not to know the first thing about SEO, TikTok algorithms, or newsletter open rates, now everyone involved with content needs to be aware of the capabilities, deficiencies, and mechanics of large language models, reliable fact-checking tools, and the legal and ethical responsibilities that come with their use. Additionally, AI has all the potential to transform good researchers and reporters into outstanding ones, serving as powerful extensions to the human brain. Research from Harvard Business School suggested that consultants who extensively used AI finished their tasks about 25% faster and outperformed their peers by 40% in quality. It will be in the interest of everyone, individuals and their employers, that no one falls behind.

But making newsrooms fit for these new challenges will be demanding. First, training requires resources and time. But leadership might be reluctant to free up both or tempted to invest in flashy new tools instead. Many managers still fall short of understanding that digital transformation is more a cultural challenge than it is a tech challenge.

Second, training needs trainers who understand their stuff. These are rare finds at a time when AI is evolving as rapidly as it is over-hyped. You will see plenty of consultants out there, of course. But it will be hard to tell those who really know things from those who just pretend in order to get a share of the pie. Be wary when someone flashes something like the ten must-have tools in AI, warns Charlie Beckett, founder of the JournalismAI project at the London School of Economics. Third, training can be a futile exercise when it is not paired with doing. With AI in particular, the goal should be to implement a culture of experimentation, collaboration, and transparency rather than making it some mechanical exercise. Technological advances will come much faster than the most proficient trainer could ever foresee.

Establishing a learning culture around the newsroom should therefore be a worthwhile goal for 2024 and an investment that will pay off in other areas as well. Anyone who is infected with the spirit of testing and learning will likely stretch their minds in areas other than AI, from product development to climate journalism. So many of today’s challenges for newsrooms require constant adaptation, working with data, and building connections with audiences who are more demanding, volatile, and impatient than they used to be. It is important that every journalist embraces at least some responsibility for the impact of their journalism.

It is also time that those editorial innovators who tend to run into each other at the same conferences open their circles to include all of the newsroom. Some might discover that a few of their older colleagues of the content-creator-phenotype could teach them a thing or two as well — for example, how to properly use a telephone. In an age when artificial fabrication of text, voice, or image documents is predicted to evolve at a rapid pace, the comeback of old-style research methods and verification techniques might become a thing. But let’s leave this as a prediction for 2025.

This post was published in Harvard’s Nieman Lab’s Journalism Predictions 2024 series on 7th December 2023.  

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Why climate change should be at the heart of modern journalism

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: make journalism about global warming, its causes, and its remedies, so pervasive, that everybody everywhere can tell facts and reality from greenwashing and wishful thinking; drown out the misinformation with factual journalism.

This requires rethinking climate journalism from it being a “beat” or “specialist subject” to something that frames all our storytelling, particularly business reporting. This is a tough call, of course. Many obstacles hold media organisations back from prioritising investment in climate journalism. Climate issues often lack a newsy angle. They may be complicated and difficult to understand Coverage may mean expensive travel, and stories can be depressing, politically polarising, and if the journalism is delivered in a less than spectacular way, may fail to attract big audiences. All of which makes the commitment even harder.

Nevertheless, climate journalism is not optional. Journalists have an ethical responsibility, even a mandate to inform the public of threats and help them to make better decisions for themselves, their children, and their communities. Media has the duty to hold power to account and investigate wrongdoing. And a lot has gone wrong. Far too often publishers and broadcasters have kept global warming in the silo of science journalism, rather than at the heart of wider business and news coverage, even though it has been known for decades that the core issues are primarily economic, with powerful interests at play.

The good news is it might help editors and media managers to know that an investment in climate journalism will generate all sorts of benefits for their organisation. Precisely because climate journalism is so complex, the lessons that newsrooms can learn from doing it well can also be applied to other fields. To put it differently: sustainability journalism can make media more sustainable. This is the major conclusion of a report recently published by the European Broadcasting Union: “Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact”.

