Tag: #nic newman

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Beyond the Algorithm: 10 Strategies for Attracting Young News Audiences

There are many assumptions but surprisingly little evidence of how to engage young audiences with news. Commonly voiced concerns are that young people just consume short-form video, trust creators more than news brands and won’t pay for news anyway because they are just not that interested, particularly not in politics. 

But reality is more nuanced: In some settings young people do trust media brands more than personalities, they follow the news avidly, and they demonstrate considerable attention spans if invested in something, even for text-based products. 

My co-author Jana Koch and I  tested these and more assumptions in a qualitative research project, commissioned by Austrian Wiener Zeitung Media Group. We based our study on structured interviews with young people and media leaders in Austria and with more than a dozen international experts, amounting to a total of 58 in-depth interviews. We then contrasted our findings with the latest research by leading organisations like the Reuters Institute’s “Understanding young news audiences” and the NextGen News project, a Knight Lab/FT Strategies cooperation. 

The full report, Knapp daneben ist auch vorbei is available in German and English  here. 

So, what is it exactly that media leaders need to know when serving young audiences? There is no one-size-fits-all solution, of course. But we have identified 10 evidence-based strategies to guide media leaders. 

1. Understand and Serve Audiences

There is no such thing as “the” young user. Expectations and habits differ not only between generational cohorts, but also within them. The old mass media formula “one size fits all” no longer works. You need to decide which community to serve on which platform, and to understand which codes to use to reach them. 

This can best be achieved by letting young colleagues in your organisation take the lead. 

Our interviews suggest: young users are indeed interested in politics, the economy, and international affairs, provided the perspective and narrative style suit them. 

Different platforms serve different purposes: Long podcasts, video documentaries, and games serve a different purpose than short videos, push notifications, and WhatsApp messages. 

What doesn’t work, for sure: Cramming everything into TikToks, or presenting every message as comedy. 

2. Add Value to People’s Lives

The digital world delivers content in abundance. Information overload and news avoidance are prevalent. Young people want to use their time wisely. 

They expect journalism to provide not just updates, but also explanations, solutions, and perspectives. 

They derive additional value from a particular voice or new forms of news experiences, local or niche context, narrative styles, or perspectives that surprise, dive deeper, or are closer to the reality of their lives. 

Marco Kruse, Managing Director of Ingame, Ippen Media’s youth initiative: “As a young person, you don’t just want to hear all day about the problems of the present; you want to know what your future looks like and what the solution is.” 

Doing less but doing it better is a valuable strategy. This holds particularly true for the AI era which is likely to put an end to copy-and-paste journalism. 

3. Be Confident

Journalism has something to offer, and young people get that. So, don’t sell yourself short, but deliver exactly what your core business is: independent, fact-based, strong journalism. Anyone determined to make any content funny or imitate slang is set up for failure. “Don’t try to be cool, because that is not your role”, says Pierre Caulliez, who leads Wan-Ifra’s News Creator Exchange programme. 

Users come to media brands precisely for what they can’t find elsewhere. And media companies can confidently promote that. The most successful German news brand on social media, public service ARD’s Tagesschau, shows how this can be done.

Timo Spiess, Tagesschau’s Head of Social Media, says: “We try to find a conversational tone (…) that conveys: ‘we take you seriously, we take this platform seriously, but we also take ourselves and our brand seriously.’”

4. Build Personal Brands

International research suggests that young people trust individuals more than brands. However, this perspective is shaped by experiences in countries like the US, where there are no public service media that have a mandate to serve all of society, or in settings where state interests have captured mainstream media. 

Creators sense gaps where they find them and happily step in. In contrast, our research shows that young adults in Austria and Germany continue to trust major media brands. 

However, individual creators gain traction when they have demonstrated clearly recognisable expertise in niche areas. 

That said, authenticity is a core value for young people. Amid the surging flood of automatically generated content, they’ve developed a particularly keen sense for whether something or someone is “real.” 

