Inspired by two recent INMA-related events, CEO/Executive Director Earl J. Wilkinson kicked off the conference portion of Media Innovation Week in Antwerp, Belgium, with two images:

One of himself, 20 years in the future, looking back at the news media industry from which he then will be a few steps removed. 

And one of the industry, moving through digital transformation toward digitising the business itself — “all of the sudden we have more in common with the bank down the street,” Wilkinson he told the audience of 270 attendeees from 29 countries.

These images are formed by a formal INMA event, set last month in Vail, Colorado, with media C-suite executives from around the world — and from a casual lunch this week in Antwerp with INMA’s retired European Coordinator Inge Van Gaal. 

The bookend events had Wilkinson thinking about how far the media industry has come in his 33 years with INMA, where it is right now (as he discovered in Vail), and where it is headed in the next decade or two.

His thoughts covered many of the challenges and opportunities of the news media companies worldwide but lingered on the one that feels most transformational right now: AI.

Generative AI will be an “enterprise-wide issue — not a newsroom issue” moving forward, he said:

“Generative AI is going to move us from a digital transformation to the transformation of digital. This is not the end. It’s the beginning. Generative AI is the continuation of a 500-year trend of tech freeing up human capacity for greater things. We’re freaking out about something that humans have been dealing with for five centuries.” 

Wilkinson also shared these observations:

• The newsroom needs to get into the business of news. The gap between journalism and the user experience must close: “We can’t get to digital nirvana at the end of this decade if we don’t have a fully participatory newsroom.” 
• Media companies must constantly be trying to add value. 
• The death of print isn’t what we thought it would be: “It won’t be readers or advertisers that are going to mean the death of print. It’s going to be the collapse of the supply chain.” 
• The topic of business models for growth may not be sexy, but it’s an important one. And other priorities can’t be executed without it. 

• Revenue diversification shouldn’t involve more than four verticals (this comes from the Vail CEOs): “Beyond that, the C-suite just doesn’t have the headspace. And master one before you go onto the other.” 
• 57% of INMA members surveyed at World Congress in New York City in May said the pandemic was a positive for their company. 
• The macro trends to look out for are the rise in news avoidance, expansion of weaponised misinformation, and the move from unipolar to bipolar global information infrastructure. 
• The hottest topics now are where generative AI fits in news media, personalisation’s impact on media growth strategies, and trust as a cornerstone of media strategy. 
• In the next decade, all news media will be digital — more about text, audio, video, and multimedia: “One of the interesting things that came out of the Vail Roundtable was that our workforces that hang on are holding us back to what we need. And I believe that by 2030, most of the people who are holding on will be gone.”

Where will the news industry be when Wilkinson is retired? That is still to be determined. Where are we now?

“We think we’re very far advanced,” Wilkinson said. “We’re just getting started. We’re in the adolescent phase. And as we all know with adolescence, it’s awkward.”

Follow coverage of the INMA Media Innovation Week in Antwerp here.

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