It identified seven such benefits:

  • First, climate journalism is about the future. Today’s journalism is too often stuck in the now. It needs to develop strategies to increase its legitimacy in the attention economy. This is especially true for public service media, which is under attack from various political camps. Who else should have a clearer mandate to contribute to the protection of humankind through better journalism? This way, public service media would also meet the needs of younger generations they are struggling to reach. Above all, it is their future.
  • Second, climate protection needs hope. People only act if they believe they can make a difference. In contrast, today’s journalism focuses on conflict, shortcomings, and wrongdoing. Constructive and solutions-oriented journalism offer a way forward. A project called Drive, in which 21 German regional publishers pool their data, recently proved that inspirational pieces were the most valuable digital content when it came to subscriptions.
  • Third, in climate change, it’s what’s done that counts. Today’s journalism still focuses too much on what has been said. The “he said, she said” type of journalism that dominates political reporting tends to be highly unpopular with users though. Modern journalism should be based more on data than on quotes. Fact-checking and verification come in right here: both need to become second nature for any journalist. Climate journalism is an excellent training ground.
  • Fourth, climate journalism that works approaches a variety of audiences with respect and in languages they understand. It explains. Today’s journalism often elevates itself above its audience in a know-it-all manner. Journalism must become more diverse and inclusive if it is to reach people, inspire them, and move them to action. This applies to formats and protagonists.
  • Fifth, climate journalism must be rooted in the local. In contrast, today’s journalism too often strives for reach, neglecting the specific needs of communities. To make itself indispensable, journalism should reclaim its importance as a community-building institution. Those who use or even subscribe to a media product often do so because it makes them feel they belong.
  • Sixth, climate journalism must have an impact, otherwise it is meaningless. It should therefore reflect on its own practices and use insights from research, especially from communication sciences and psychology. Today’s journalism does this far too rarely. Journalists tend to be curious but often surprisingly resistant to change. Media companies could gain a lot if their managers and employees developed more of a learning mindset and trained their strategic thinking.
  • Seventh, climate journalism benefits from collaboration. In today’s journalism, old-fashioned competitive thinking still dominates far too often. Yet so much potential could be leveraged through cooperation. This applies to networking within organizations among desks and regional bureaus, as well as to devoping links with external partners from within the industry and beyond. The journalism of the future is collaborative.

This blog post was published in March 2023 by the BBC’s Trusted News Initiative.

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Getting climate journalism right means getting journalism right

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 journalism as a whole into the future. 

In November 2022, many people took in another big dose of climate journalism. For some, it may have felt like an overdose. The climate summit in Sharm-El-Sheik dominated the headlines for days. And we learned from the media: it was a disaster. “Less than nothing” had been achieved, was the title of a commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In addition, there were the protests of young people who, in their rage, stuck themselves to streets or destroyed works of art. This, too, has been reported on in all its facets. Is that good?

It’s important, yes. But the debates about the protests, or even the big splash at events like COP27, obscure the fact that there are many reasons to be confident about the climate issue, too.

  • Researchers say the energy transition is no longer a technical problem, nor is it a price problem. It is a political problem – tricky enough.
  • New solutions are being invented practically every day, and a vibrant start-up scene has sprung up around green technologies, products, and services.
  • Most industries are intensely engaged in climate innovations, funds are shifting their portfolios, polluters are switching to climate-friendly technologies, even aircraft engine manufacturers have a climate strategy.

Only journalism does not. For the EBU News Report of the European Broadcasting Union – the world’s largest association of public service media organisations – we have been researching for months, interviewing editors-in-chief, researchers and other experts. We found that up to now, just a handful of newsrooms have strategically addressed the issue.

When you argue this way, you hear critics saying: What other industries are doing is often just greenwashing. That may be true in some cases. But if you want to be nasty, you could say that journalism often doesn’t even get greenwashing right.

When it comes to the climate, journalism lags other industries. Why is that?

  • Journalism is afraid of being perceived as partisan, activist. A small, vocal minority of skeptics sets the tone. Editors underestimate their audience. The majority has long since moved on, as surveys show. Most people know the problem – at least intuitively – and would like to see something happen.
  • There is little pressure. Many publishers are medium-sized, broadcasters are structured under public law. Newsrooms are not listed on the stock exchange, pension funds cannot withdraw money if the media botches on sustainability. Other things take priority, and cost pressure adds to the problem.
  • Climate journalism is misunderstood as one topic among many. Yet the protection of our planet’s livelihoods must be the frame under which journalism operates – just as it is with democracy or human rights. The climate must not only be an object to be observed and described. It must be the backdrop against which life plays out. It should define all storytelling.