This opens opportunities for media: they can strategically build personal brands. The key though,  is not to stake everything on a single individual, but to develop clearly distinct voices. 

This also helps decrease the risk of losing popular content creators and their following. As Spiess describes: “The brand is the star. The brand is carried by faces. But these faces always step back a little behind the brand.”

5. Make Diversity Visible

Many young people are allergic to what newsrooms have long characterised as quality journalism: the know-it-all attitude, preachiness, complex phrasing, or irony and sarcasm. 

This suggests: Don’t talk about young people, but with them – and let them speak for themselves. Especially in ageing societies, the perspectives of young people are often overlooked. 

Co-creation can do wonders, but don’t assume that everyone wants to participate. In general, young people want more diversity of perspectives in news media, but this needs to go beyond the buzzword: different social backgrounds, experiences, and life stories need to be reflected. 

Funk, the youth network of German public media ARD and ZDF, for example, had determined through data analysis that it struggled to reach audiences with strong roots in rural areas. This led to “Sag mal,” which, in the words of Funk CEO Philipp Schild, became one of their most successful formats: “It focuses heavily on tradition and rural culture and is aimed at people who have a strong sense of identity in those areas.” 

Interestingly, the young Austrians we interviewed voiced rather traditional expectations in news, emphasising objectivity as a journalistic value. This contrasts with assumptions – also by some of our expert interview partners – that young audiences explicitly demand a point of view.  

6. Build and Retain Relationships

Media need to be present in the everyday lives of young adults to build connections, ideally relationships. Don’t wait for them to come to you, but go where they already are: on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, in algorithmic feeds – or to their schools, youth clubs, and universities. 

Real-life encounters can foster closeness. If you can afford it, organise workshops, guided tours, even festivals. They do not necessarily need to be about media. Relationships are built through presence, relevance, and shared experiences.

Caulliez says that publishers underestimate the potential of events: “When someone attends a specific event, they are 10 times more likely to remember the brand than if they only watch 10 seconds of YouTube Shorts from the same brand. It creates added value to build connections to different types of events throughout a person’s entire life cycle.” 

7. Diversify Monetisation

Purely transactional monetisation models like subscriptions appeal to very few young adults, especially as, in many European countries, every household has to pay the public service media license fee. 

This does not rule out a willingness to spend money on private news media, but people will only pay for tangible added value such as an experience or a feeling of identity. 

Liesbeth Nizet, Head of Future Audiences Monetization at Mediahuis says: “Creating a sense of belonging is super important.” Many publishers fail to reach young people with their product offerings. Some are not even known to them, others come across as inflexible, overloaded, or outdated. Younger audiences are used to personalisation and choice. A student subscription alone is not an innovation.” 

Nadine Eibl (formerly Günther), new product and innovation manager at German publisher Funke says: “Media companies simply need to realise that it’s pointless to force the existing offers onto young audiences.” 

Our interview partners see products for young users primarily as an investment in the brand and thus the future; some found potential in branded content. Nevertheless, investing in young audiences often pays off in a different way.

Many media companies have learned that formats for younger people often attract broader segments of society than their traditional fare. 

8. Think in Formats

Simply investing in vertical short-form video won’t do the job. Social media channels differ, and the data from each platform reflects how the respective algorithms interpret certain signals.

Of course, this type of analysis is thankless, because just when you think you’ve figured out a pattern, third party-platforms might change it. A dataset compiled by the Financial Times in October 2025 for a story titled “Have we passed peak social media?” even revealed that time spent on social media has been declining since 2022.

Many young people are themselves unhappy with their excessive social media consumption, and political initiatives want to curb access for kids and teenagers. 

“There is definitely a backlash against noise” says Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute in Oxford. While the extent of news consumption via social media platforms will remain significant for a few more years, media companies should develop formats that could also thrive on their own platforms.

