The future of journalism will not be won by the strongest brands or even the most technologically advanced ones. It will be won by those willing to reinvent boldly — without losing sight of who they are.

That was the unifying thread running through the 51st INMA European News Media Conference in Dublin which brought together 322 delegates from 26 countries. Over three days of sessions and discussions featuring 40+ speakers, one theme kept surfacing: Adaptation is not just about tools and platforms; it is about courage, humility, and grit.

From AI-driven newsrooms to TikTok-first strategies, from advertising transparency to the redefinition of loyalty, the INMA Dublin conference’s message was clear: survival depends on human-centered reinvention. 

AI at work: Case studies and experiments

• Funke Media (Germany): Dr. Paul Elvers, head of the AI task force, demonstrated the “Reel Machine,” which transforms articles into Instagram and TikTok reels in minutes. Hundreds have already been produced, with journalists seeing new audiences discover their stories.
• Schibsted (Norway): Joy Mutoloki, product manager, presented predictive models that tag more than 1,000 audience interests across brands. The system outperformed manual tagging, reducing churn and improving ad targeting.
• Badische Zeitung (Germany): Valentin Heneka, head of editorial AI and analytics, explained how their newsroom LLM produces 500 weekly articles from press releases and police reports. Headlines are optimised and interviews transcribed, but credibility checks remain human.
• Russmedia (Austria): Dominic Depaoli, chief technology officer, showed how automation turned decades of archived material into a searchable, monetisable resource.

More voices on AI

• Daily Mail (United Kingdom): Chris Clemo, director of innovation, described experiments with AI summarisation and archives. His emphasis was on building guardrails: “We’re testing boundaries, but we know trust is the brand.”
• Funke Media (Germany): Highlighted how automation is not just about output but workflow integration: “The win is not just in speed. It’s in freeing up reporters to chase stories humans must do.”
• The Irish Times: Aisling McCabe, group strategy and business development director, shared how their AI taskforce brings editorial, commercial, and technology together for hackathons and training. Staff surveys showed 83% had only basic AI literacy, but 74% were motivated to learn. “AI is not a technology issue,” she said. “It’s a people issue.”

The human line

Peter Vandermeersch, CEO of Mediahuis Ireland, offered a sobering reminder. After comparing AI-generated obituaries with dozens written by journalists, he found only one human version outperformed the machines.

“That was scary,” he admitted.

His question to the industry: What must remain human in journalism?

Learning from the past: too slow, too safe

Vandermeersch drew lessons from history. The New York Times’s 2014 Innovation Report, he said, was a milestone — but “15 years too late.”

“With AI, we don’t have 15 years. We have maybe two. If we don’t act, we will be dead.”

His mantra: “Experiment, experiment, experiment.”

Even failed experiments can accelerate learning. He recalled launching a newspaper in 2004 that collapsed within six weeks. “It was so bad we had to stop it. But we learned. And our main paper became stronger.”

Others echoed this urgency.

• Badische Zeitung (Norway): Valentin Heneka, head of editorial AI and analytics: “We tried multiple newsroom LLM pilots before BZ.Echo. Not all worked. But every misstep taught us what to build next.”
• Schibsted (Norway): Joy Mutoloki, product manager, advised: “Start small, but start. Waiting for perfect is the biggest risk.”

Advertising and subscription synergies: a two-legged strategy

If AI was the hot topic in Dublin, the core business question remained how to pay for journalism. Time and again, media executives stressed the importance of a “two-legged” strategy: advertising and subscriptions must be managed not as rivals but as complements.

Reach and loyalty, scale and depth. Advertising depends on reach — the broad audience that delivers impressions and brand recognition. Subscriptions depend on loyalty — readers so committed they will pay for access.

The two are often framed in tension. But as several speakers argued, the future lies in finding synergies where each supports the other.

Personalisation as bridge

At The Irish Times, McCabe described experiments with dynamic paywalls that personalise offers to individual readers. The same data signals used to identify likely subscribers also inform advertising strategies. A casual visitor might see more advertising; a likely subscriber might see fewer ads but a tailored paywall.

“We have to balance personalisation with transparency,” McCabe said. “Readers need to understand why they see what they see.”

Mining assets for dual value

• Ringier’s Proteus tool (Switzerland) allows content to travel across brands and geographies, serving both goals: broader reach for advertisers and greater depth of archives for subscribers.
• Russmedia’s archive project (Austria) similarly creates dual value: searchable historical content drives new subscription packages while also supplying advertisers with contextual data.