The topic of climate is an opportunity for journalism because it exposes its major shortcomings:

  • Climate is about the future. Journalism is stuck in the now. The focus is on the quick news, the daily business. Surveys show: Too much is reported, too little explained.
  • Climate protection needs hope. Today’s journalism focuses on drama, omissions, failures. This is also expressed in language. Journalism warns, threatens, scares.
  • In climate protection, what counts is what is done. Today’s journalism focuses on what is said. The overproduction in “he said, she said” journalism often leaves people confused, empty, bored.
  • Journalism that works approaches people at eye level in a language they understand. Today’s journalism often arrogates itself above them in a know-it-all manner – especially when it calls itself quality journalism.
  • Journalism that wants to be effective respects its counterpart and relies on diversity, also in addressing the audience. Most of today’s journalism is still grounded in the age of mass media, where one size had to fit all.
  • Journalism that wants to have an impact reflects on its own practices and makes use of research. Today, many newsrooms almost pride themselves on ignoring academic knowledge. Yet there is a lot of knowledge about how communication affects people.

But can journalism that doesn’t have an impact be strong journalism?

To have an impact, you need to engage with your audience. What’s interesting is that the formats that win journalism awards don’t necessarily resonate with audiences – and vice versa. The impactful formats don’t win awards.

So, what is effective climate journalism, what do we know from research?

  • Effective climate journalism focuses on the here and now rather than the distant future when describing the problem. It anchors the issue where people live.
  • Effective climate journalism paints the possibilities of a good future, shows: What will be gained, instead of always emphasizing what will be lost, what will have to be sacrificed. It’s about developing a sustainable economic system. Climate journalism expert Wolfgang Blau calls it the biggest transformation since World War II.
  • Climate journalism works when it is constructive and solutions-oriented, instead of always painting the apocalypse on the wall. If you want to engage people instead of making them run away, even humor works better than constant alarm. Scientists are already looking at the effects of comedy in climate communication.
  • Climate journalism can work if it gives people agency instead of making them victims, or at least “those affected”, as is almost universally done in the news.
  • Effective climate journalism serves different audiences in a way that makes them listen. It takes note that the messenger is often more important than the message itself. At best, the ambassador is a person with high trust and credibility ratings. It also takes into account that an abundance of facts does not replace empathy.
  • Effective climate journalism is powerful journalism. Editors should not be too preoccupied with incidental details. A corset of language is not needed. What is important: depth, research, factual accuracy, strong images – especially strong images of solutions. What never works: Images of “men in suits,” as one Norwegian editor-in-chief put it.
  • Effective climate journalism needs a credible foundation. Media organisations should do their homework, work on their carbon neutrality. And that is possibly the biggest challenge. But anyone who writes flaming commentaries but does not live climate protection in a credible way is quickly exposed as a hypocrite.

Mark Hertsgaard, co-founder of the Covering Climate Now platform at New York’s Columbia University, said, “If we don’t transform the media industry, no other industry will be transformed.” You might hear some hubris in that. But the truth is that only constant public pressure will spur everyone involved to finally tackle the issue.

Climate journalism has what it takes to push journalism into its best future. It is high time to seize this opportunity – for journalism and for the climate.

I gave this keynote on 29th November 2022 at the Constructive Journalism Day in Hamburg, organized by Hamburg Media School and NDR Info. The research for this project has been funded by the news committee of the European Broadcasting Union. 

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Climate Journalism – What works?

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 economies in a sustainable way. 

I’m lead author of the upcoming report “Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact” – that will be published in full in Spring 2023. Working with me on this have been Katherine Dunn from the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, and Felix Simon from the Oxford Internet Institute. The report will look at how to craft journalism about climate change that is likely to have an impact and to resonate with audiences and how to restructure newsrooms accordingly. It will also include best practice case studies and Q&As from thought leaders and influencers on what actually works.