George Montagu, who oversaw the NextGen News project for FT Strategies, recommends redirecting energies from content to formats: “Right now, they (journalists) spend 80 to 90 percent of their time thinking, researching, and writing, and 10 percent figuring out ‘How do I package this for social media?’

“But what if they invested 50 percent in research and writing and 50 percent in turning that into something cool and innovative? No one is asking for more content. They’re asking to receive content in different formats and styles.”

9. Optimise for AI and Convenience

In the digital world, consumer expectations are shaped by Netflix, Spotify, and the like. This applies to both content and user-friendliness, the so-called user experience (UX). 

Journalistic products must be easily accessible and navigable. Younger consumers also expect that important news will somehow find them. With developments in AI, media consumption habits are likely to change. Much content might soon no longer be consumed directly by humans but read by machines first. 

However, many of our interviewees see opportunities for media companies in the world of synthetic content and overload. 

For example, verifying factual accuracy is becoming more important. And some professionals see an advantage precisely for brands that focus on people. 

Smilla Schwörer, business development manager at Funke and herself a Gen Z, says: “People overestimate how open young people are to AI. Young people want real people, real opinions, real faces, and real stories. I’d say the Boomer generation is much more likely to listen to an AI podcast than we are. We’re probably also a bit quicker at recognising AI and are therefore a bit more critical of the whole thing.”

10. Innovate Fast

The media industry is losing young audiences less due to a lack of ideas than a lack of courage. Innovation requires a different mindset: less fear of failure, less clinging to routines, and more trust in experimentation. Innovation-friendly leadership means allowing for setbacks and delegating responsibility but also shifting resources from declining to growing parts of the company. Young media professionals who understand the codes, languages, and dynamics of digital communities, should be encouraged to step up instead of being cornered into some social media team with no career prospects.

Sophia Smith Galer, independent news creator and member of Mediahuis’ Future Insight Board, recommends media leaders to make explicit that all staff is responsible for a company’s financial health: “Everyone should be required to do something to innovate every year”. 

Conclusion

Reaching young people is a challenging task that requires a strategy: it involves lots of data analysis, experimentation, and a shift in thinking. Many assumptions need to be discarded, along with the structures that go with them.

But Gen Z displays less news fatigue than is often claimed. Spiess from Tagesschau: “The younger generation also wants to dive deeper into things. … (Reaching young people) is a challenge. But it can be done.”

The reward for these efforts isn’t just about securing the future of a newsroom or a company. As Funk’s CEO Schild says: “Anyone who does something for young people is doing something for democracy.”

This text was written for and published by the World Association of Newspublishers Wan-Ifra on 12 June 2026.

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“There’s definitely a backlash against noise”

Being the longtime lead author of the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, Nic Newman has collected data on news consumption for more than a decade. By analyzing data and leading focus groups, he and his co-researchers have observed significant changes in behavior by young audiences: These days they overwhelmingly access news via social media and expect the consumption experience to be frictionless. I interviewed Nic for a research project on Gen Z and News by Mediengruppe Wiener Zeitung.  

Nic, you have studied news consumption behaviour of different age groups for decades. What do media organizations need to know if they want to reach young people today? 

Nic Newman: People who grew up with social media show very different behaviours from those of previous generations. They want everything friction-free – ­and immediately –  and they want to consume content where they are. They don’t want to go to news websites or apps. And they want their consumption to be easy, entertaining, fun. That’s a big challenge because do you change your journalism to make it more entertaining and fun? Or do you just accept that they’re going to come less often to you because you’re not very entertaining and you’re not a lot of fun?

Is there such a thing as “the young audience” some in the media are talking about, or does your research reveal different young audiences? 

