The recent INMA World Congress in New York was energising, invigorating and inspiring.

Three topics brought up over the course of the week are still top of mind for me:

Personalisation

“The killer app for AI” would be one that gets the user further into products that they are already subscribed to, according to The Atlantic’s Thompson. 

What would be most valuable to the individual and the publication would be using data to create an element of surprise and serendipity for the user, he said, adding, “if we could have better information, that they have 30 minutes and they are interested in these things and they like to be surprised 30% of the time, and if we could feed them information according to the window of time and the level of curiosity they have, in a better way, without losing the serendipity that we have right now.”

Devices

The entire information ecosystem is changing, and if your news is not on wearables, you may be left behind. 

Der Spiegel CEO Stefan Ottlitz spoke about how he expects devices such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses to include an audio component as well — or how earbuds will include a visual component as well — and this will increasingly be how news consumers get their information. (Indeed, Google announced exactly this.) 

We will no longer be restricted to screens in our palms or on our laps. News will be everywhere, and we have to be ready for the opportunity.

“AI will be in every UI,” Ottlitz pointed out. 

AI has made it easy for us to reach new audiences through these devices. Text to audio or text to video, as well as AI-powered news playlists, are commonplace now. Der Spiegel is using AI for tailored offers and targeting, multimodal content production, optimising product components, efficiency in investigative journalism, training tools for the newsroom and product innovation.

“In the end, it’s not about cheaper content,” Ottlitz said. Instead, he said, it’s about good journalism, an excellent user experience, ensuring your content is as liquid and easily transferable to other formats as possible, and about preparing for the end of the open internet.

Monetisation

Many news organisations are using GenAI for summarisation to provide value to readers who are pressed for time. The most common use case is to put a few bullet points at the top of an article or to offer the reader something to click on so they can see the content in a few bullet points.

Britain’s Independent decided to do something different: They not only launched summaries but also created a new brand for these summaries — and monetised them. The brand is called Bulletin, and its tagline clearly states the value proposition: “News for seriously busy people.”

Users can read the news in a few bullet points, watch a video for each story, or watch a social-first video that pulls together key headlines of the day. The brand is sponsored by WeAre8, a social media platform that pays users to watch ads and lets them donate some money to charity.

Also interesting: The Independent also picked a hybrid model when it came to building versus buying.

“There is an alternative to build or buy,” said The Independent’s Executive director of Innovation James Martin, adding:

“You don’t need to be the first to do everything.”

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