The media industry is, and has been for some time, in the throes of major turmoil. With financial pressures, dwindling audiences, and challenges of news avoidance, media companies — particularly legacy media brands — are struggling.

In February, the Reuters Institute unveiled a report 10 years in the making that demonstrated how, across the world, an increasing number of people are turning away from the news.

Add to this the emergence of digital media as a major disruptor, and it becomes clear why news media companies are in crisis. Journalists now have to vie for space with content creators and influencers who often have greater audience reach and, more significantly, can monetise content more effectively.

The digital age has also weaponised information. We’re seeing cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, algorithmic manipulation of opinions, and state-sponsored propaganda campaigns unfold not in backrooms, but in plain sight.

On a digital mission

For us in the Collective Newsroom, it has placed us in a challenging yet interesting space. Most of us at the core of this new company are steeped in the legacy of the BBC, having served with the public broadcaster for years.

It’s not surprising, then, that our vision and mission are strongly influenced by the core BBC values: a public service broadcaster that is independent, creative, and places audiences first.

As a digital-first organisation, the Collective Newsroom in many ways has been able to use the ever-evolving digital media trends, technology, and content consumption to reach new audiences but, more importantly, people and communities who are often unheard or relatively invisible.

That is the essence of public service broadcasting, which we are not — but whose values we certainly cherish and uphold, even as public broadcasters around the world are in serious threat of being shut down.

At the heart of it all, we have stayed faithful to the one craft that is fast disappearing from the media landscape: great storytelling.

Storytelling has always been at the heart of organisations like the BBC, as seen in its radio broadcasts and television packages, which used this approach to reach out to audiences.

The power of a story

Great storytelling also allows us to use the advantages of digital to engage with our audiences and communities, and understand what they look forward to from us.

What better way than to tell their stories, in the most creative, evocative and empathetic way that can be shared with them, as well as the whole world.

As reporters and journalists, when we set out to uncover these stories and then bring them to life, it is the credibility of both your craft and your company that allows you to reach out to people, earn their trust and allow them to say what they want to through you.

This is even more important at a time when journalists and reporters around the world strive for short, snappy bytes and visuals which can grab the attention of their audience through clickbait and sensationalism.

Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than this recent story that we did on the back of the dreadful Air India air crash that claimed the lives of all but one on board.

Our teams travelled to a distant part of India, the north-eastern state of Manipur, wracked by ethnic conflict. While the rest of the Indian and international media focused on the crash site and its immediate aftermath, we decided to bring out the story of two flight attendants, from either side of the ethnic divide, who had died in the crash and devastated their communities.

This story, and many others like it, have not only performed well with audiences but also allowed us to engage with communities that are often ignored by mainstream media. This, for us, is the best and most effective use of digital media: to allow the intimacy of its consumption on personal devices, often on video, to peek into the lives of those unheard and amplify their voices and concerns to a wider world.

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