One of the defining features of this younger audience is just how varied their consumption is. We’ve done qualitative work where we’ve talked to individuals in different countries, and everyone has got different media habits. For example, it’s not true that all young people use TikTok for news. There are many who hate TikTok. We found people who had very clear routines, almost like those of newspaper readers. We saw them reading The Economist at exactly the same time every morning on their commute as they briefed themselves on the things they needed to know for work. You have the typical lifestyle effects when as you get older and go into a job, there’s information you need. Just young people’s way of accessing that information is going to be different, the unhappiness with any kind of friction applies to all. 

Presumably education and social status matter, too.

Education is always the biggest divider in terms of how interested people are in news. The more interested people are in news, the more likely they are to build a relationship with a brand or with an individual. That’s the other big trend: that many young people prefer to access news through an individual they trust. 

You did a major report on creators for the Reuters Institute. What were your key findings?

It varies by country. We all know the politically polarizing creators in the US, the Joe Rogan types. There are a lot less of these in Europe. There you see more of those educator types like MrWissen2go in Germany. In explanatory journalism creators are clearly filling a gap that traditional media does not fill. The third area is the specialists who are building really deep, authentic relationships in a particular subject area. This also threatens traditional media companies, because these individuals have an incredibly low cost base. Many of them came from mainstream media but now think it’s better to operate on their own. 

Some data shows we have reached peak social media – now that even the most backwards media brands have realized they need to give it a go. 

There’s definitely a backlash against noise. But it might be impossible to even talk about social media anymore. Social media used to be social: about what your friends were doing. But that has been declining. In the past two to three years, it has developed from content that came from someone you knew to content that is essentially driven popularity using AI driven algorithms. A lot of that is fuelled by video. People aren’t getting bored with YouTube or TikTok, that’s growing. 

What does that mean for the media industry? 

One of the implications is the competition for attention within the new discovery mechanisms. The platforms are setting themselves up as creator friendly, they want to attract the best content that’s going to keep people’s attention. And again, they find that although professional media is part of that, people are paying more attention to non-professional media, to authentic personalities. Younger people are paying a lot of attention to people who look like them. Traditional media are struggling to behave like creators, because their sometimes less objective approach doesn’t fit with journalistic norms. The other growth area is through AI. Young people are more likely to access news and information through AI, because it’s friction free, quick, easy, and gives them what they want, it is personalized. 

What would you recommend editors and media organizations to do in this situation where both is quite foreign to them: creators and AI-based discovery?

Most media companies are thinking about investing more in video, particularly in vertical video that builds an authentic trust relationship. You’ve seen the New York Times and a range of other media companies putting vertical video on their front pages, trying to bolster the visibility of their own personalities and journalists to the extent that these are looking directly at you in the camera, building that sort of authentic direct relationship. They’re trying to copy a few creator techniques. Other strategies are to partner with creators or to co-opt them and bring them on staff. A whole list of companies have done that, in the UK for example the Daily Mailand the Independent. The third possibility is to engage with existing creators in particular fields, for example in investigations to help with distribution or content creation

What are the most common mistakes that you observe in newsrooms – apart from not doing anything for young audiences?

Probably the biggest mistake is an old newsroom trying to be down with the kids. Some older television anchors have done very well on TikTok, but in general, young people do not want you to dumb down. They want you to maintain your credibility and institutional authority. Don’t not cover politics or other important subjects because young people are spending less time on these issues. Try and make it accessible. Think hard about the formats you’re using. This works for older people as well. The other common mistake is to do a brand for young people, unless you do it to learn something from it. There have been very few cases where that has been successful. 

Why is that? Some young editors in large media companies have put quite some effort into developing those brands. 

Because in most of those cases you’re trying to get young people to do something they don’t want to do, which is come directly to an app or to a website. And if it’s a brand that only works in social media, you might as well build a personal brand or try and amplify the message of the existing brand rather than trying to create a new one. It is different if you are a digital first brand like Zetland in Denmark where you have a very clear audience in mind to begin with. 

What is their secret sauce?