These are some key preliminary findings that we presented at the EBU’s annual News Assembly on 12th October 2022:

•    Facts alone don’t help. More facts are not necessarily more convincing
•    The messenger is often more important than the message. It is a matter of credibility with the audience.
•    It is important to make climate impact part of all the beats in a newsroom – rather than confine it to a dedicated climate desk. All journalists need basic climate literacy.
•    There is no one-size-fits-all model for newsroom organization, language to be used or visual policy. Everyone has to make it fit their resources, values, culture.
•    Images matter a lot and the formats need to fit the particular audience
•    Leaders experience little resistance when implementing climate strategies. When leadership doesn’t make the topic a priority, a climate desk might flourish but the rest of the journalism will stay the same. 
•    The media has a hard time living up to their own standards when it comes to measuring carbon footprints or making newsrooms more sustainable. Travel is a pain point. 
•    There is a lot of material out there on how to communicate the climate challenge successfully, particularly from the field of communication studies. Newsrooms just haven’t used it yet.

Academics doing research on climate communication have discovered: Stories are more likely to work if they are related to the here and know instead of to the distant future, tied to a local context, convey agency, are constructive or solutions-oriented, and envision a sustainable future instead of emphasizing sacrifice, crisis, destruction, loss, and disaster. While doom scrolling might capture attention for a brief moment, it also risks to drive people into news avoidance.   

We also uncovered some indicators on how climate change and the environment resonate particularly with younger audiences – and how focusing on sustainable issues could help public service media speak directly to this audience and solve some of their own problems in the process.

Interestingly the same focus also appeals to young staffers – and attracts young talent – in newsrooms themselves. And there is evidence that these topics energize veteran news reporters and help promote overall diversity. They make journalism broader, more constructive, and help to break the dominance of the “he said, she said”-type of political reporting that hasn’t served audiences too well anyway.  

We will cover all this and more in the next News Report. But you don’t have to wait that long to read our findings. We will be publishing selected Q&As with media leaders, climate journalists and experts in advance of publication. You can read Wolfgang Blau’s take on some of the challenges – and opportunities – for public service newsrooms.

Climate Journalism That Works – Between Knowledge and Impact by Dr Alexandra Borchardt, Katherine Dunn and Felix Simon, will be published on 1 March 2023. This blog was first published on the EBU’s homepage.
 

 
 
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Jay Rosen: “Journalists have to become more explicitely pro-democracy”

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, and why the media industry is particularly reluctant to change. 

Medieninsider: American journalism has been pretty hung up with Donald Trump, now he is gone, at least as a president. What has this done to the industry?

Jay Rosen: Donald Trump was good for ratings and for subscribers, he was good to create interest in the news, but I don’t think anyone misses the kind of frenzy everyone went into when he tweeted something. The more serious question is, what happens when he runs again? Because his whole approach is to destroy journalism, to destroy trust in it. He tells his supporters, the press is critical with me, because they hate you. How should journalism respond to that? I think the industry has been reluctant to face this question, also because the stakes are so high.

But the industry must have learned something from the Trump years?

Our journalists did learn to say sometimes: This is a lie. They didn’t do that before that often. To simply offer a platform to someone who proceeds to supply disinformation is something journalists should not participate in. So the challenge is, how to avoid amplifying disinformation while still covering the news. The press is finally waking up to the fact that some people are antidemocratic. There are not just populists but fascists in that crowd. There is a real danger here to America democracy, and it is coming from an awakened right wing. Right now, the mainstream press doesn’t know what to do about it. A complicating factor is: The right wing has its own media system now and it doesn’t necessarily need the rest of the press. In this ecosystem things that we would call misinformation and disinformation are absolutely believed and promoted. There are actions being taken on the basis of misinformation and disinformation, like changes in law and governance, that arise from politicized fiction. Fox news is an extremely important actor in this. 

Has the significance of Fox News decreased now that Trump is gone or has it increased?

Increased! Now that Trump is out of the way, Fox is the home of his supporters. In a way Tucker Carlson, who is the most powerful figure in the Fox lineup, has taken over from Trump as a nightly presence. It is a very potent organization. 

Are these really two different worlds of journalism, or is there a crossover of journalists?

There is very little of it, a few journalists who start in conservative publishing like for example the National Review might change to other media like CNN or one of the big newspapers. But an increasing part of the right-wing media sphere is consumed with fiction and things that never happened, like the stolen election. Once you have written stories on premises that are false, it is very hard for that person to shift somewhere reputable, because they are on record with it. 

Many European countries have strong public service media. We like to believe that a polarization like that could never happen here.

