Event report1 of the second edition of the European News Media Forum on “industrial transformation” The Square, Brussels 29 November 2021 – 9am – 7pm
Recordings, programme and contextual information available here
Table of contents Opening remarks ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction and summary of the Forum................................................................................................ 4 Being relevant to society as a whole ....................................................................................................... 5 Being relevant to society by being inclusive ........................................................................................... 6 Re-thinking business models ................................................................................................................... 9 Levelling the playing field ...................................................................................................................... 12 Closing remarks ..................................................................................................................................... 13
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This report was prepared with the help of an independent consultant
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Opening remarks Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton In his opening remarks, Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton summed up the challenges in the current media landscape and set out the Commission’s agenda for addressing them. He highlighted the growing gap between online audiences and traditional media, with falling revenues for the latter and the need for media to find new models to monetise their revenue. Healthy revenues are needed to protect jobs. Job cuts reduce the capacity to produce quality content and to nurture democracy. New revenue models, particularly for online media, include membership and subscription models, the use of smart paywalls and donations or one-off payments. Other innovations include publishers joining forces to test common online advertising platforms to retain both revenues and data. The threats to quality journalism and democracy also come from government interference (including channelling state advertising budgets to politically favoured media), politicisation of public media, or a heavy concentration of media ownership in a few hands. Media consolidation, which strengthens the financially vulnerable, can be good for business resilience, but it can also be a threat to editorial independence, particularly if the media owner has vested interests in other sectors and journalists therefore do not feel fully free to report on these. Redundancies to exploit post-consolidation synergies are another threat to a plurality of views. Pluralism also cannot reach its full potential because there are still barriers in the internal market to operating across EU borders. Rules differ, may not be clear or be applied arbitrarily. Overall, media independence and pluralism are at stake, together with the quality of public debate and public accountability. Yet, the pandemic has increased the appetite for quality information from TV or established newspapers; trust in traditional news sources has risen. The Commission needs to respond by ensuring that citizens can access reliable, quality and independent information, including online. It will present a Media Freedom Act in 2022. Its objectives will be to ensure the integrity and independence of the EU media market, and thus boost media pluralism, improve the sector’s resilience, act on unjustified interference in media companies’ activities, ensure media pluralism is safeguarded (in traditional and online media) and make the European information space more secure. The Act will build on the revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive and complement the Digital Services Act package. The result will be a comprehensive media policy for the digital age. Commissioner Breton concluded by acknowledging that with the European Media Freedom Act, the Commission will walk a fine line; one it wants to walk together with industry, civil society, the Member States and their regulatory authorities, starting with a public consultation as the first step. Commissioner Breton concluded by stressing that the Commission can provide the regulatory framework and a level playing field, but it is up to industry to innovate to achieve financial – and therefore editorial – independence as they complete the digital transition. It is for Europe’s media outlets and professionals to develop the formats that work and join together to offer citizens across the Union quality and reliable information. For its part, the Commission is working with the European Investment Fund, private investors and foundations to test new models of financial support. It is also rolling out a media data space and a
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virtual reality coalition to foster collaboration and innovation, and will continue to support newsrooms that collaborate on data and training and enter into value-adding partnerships. One such partnership announced at the Forum is the creation of a European Newsroom of 16 national press agencies in reporting on EU affairs from Brussels.