One important aspect of this is representation. Young people struggle with traditional brands because they don’t feel that the journalists and the newsrooms really understand what they’re interested in – both in terms of the agenda and in the way they like to consume media. For newsrooms that are primarily employing people age 45 and older, it’s very hard to speak authentically to a younger audience. Zetland’s founders were of that generation.

One of their recipes for success seems to have been their audio first concept. Because the data shows that young people like long stories – when they can listen to them. 

That’s another myth about young people: that they’re not interested in linear, they’re not interested in long form. Obviously, they binge on long television series, they binge on podcasts. But the kinds of podcasts they’re listening to are an accessible, easy mix of entertainment and information. There’s a lot of humour involved. And again, that works well with older people, too. Interestingly, podcast is becoming video. What we found in our research for the latest Digital News Report is that younger people watch podcast videos because they want to get closer to the host. Whereas older people say, it’s all about audio. And then you’ve got this third audience, which is people who just come across the podcast brands as short form video clips on TikTok and Instagram. So, podcasts are becoming kind of multi-platform brands with different appeal to younger and older people, depending on the platforms that are being used. 

Listening to you I get this feeling that about two thirds of today’s newsroom inhabitants are useless species because all they’ve ever wanted to do is write long stories. 

The other side of that coin is that the majority of traditional news organizations’ audiences are older and that they’re not dying anytime soon. Newsrooms will continue to serve those people, which is one of the things which makes it hard for them to change: Most of the revenue comes from older people. If they super serve young people, they’re likely to annoy these older groups. This is where personalization could come in: showing people who like these formats more of the video and showing people who don’t like them less of the video. When targeting younger audiences, there’s a bit around the news agenda, there’s a bit around formats, and there’s a bit around tone.

What about young people and news has surprised you most in all your research? 

That there is so much diversity in interests. Let’s take Sudan. That’s a country that gets very little mainstream media coverage, but on Instagram and TikTok there’s quite a lot of news about it, because it’s a completely horrific situation. You get a lot of surprises like that which challenge some of those myths that young people aren’t interested in anything outside their backyard or their friendship group.

Your creator report says that across the 24 countries you looked at, 85 percent of the creators were male. That looks like the opposite of increasing diversity. 

Yes, it is ironic that  that this new space that is full of creators is actually less diverse in some respects. That tells us quite a lot about who wants to get in front of the microphone. Political commentary is the one that is most dominated by men talking into their big microphones to other men, mainly consumed by older people. Then you’ve got the explanatory stuff, which is mainly created by young people and consumed by young people. And then there’s a whole load of more news adjacent creators who are in fashion or food and that’s much more gender mixed. There are some exceptions though. The Philippines has almost gender parity.

This interview was conducted as part the study “A miss is as good as a mile: A qualitative study on Gen Z and journalism in Austria, featuring perspectives from users, media professionals, and international experts.”  You can find more information and the full study here. The study was commissioned by Zentrum für Medienwissen of the Mediengruppe Wiener Zeitung, Co-Author was Jana Koch. The interview was published in full length here. 
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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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Climate Journalism Needs to Mature from Topic to Mindset

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 job. Be fresh, be surprising, don’t ride anything to death  – everyone who is trained in the daily business of news has internalized this way of thinking. It is called news for a reason after all. But how does that fit with an earth-altering development that manifests itself mostly in slow motion and only at times with the force of catastrophes? Newsrooms have not yet had to cover anything like that, a for the most part unpredictable process which challenges our way of living and doing business right down to the smallest personal habit.  

Wolfgang Blau knows all about these reflexes. Few media managers are currently dealing as intensively with the demands and difficulties of climate reporting as he is. The former editor-in-chief of Zeit Online, who pursued his career at the Guardian and the publishing house Condé Nast, is currently focusing on the demands and difficulties of climate reporting. Being the co-founder of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, he pinpointed the hurdles to overcome for those who want to report on climate change seriously and effectively in a lecture. The list is long.