That is a huge advantage and does make it harder for this extreme propaganda approach to reach as many people. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say it couldn’t happen. There are political forces on the extreme right wing, also in Germany. If they can discredit the public service media complex enough, if they can wip up resentment against paying the fees that are necessary to keep it going, they may be able to weaken the political support for public service broadcasting as part of their political campaign against elites. That would erode this advantage. You can witness this in the United Kingdom, where the Conservatives are attempting to push back the BBC. 

It is hard to overemphasize how much hatred for the media is itself a huge mobilizing factor in the politics of the right wing

What could the US teach the world about doing journalism in a polarized society?

We don’t have anything to teach the world with that. About 25 to 30 percent of the American voters are in many ways lost to mainstream journalism. It is not that they don’t use it. They mistrust everything they see. And it even goes beyond that: If a story appears in the mainstream press, it is a reason to disregard or disbelieve it. This is active distrust. It is hard to overemphasize how much hatred for the media is itself a huge mobilizing factor in the politics of the right wing. Nationalist populism generates power by raging at elites, and the central elite in that system is journalists. Resentment against the press is a political mechanism. 

What kind of consequences do reputable Media draw from that? Have they changed their approach?

I tend to say they are not doing enough. One thing we have seen is that how much the Republican Party has taken on the Trump attitude and approach. It is now the Republican way of operating, even if Trump is not involved. For example, Republicans are trying to make it harder to vote. Or they are making it easier for public officials to manipulate the vote. One of the things big news organizations are doing is they are putting a lot more people on the voting beat, covering changes in the voting system. The Washington Post has a new democracy desk, AP is doing something similar

Do journalists have to stand up more for democracy?

Journalists have to become more explicitely pro-democracy. They have to undertake the defense of democracy. That includes things like reporting about voting but also about disinformation. When you have a party that is turning anti-democratic, and you are supposed to cover that party fairly, you have a problem, because you are also supposed to be pro-democracy. Unfortunately, in the States being pro-democracy is increasingly seen equivalent with being pro Democrats. 

In 2018 you spend a summer in Germany studying “German press think”. What is it that makes German press think different?

One of the pillars of German press think is that journalism should help to prevent the return of totalitarianism. We don’t have that in the US.

Funnily, this is exactly what Americans taught Germans after the Second World War. So, is it time now for the American press to learn from Europeans?

That’s right. I don’t think in any of these problems we have talked about, American journalists are the leaders. 

Newsroom leaders have more and more to decide will they have the view from nowhere to prevail or will they have the “diversify the newsroom project” to prevail?

These pressures come at a time when many American newsrooms seem to be consumed by internal debates, for example about diversity and identity.

The campaign to diversify the American newsroom has gone on for about 30 years, even longer. The warning that the news media is too white goes back 50 years. The campaign hasn’t worked. In positions of power, you don’t see any real movement. Lots of minority journalists got frustrated with that and quit. 

Even with Dean Baquet having been the first black editor of the New York Times? 

Yes. In fact, just last year they had to do this big report on newsroom culture. The younger generation of minority journalists is more committed to these changes, they are less likely to accept excuses. They have also more tools for expressing themselves, they can always go to the internet. There is now a kind of confrontation happening between rhetoric and results. It is revealing this contradiction at the heart of the diversify the newsroom process:  Journalists are being recruited into the newsroom to bring in a different perspective to the news. Once they are hired, they are told to check their perspective at the door and show that they can be a professional like everyone else with a view from nowhere, as I call it. Newsroom leaders have more and more to decide will they have the view from nowhere to prevail or will they have the diversify the newsroom project to prevail. 

The debate about impartiality in journalism is alive and well in Europe, too. What do you think about it? 

I have to be careful when I talk about it. It depends a lot on what you mean by impartial or objective, in the United States that tends to be the term. We need journalists that are intellectually honest. If objectivity means, let’s use facts rather than arguments, that is important. If objectivity means getting a larger picture, that is extremely important as well. Impartiality means trying to describe what the situation really is instead of what we prefer it to be, that is super important and very basic to journalism. But if impartiality means you are above it all and you have no perspective, that is a lie. If you think of yourself as the only one who doesn’t have an agenda because you are a journalist, it is a dangerous thing to believe. 

The BBC has reworked the concept to make it fit their purposes, their regulator Ofcom now calls it due impartiality, meaning it has to acknowledge the context.

