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News Alchemists #11: "We must embrace the next generation of news consumers and creators"

Hello and welcome to another edition of the News Alchemists newsletter!

My name is Mattia and, according to the Future Today Strategy Group (FTSG), I am one of twelve pioneers and power players at the forefront of development and transformation in the News & Information industry. #humblebrag 😬

The reason FTSG states for including me in such a prestigious list is "for founding News Alchemists, a project aiming to redefine journalism around audience needs and financial sustainability." Seems like you're part of something special by reading this newsletter! This recognition obviously made me very happy, especially because this project was always meant to be 'us' more than 'me'.

After all, News Alchemists started as a community: a group of people who came together under the original purpose of articulating a vision for change for the journalism industry, and advocating for it, in order to make journalism more user-centric, and more equitable and sustainable as a result. I like to think of them as the founding members of this project.

I've already featured the work and the words of some of them in this newsletter: Sannuta Raghu in #5, Agnes Stenbom and Shirish Kulkarni in #6, Rishad Patel in #8. In this edition, I want to introduce you to seven more founding members of News Alchemists. Seven more people who give me hope every day and help me believe that we can redefine journalism and heal the broken relationship between our industry and the people we aim to serve.

Onto today's links:

🧞Jeremy Gilbert is Knight Professor in Digital Media Strategy at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism – the longest job title in this newsletter and beyond. In this essay, Jeremy combines insights from different research projects his team contributed to in the last couple of years to describe the 'modes of news consumption' of younger audiences (learn more about those in the excellent Next Gen News report), and how creators are serving their needs much more effectively than legacy news organizations.

Every line is packed with useful insights but I especially appreciated the historical perspective: "news consumers choose where they get news from; it’s not incumbent on them to come to legacy publishers. [...] we cannot dismiss consumer preference as foolish or frightening—as we have done so often in the past. Here’s what opinion leaders had to say about a few earlier technological innovations:"

  • About radio: “It delivers only pap—brainless diversions that erode listeners’ ability to think, inquire, and judge”.
  • About email: “It is a recipe for muddled thinking
and poor performance”.
  • About Wikipedia: “It is an online fetish site for
foolish collectivism”.

🤡

🧞Annika Ruoranen is the AI governance lead for 🧩 Yle, the Finnish public broadcaster. This post is from one year ago, when she was in charge of Yle's digital user experience as part of her previous role. Probably one of the reflections that had the most influence on the creation of News Alchemists, as it illuminated for me the urgency to think about journalism beyond content and products. In Annika's words: "we rarely ponder the overall experience we create, [...] how can we craft an experience that delivers researched information without overwhelming the audience with all of the world's woes, respecting people's time and valuing mental well-being?"

I could not talk about people and initiatives who had a strong influence on the creation of News Alchemists without mentioning 🧞Styli Charalambous – CEO of the 🧩 Daily Maverick – and the transformation project called "Securing our Future” that he designed and led "to empower the employees to tie their daily work to the brand’s vision and mission." Don't let my writing stand in the way of you reading this piece as soon as you can.

🧞Uli Köppen is the chief AI officer and head of data at 🧩 BR, the public service broadcaster of Germany's Bavarian region. She leads what has become one of the most innovative teams in the industry, the AI+Automation Lab, in large part thanks to Uli's relentless commitment to interdisciplinarity. (The autocorrect of my laptop disagrees but I promise the word exists.) I always learn a lot from Uli, and if you want to learn something from her as well (you should!), this article is a good place to start: "Data Driven Publishing is a framework we developed to produce and deliver news journalism in a user-centered way and fulfill our mission as public service broadcaster."

"The future resilience of the world’s media lies in focusing on niche audiences and verticals."

"It’s time for news media to look for alternative revenue streams."

"Large mainstream newsrooms will need to find ways of connecting with audiences on a deeper level."

This sounds very 2025, right? Nop. These are quotes from 🧞Tshepo Tshabalala's Nieman Lab Prediction for... 2021. In the last edition, I quoted a friend saying "We have the evidence!" As I said then, it's time to act on that evidence with more focus and more urgency. People like Tshepo, who leads the JournalismAI initiative, have been telling us this for a while.

🧞Laura Krantz McNeill is senior editor for subscriber products at The Chronicle of Higher Education. At the beginning of last year, she published this fantastic report that highlights "the five crucial skills for the next generation of media leaders in the era of community-centric journalism". Guess what I am about to say... You really should read it. 🙃

🧞Nick Petrie is the digital director of The i Paper and a board member of the News Product Alliance. What better way to close this list on a hopeful note than Nick's prediction that 2025 will be the year when publishers start to address their structural issues: "For too long, newsrooms have been structured for an era that no longer exists, and their products reflect this mismatch. The solution isn’t simply better tools or larger budgets. It’s about reimagining the newsroom as a cohesive, adaptive system. The result won’t just be happier staff and smoother workflows — it will mean a radically improved experience for readers and a more sustainable future for journalism."

More links? 📚 Check out the previous editions

As always, I hope you found this newsletter useful and that it helps you feeling more hopeful about the future of journalism. If it did, can I ask you a favour? Forward this email to one friend or colleague who could also use a little hope and encourage them to sign up. Let's keep building this movement together.

See you next week 👋

Published by:

Mattia Peretti

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