Dace Melbārde, Member of the European Parliament Ms Melbārde welcomed the wide range of media represented at the Forum from a wide range of national backgrounds, from those countries ranking highest among the world in freedom of speech and those facing economic and political pressure in their home space. She saw the Forum as a great illustration of the diversity and strength of the media industry. Pointing out that the media ecosystem was fragile even before the Covid-19 epidemic because there had been a deterioration in media freedom and economic viability over the previous ten years, she highlighted risks posed to media pluralism. The pandemic has deepened existing problems and created new ones. The European Parliament sees the Commission Media and Audiovisual Action Plan published in 2020 as a “really good starting point,” but stressed the need for the Commission to go further to help the news media sector recover more quickly from the pandemic and implement the green and digital transitions, building on the European Parliament report on Europe’s Media in the Digital Decade: an Action Plan to Support Recovery and Transformation adopted on 20 October 2021, for which she was rapporteur. Ms Melbārde further highlighted the following key points of the report: the Commission should develop a strategy for the news media industry, there should be greater financial support for news media at EU and Member State level; there should be increased financial support from the Cohesion funds, Horizon Europe and Digital Europe; Member States should support news media organisation through their national recovery plans; and there should be a media-friendly tax policy. She welcomed the fact that the cross-sectoral strand of the Creative Europe programme is open to news media under this Multiannual Financial Framework for the first time, but the Parliament is calling for an improvement in the amount of support available given the range of challenges news media face and for a dedicated news media fund under the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework. She stressed that any provision for public funding should guarantee full editorial freedom. She also stressed the importance of a level playing field for traditional news media facing competition from new platforms. This requires legislation on transparency in the functioning of operating systems and in advertising. In addition, she recalled that the global digital platforms need to pay their fair share in taxes. Part of that tax revenue should be returned to the bloodstream of the news media industry. Investing tax revenue back into the ecosystem is only fair since the media are facing a disproportionate economic impact from the global online platforms, mainly non-European players who do not invest in the EU media ecosystem. Smaller markets, small countries, local regions and culture face additional challenges: these markets are too small to operate economically viable businesses on market principles. Some Member States, like the Baltic states, suffer from geopolitical interference in their media space, including in the form of investment. Economic sustainability is a prerequisite for freedom of expression, so we must do what we can jointly.
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She ended by thanking the Commission for prioritising news media sector policy, adding that there is a feeling in the European Parliament that a huge change is underway and that she personally thinks this is a truly decisive moment for strengthening the European Union.
Introduction and summary of the Forum In the discussion at the Forum, there was broad consensus that the media ecosystem remains fragile, although it has been possible for some media groups to emerge more successful from the pandemic than when they entered it. This is in part because the pandemic has been positive for the demand for quality journalism from trustworthy sources. It is also the produce of resilience strategies. “The Covid bounce was not an accident, not pure luck” Greg Piechota, researcher-in-residence at the International News Media Association pointed out. It was the result of years of investment and commitment. The industry is rebalancing: for many years the advertiser was the primary customer, now it is the consumer. The share of advertising in revenues is falling and being replaced by e-commerce or other business models. The environment remains difficult, particularly for smaller regional players, or for TV players heavily reliant on advertising. According to many, the costs of the technology needed to keep up and continue producing quality journalism are likely to drive consolidation. However, there was agreement that this should not be at the expense of pluralism. As said many times, new business models are needed to meet the challenges of rapidly changing consumption habits and the threat from global digital platforms (the likes of Apple, Facebook or Google). Public sector broadcasters may need to think of themselves as media groups rather than broadcasters. Others see the answer in engaging with communities or particular segments that might otherwise be overlooked. SVT (the Swedish Public Television) focused in its presentation on community engagement, but the extent to which it has become a 360-degree media group was illustrated in the fact that SVT’s streaming platform is the most popular in Sweden, more popular even than Netflix. Co-operation can be a means to share the cost of technology or to enrich the quality of investigative journalism by pooling resources. This co-operation may be cross-border, but to the Forum participants the real challenge in the current environment is changing the mindset on working with domestic competitors to develop synergies in order to compete better with the global digital platforms, and fund the technology and range of skills that requires. As several speakers recalled, developing new formats mean transforming newsrooms, in particular to cater for platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat or dissemination formats such as podcasts. Embracing new formats is essential to capture the attention of the younger generation for news. Assuming that under-25’s are not interested in news or complex issues would be wrong, but the format and the channel have to be appropriate. The approach has to be consumer-centric. Many of the initiatives presented during the day not only emphasised moving from a B2B to a B2C model, but also underlined the importance of mechanisms for listening to audiences to understand what they want and need. Being relevant to the audience was a recurring theme, either meeting the challenge of being relevant to a whole population, or specific population groups which do not relate
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to conventional media or which traditional media are not addressing adequately (notably young people, but also people with a migration background and local communities). The main topics addressed can be broadly divided into the following (sometimes overlapping) areas:
being relevant to society as a whole; being relevant to society by being inclusive; re-thinking business models; levelling the playing field.
