News Outlets Must Adapt or Face Irrelevance, Warns World News Day Leader

Leaders in the news industry are urging media organizations to adapt to a changing landscape or risk becoming obsolete, emphasizing the critical role of trusted journalism in society. The message comes from World News Day, an initiative launched in 2018 to underscore the importance of news providers in investigating and explaining significant events.

This call to action is set against a backdrop of public sentiment described by the Reuters Institute as "anxiety, disengagement, and cynicism" towards news. However, the report also noted an "openness to new sources and formats, and continued belief in what news at its best can offer."

Last year, social media and video networks surpassed traditional news organizations' own websites and apps as the primary source for online news. Despite this shift, these newer platforms are generally trusted less than established news outlets. A report from UK media regulator Ofcom further indicated that while people are accessing news from a wider array of sources, including rapidly growing platforms like YouTube and the increasing use of AI tools by 20% of users, traditional news providers are still perceived as more trustworthy, accurate, and impartial.

Javier Brkic, founder of South Africa's Daily Maverick, acknowledged that the media environment has fundamentally changed and stressed the necessity for established news organizations to evolve. "The old days are not coming back," Brkic stated. "We need to form a new equilibrium, and the only way we can do it is that if we actually join forces." He warned that without collaboration, individual news players risk being overtaken, adding, "If we don't change something pretty fundamentally and pretty urgently, we're just going to be roadkill."

While acknowledging that mainstream media has made "mistakes," Brkic asserted the indispensable function of professional and reliable journalists. "We need to talk to our audiences and explain to them, it's not in your interest not to choose truth and trust," he urged. "We cannot function without a thing called the truth, without facts." The concept of "truth" itself has become a point of contention, as exemplified by ongoing disputes between public figures and what they term the "fake news media."

"This is the information-based society. We are the infrastructure for that information-based society," Brkic concluded. "And that society is actually going to really struggle without us."