Focusing on super users

Several speakers emphasised that loyal subscribers are not only paying readers but premium advertising targets. Their consistent engagement makes them attractive to advertisers seeking trusted environments.

As Depaoli of Russmedia put it: “A thousand loyal subscribers are more valuable than 10,000 casual visitors.”

Transparency as common denominator

Sophia Smith Galer, journalist and founder of Viralect in the United Kingdom, tied these threads together with a warning from the creator economy. Younger audiences, she said, demand honesty about both subscriptions and advertising.

“They are really good at detecting bullshit,” she said. “You have to be transparent: why you’re not paying for subscriptions, why you’re seeing ads, and what the ad is about.”

Radical transparency, then, becomes the bridge. By explaining both revenue models clearly, publishers can maintain trust while allowing advertising and subscriptions to work in tandem.

From tension to synergy

The message in Dublin was clear: Advertising and subscriptions are not two competing revenue streams but two parts of the same ecosystem. Advertising fuels reach that can be converted into subscriptions. Subscriptions provide trusted environments that make advertising more valuable. Together, they stabilise the business.

Breaking silos, building trust

Trust was discussed as both an audience and organisational issue.

Vandermeersch lamented siloed structures: “I was in a French company where marketeers couldn’t even enter the newsroom floor. In 2025, that’s a problem.”

His prescription: integration without dilution: “Editors are the heart of the company. Everything else must revolve around that heart — but in conversation, not isolation.”

Cross-functional collaboration

The Irish Times modelled this through its AI taskforce. Hackathons, master classes, and shared newsletters spread knowledge across editorial, commercial, and tech.

“Our goal is literacy for all,” McCabe said.

Other perspectives

• Astrid Jørgensen (consultant, Denmark): Stressed that without a “shared language,” transformation collapses. Her framework of capability pillars (strategy, leadership, skills, technology) offered one way to align silos.
• Paul Elvers (head of AI task force, Funke Media): Advocated for engineers in the newsroom: “Innovation happens fastest when coders and reporters sit together.”

Younger audiences: platforms, creators, and new habits

Few topics provoked more energy than youth engagement.

Smith Galer recounted the reluctance of journalists to join TikTok: “Brands went in, but journalists themselves? Absolutely not.”

Meanwhile, creators built massive followings.

Her solution: Smash hierarchies. “Social video is still treated as less important than a web piece or TV package. That has to change. Eighty-five percent of Internet traffic is video.”

Among key case studies and voices on younger audiences:

• Vice News (United Kingdom): Smith Galer, a former reporter at Vice, produced dual TikTok videos — one on the brand’s account, one on her own — which grew both reach and trust.
• Funke Media (Germany): Their Reel Machine made social video mainstream for local journalists. “We gave them tools, not just orders,” Elvers said.
• Mediahuis Ireland: “We cannot ignore that younger audiences are elsewhere. We must follow, but on our terms,” Vandermeersch said.

Galer urged newsrooms to learn from creators rather than compete: “They might ask us: How have you lost trust with audiences? We need to listen.”

Between fear and boldness

If one phrase captured Dublin’s mood, it this from Vandermeersch: “We won’t have 15 years this time.”

The combination of AI disruption, shifting audience habits, and fragile business models demands faster reinvention than the shift to digital ever did.

Yet optimism ran through the sessions:

• Funke showed how AI can make social video scalable.
• Schibsted proved predictive models can beat manual work.
• Badische Zeitung automated routine reporting without eroding credibility.
• Russmedia repurposed archives as revenue.
• The Irish Times embedded experimentation across silos.
• Sophia Smith Galer embodied the cultural pivot required for younger audiences.

The refrain was simple: Just build things.

Even underperformance was reframed as learning. “There wasn’t failure,” Galer said. “If a video underperformed, that was an opportunity for data collection.”

Between fear and boldness, the consensus was clear: Survival lies in boldness.

Conclusion

The INMA European News Media Conference in Dublin did not resolve journalism’s dilemmas. But it reframed them with urgency and honesty.

The real fight is not technology versus tradition but paralysis versus courage.

The future of media will belong to those willing to:

• Embrace AI with critical humanity.
• Balance advertising and subscriptions through loyalty and transparency.
• Break silos without losing editorial identity.
• Empower creators to connect with younger generations.
• Experiment relentlessly, treating every setback as data.

In the end, survival is less about adapting to disruption than about choosing to lead it — boldly but without losing our journalistic soul.

Editor’s note: This article summarises, with the assistance of ChatGPT, original content created by INMA. All content has been reviewed and edited by INMA editors.

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