They discovered that the old concept didn’t work in daily newsroom practice. They saw that their managers who run the desks where doing this with climate change, to allocate the same time to climate change proponents and deniers. That is not what they wanted, so they went through this process. If you have two parties and one of them is powered by fictions, lies, and disinformation, simply reporting on what they do feels and sounds biased. 

If our newsrooms cannot learn how to become more helpful in problem-solving, they won’t survive as influential

The former editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, says that the media has failed in the biggest story of our times: climate change reporting. Do you agree?

Today’s news system, at least the one we have in the US, is not designed to create public understanding. It is designed to produce new content every day. With climate change the first step that is required is learning, you need background knowledge, without this the news about climate change doesn’t make any sense. But our news system is not designed to create background knowledge but to report what’s new today. It is a new challenge. Journalism has to become more problem-solving.

Is this why you decided to join the board of the new Bonn Institute for Journalism and Constructive Dialogue?

Yes. If our newsrooms cannot learn how to become more helpful in problem-solving, they won’t survive as influential. It is a huge challenge for the profession, this will be around for the next 20 or 25 years. It is not like this week’s flavor of ice-cream. For us journalists it used to be that our job was to uncover problems, to put a spotlight on them, and it was governments’ job to solve them. This is no longer appropriate. But the move toward solutions journalism is happening. In the US the Solutions Journalism Network has been active for 15 years. They have reached 30 000 journalists and  collaborated with over 300 newsrooms. The movement is slowly spreading. Even small changes can take years. 

Can you please give us an example how this is reflected in American journalism?

With mass shootings it used to be that there was all this publicity about the shooter. You could read his bio in all detail. This encouraged other shooters to take up their guns. Critics said to major networs: You cannot feature the shooters as the star of the story without encouraging more violence. Now the stories are much more about the victims. This is a response to the criticism. It took 15 years. The adoption curve in journalism is absurd, it takes too long. We don’t have that long. The 2024 election is around the corner, for example.

Why is this industry so slow in adopting change?

One reason is, journalism is a team sport, in most cases it is collaborative. You need everybody to be on the same page on what our job is. It is a consensus practice. If the consensus becomes a problem, journalists are reluctant to give up their intellectual tools even when they are broken, because they need everybody to operate in the same way. There is the production routine after all, deadlines have to be met. Additionally, journalists get a lot of bad faith criticism from people who are trying to undermine the press. This is why sometimes they get defensive about criticism. Also, there is a cultural thing: journalists are a herd of independent minds, they are people who think alike but also think of themselves as individuals who make their own choices. This is how White House correspondents work: in their minds they are intensely competitive with each other at doing exactly the same thing. But the business prospects for the press are dim if they can’t help solving problems. When it is done properly, you often see in the numbers that people are paying attention and their satisfaction with the product grows. If those metrics show that people are paying attention and they find this kind of journalism more valuable this is a huge thing. 

Do we have to revolutionize journalism education then?

Slowly journalism education is changing. We are now seeing programs that are focused on innovation, teaching people how to become innovators in the newsroom and in these companies. That’s not the way it has been for a long time. Journalism schools were usually trailing changes rather than the other way around. It would be a significant change if they led the way. 

Do we also need more executive education?

Leaders of news organisations have to become smarter with a lot of things. There is a lot of pressure around developing the business of news. The news industry had remained remarkably stable and profitable for a very long time. That created a culture that isn’t build for rapid adjustments and changes, it is not exactly agile. That the news industry has to learn from the tech industry. 

Is there anything else the news industry could learn from the tech industry?

Iteration. This is a buzzword, I usually try to avoid those. Because the costs of trying things have fallen immensely in the digital era, you can use iteration. See what works, improve it. Innovation used to be creating a new food section. Now it is about quickly changing your product in response to user data. Incorporating your audience in the production of the news is also a whole new world. Previously the job of the audience was to sit in their seat and consume the news. The job of journalists was, finish your story, job done. Now your job is: how to get it to the people who really need it. That is something you cannot really outsource. In job interviews it used to be that the editors who did the interviewing had all the skills, now they ask the job seekers explicitely about the skills they themselves don’t have.  

So, it is all about figuring out user needs. What are the user needs journalism can and should fulfill?

People do consume news because they want to know what’s going on. They need journalism to know what is true and not true, what they can ignore and not ignore. But also: They want to know, how are we getting out of this mess? They need a reason why to keep paying attention. 