In conversations with media people around the world, Blau identified operational but also cultural and ethical challenges. The compulsion to highlight the latest news, the fixation on disasters, the lack of expertise among reporters are the best known. Nic Newman’s media leaders’ survey “Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions,” also reflected on some of these. In the 2022 edition, the nearly 250 editors-in-chief and top managers from around the world complained about two things in particular: First: There is a lot of good climate journalism, but the readership does not take to it to the extent they always claim in surveys. Second, there are too few experts in newsrooms, and the scientific culture is weak.

One of the biggest difficulties, however, that few are aware of who now dutifully identify topics, commission stories, develop explanatory formats, hire climate reporters, or set up special desks, is: Excellent climate journalism requires an entirely different mindset, explicitely a commitment to the very subject itself. It does not regard sustainability as just another topic to be dissected from an observer’s perspective alone, but as a goal. The preservation of the natural foundations of life would then be equivalent to the preservation of democracy and human rights to which independent journalism is committed.

Only, the problem is: At a time when some declare impartiality to be a religion and confuse pluralism with relativism, those who take climate journalism seriously tend to come under general suspicion. Those who openly strive for sustainability are accused to follow a green political agenda. Many owners, business managers, funders, and even quite a few editors who are committed to the journalistic principle of objectivity are therefore reluctant to follow suit. In addition, a corresponding attitude deeply interferes with personal lifestyle. It is comparatively easy to behave as a good democrat. Living as a responsible citizen of the earth places considerable demands on everyone and also raises many unanswered questions.

Blau argues that climate change requires a similar rethinking in the industry as digitization. There’s something to that, because it’s also down to the nitty-gritty: digital journalism requires a different attitude than classic print or broadcast journalism. Instead of assuming the position of the head teacher, as in the past, modern journalists are concerned with the needs of the users. Editors study and know their audiences, and ideally serve them so precisely that even demanding material is gratefully accepted – not just the clickbait scolded by digital skeptics. The goal is to build trusting relationships between senders and recipients. In climate journalism, it becomes something like a triangle: Users are supposed to engage with often uncomfortable facts and ideally derive consequences for their own actions: behave differently as consumers and/or get politically involved in preserving the planet.

This is where problem number two arises: Journalism that deliberately aims to change behavior comes under suspicion of activism. And yes, journalists who care about strong, independent reporting should be suspicious of the campaigning nature of activism. But can climate reporting that accomplishes nothing be good climate journalism at all? When it comes to the big issues like democracy, equality or even sustainability, something that could be called activating journalism is necessary. It is precisely in this balancing act that constructive journalism finds itself, which is sometimes accused of being activist. Constructive journalism works primarily against the audiences’ feelings of powerlessness. According to surveys, one in three people regularly avoids the news, mainly on the grounds that it leaves them behind helpless and/or in a bad mood.

What could climate journalism look like that doesn’t do that? The French news agency AFP, for example, has reorganized its entire newsroom into “hubs,” including one that deals with the future of the planet in all its facets. Every story needs a climate dimension, says AFP editor-in-chief Phil Chetwynd. Ritu Kapur, founder of Indian news platform The Quint, also believes looking ahead is crucial. Doomsday scenarios don’t go down very well with audiences, she says, but anything that involves people and the impact of climate change and strategies against it on employment, growth, mobility, and lifestyle. A big hit with the Quint-audiences was: How can the ecological footprint of a big traditional wedding be minimized?

Good climate journalism definitely needs to become a cross-cutting issue. Every reporter, every commentator should critically examine in all assignments what impact events, new products, projects, or political steps have on sustainability and climate protection – whether that’s the Olympics, new car models or transport projects. Correspondents must address was digitization does to energy consumption, they still do this far too rarely.

Problem number three arises from all of this: the contradiction between commentators’ demands and the media’s own role model function. Media companies, which are often medium-sized and financially strapped, seldom excel in practicing sustainability. While it has become increasingly common in many other industries to calculate and document the ecological footprint of products and processes, this is rarely seen with publishers and their newsrooms. This mirrors a common trait, witnessed also in other areas, for example gender equality or diversity: There is a gap between flaming commentary on the one hand and corresponding, transparent action on the other. Only a few companies have understood that this puts nothing less than their very credibility at stake.

So, what would help climate preservation is an activating journalism, supported by a commitment and mindset that is reflected in the entire organization, its products and practices. So much for the ideal. If you want or need to start a little smaller, start with a qualified, energetic, and outspoken climate correspondent. But he or she should have a seat at the table every day, not just in case of floods, storms, or fires. 

This column was first published in German on 16th February 2022 by Medieninsider.         

 

 

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The Power of the Middle – Not even media leaders themselves think that they have the best ideas

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 is taught in many a business school. Former Siemens CEO Peter Löscher once spoke of a “clay layer,” the term even survived his own career in the company. A word that is like a slap in the face of all those tireless getting-things-doners who not only keep the company running on a daily basis, but also strive for constant improvement and overhaul, whether there is a crisis or not.

In the media industry, bosses are apparently no longer so sure about that clay layer. In the new “Journalism, media and technology trends and predictions” report by Nic Newman, which the Reuters Institute in Oxford publishes regularly at the beginning of the year, top managers were at least refreshingly self-critical about their own capacity to generate top ideas. Only about one in four (26 percent) of the 234 executives surveyed from 43 countries said they were convinced that top management generates the best ideas. The problem, as Nic Newman frames it: Innovation might not come from the top, “but companies are still run that way”. The report is not representative, but it is a must-read in the industry precisely because the respondents tend to be leaders who are particularly concerned about progress.

But where do they see innovation coming from? Nearly three-quarters revealed that data and audience research were most likely to give them a leg up, 68 percent bet on mixed teams from different areas, and still just under one in two admitted to borrowing the best strategies from other media companies. Okay, according to the survey, editors-in-chief and media managers trusted middle management as such even less (17 percent) than they trusted themselves. But who meets in the mixed teams, who evaluates audience data and derives strategies from it, who attends the relevant industry meetings, reads up on foreign material and then reports to the C-level? That’s right, in the very most common case, it’s the mid-level.

It is often those who are not celebrated as heroes in any industry publication and who neither management literature nor research has an eye on. They are the ones who are closest to the difficulties – and often therefore to the solutions. But they are also the ones for whom demands from employees and customers alike pile up into a sandwich of expectations. They are expected to be both operationally reliable and to think strategically and manage change. And if something goes wrong, it’s up to them to pick up the pieces and rebuild them into something else – in management-speak this is coined as “celebrating failure.

This layer of dedicated and loyal drivers of innovation, many of whom are at an age and in situations where family work demands additional work from them, is – no surprise – most at risk of burnout. Lucy Küng, who researches cultural change in media companies that go digital, has revealed this in countless interviews, including in her latest book: “Hearts and Minds: Harnessing Leadership, Culture and Talent to Really Go Digital.” This results in a huge brain and talent drain, she emphasizes again and again.

Yet many managers consider the mid level worthy of support only as long as they themselves are part of it. As soon as they have made it into top positions, they recoin themselves as visionaries. Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor at INSEAD Business School, calls this “leaderism.” Instead of valuing reliable and constructive management, which is so necessary especially in times of crisis, he says, people celebrate visionaries whose ideas all too often go down with them. The glorification of leadership on the one hand and the devaluation of management qualities on the other is a dangerous pair of opposites that is still taught, but does more harm than good, especially in crises, he eloquently describes in the essay: “Why leadership isn’t a miracle cure for the Covid-19 crisis (and what can really help).” It is time to put less hope in leadership and more humanity into management, Petriglieri said. Judging by the “Trends and Predictions” report, many media managers already understand this. Humility can be the first step toward innovation.

This text was first published in German with Hamburg Media School Blog on 15th January 2021, then translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator and edited.