Interview: Alexandra Borchardt, the text was first published in German by Medieninsider on 20th May 2022.

 
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Forget About Extinction: The Pandemic Has Been A Media Empowerment Event

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 a “media extinction event“. Last year though things went surprisingly quiet in the horror scenario department. And now the latest trend report by Oxford-based Reuters Institute is predicting something like a bull market for the industry: The subscription business is flourishing and even the digital advertising market, which had long been declared dead, has made a strong comeback. 59 percent of the surveyed 246 media executives from 52 countries reported rising revenues, and three out of four respondents expected an even better business in 2022. Hooray, we are playing again!

It should be noted that the annual survey is not representative. Mostly those respond who are already committed and possibly proud of their successes. Nevertheless, the situation is apparently better than the mood. Instead of a “media extinction event”, the pandemic has become a “media empowerment event.”

Fuelled by increased user interest and trust levels, editorial and management teams at many publishers have finally taken their fate into their own hands. They are developing new formats and workflows geared to user needs, fine-tuning subscription models, and even taking care of their customers. The crisis has accelerated innovation, dozens of media executives had already gone on record for the EBU News Report, published in late November 2021 (transparency note: I am lead author of the report).

This is about time. For decades, journalists have left the money-making part of the business to the publishers. These, in turn, had often just administrated advertisers and subscribers rather than selling advertising formats and journalism. But suddenly, advertising revenues dwindled, whereas on the content side, the quality supply multiplied. Journalism had become a consumer good, to be developed and sold accordingly. Only the producers had noticed it rather late. These days things are different. In many media outlets, teams of journalists, marketing, and tech have started to work together on products for different audiences. And what’s at least as important is that publishers look at how their neighbours are doing it, support each other, and – the master discipline – even develop solutions jointly. For 2022 and beyond, the smart ones are collaborating, cooperating and/or training together. This is happening on an international and national level. There are several examples:

► In the project “A European Perspective“, led by the European Broadcasting Union, public broadcasters share important content and make it accessible in different languages with the help of automated translation.

► In the Table Stakes Europe program, managed by the World Media Association Wan-Ifra, European publishers train their editorial teams in the “audiences first” principle and support each other; they recently started their third year (transparency note: I work as a coach in the program).

► In the award-winning Drive project, led by Deutsche Presse-Agentur, more than a dozen German regional publishers pool their user data and jointly analyse the findings.

And the number of international training programs, in which seasoned journalists and media managers look into each other’s decks and learn new skills, continues to grow. When it comes to innovation, scarce resources render it not only impossible but also stupid to be a lone warrior. This is especially true for public service media, where waste is hard to justify in front of the license fee or taxpayers.

Of course, there are also those who want to – and possibly can –  go it alone. In the first week of January, The New York Times announced its acquisition of sports journalism platform The Athletic. It did so for $550 million, giving it access to subscribers across America and beyond. The industry has been debating ever since whether this is a new killer virus for local journalism or not all that bad, as Joshua Benton of Harvard’s Nieman Lab reflected.

And then there’s Axios, another U.S. digital journalism provider, which plans to redefine local journalism in a land of news deserts. It launched Axios Local and is expanding into audience-centric business journalism with Axios Pro. In addition, there are plenty of creators on both sides of the Atlantic who are making their debut as founders, either alone or in teams. Young journalists seem to have overcome their shyness when it comes to business models. Just a year ago, Project Oasis, a major study on media start-ups in the U.S. and Canada, analysed that many founders’ lack of business knowledge was the biggest hurdle to becoming successful media entrepreneurs.

So, are the many appeals to support journalism superfluous because the industry can manage without help? It’s not quite that simple. Pressure on press freedom is growing in many countries, and journalists are increasingly exposed to aggressive attacks. In addition, many customers could develop a kind of subscription fatigue and thus bring the positive development to a standstill. In the “Trends and Predictions” report of the Reuters Institute, significantly more respondents were convinced of their own company success than predicting a great future for journalism. This demonstrates a new sense of agency but also a certain humility. The diligent workers outnumber the visionaries. Most respondents said their focus this year would be making what they had already built better, more efficient and more user-friendly. Making growth sustainable, this should be a central goal – in 2022 and beyond.