Topic: being relevant to society as a whole A number of speakers discussed the challenge of addressing society as a whole. Speakers from three public service broadcasters (RTBF of Belgium, ARD of Germany and SVT of Sweden) stressed their responsibility to reach society as a whole and presented different approaches. SVT stressed the importance of engaging with local communities. Both RTBF and ARD stressed in different ways the importance of seeing themselves as addressing the whole of society, while TF1 (French private broadcaster) emphasised the social function of television. With society becoming polarised into digital bubbles and the risk of two-tier access to news, with higher income groups able to access quality journalism behind paywalls while lower income groups rely on social media, Jean-Pierre Philippot, CEO of Belgium’s RTBF, sees it as the role of public broadcasters to bring people with different opinions together. He thought of RTBF not as a TV broadcaster but as a media group which acts as a technological bridge between TV, radio and platforms. Gilles Pélisson, Chairman and CEO of TF1, made a similar point that TV is a social need that binds people together, whereas the internet is for individual consumption. He also pointed out that the concept of broadcast news is also changing. TF1’s main lunchtime and evening news broadcasts have an increasing educational function, and that differentiates them from social media. Patrick Weinhold, Editor-in-chief social media at ARD’s Tagesschau described how this German public service broadcaster has gone through a transformation from a TV channel to a 360 degree media group, describing how the traditional evening news programme Tagesschau has developed its brand to reach young people through TikTok. This was due to ARD having a statutory responsibility to inform the public as a whole, not just a segment, at a time when TV audiences (whether live audiences or via the app) are predominantly male and older. Hanna Stjärne, CEO of SVT described how built on the lessons learned by the BBC which, with Brexit realised it had not fully understood what was happening over all the country. SVT has increased its local coverage “dramatically”, going from 27 local stations to around double the figure. This process required “painful” rationalisation to finance the shift within the existing budget. SVT also engaged with local communities in workplaces, local squares, in gardens and in homes. They learned that their reporting was seen as too Stockholm-centric and rather depressing. They have shifted the focus on more constructive journalism and more local coverage (while continuing to cover national and international news). Expanding their local coverage encountered initial opposition from local papers, but that has been resolved by an agreement on crediting sources and through continuous dialogue on exploiting mutual benefits.
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Another believer in staying close to citizens’ concerns is Fabrice Fries, CEO of AFP. Since 2016, AFP has had a deliberate strategy of putting boots on the ground. In his words, remaining relevant has ben “an obsession” for AFP.
Topic: being relevant to society by being inclusive To many Forum’s speakers, being relevant to society means addressing audiences across all age groups and backgrounds. That can come from being a media group that offers a range of products for different segments or consciously targeting groups that could be left out, in particular Generation Z (born post 2000), audiences from migrant backgrounds or local communities (as SVT has done as described in the previous section). Stefano Feltri, Director of Domani and Gard Steiro, Editor-in-Chief of Verdens Gang illustrated two completely different approaches to providing quality news coverage for Generation Z, while Patrick Weinhold, editor-in-chief of social media at Tagesschau, described how they are also targeting Generation Z through their ‘digital with tradition’ strategy. Gabrielle Boeri-Charles and María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros Garcia discussed reaching new audiences through podcasts, and stressed their growing impact. David Schraven, Founder of Correctiv, illustrated how to reach out to local communities, while Thembi Wolf, Editor at Krautreporter, media activist and a founder member of the Mediamacher/innen association, demonstrated how the German media are failing to reach out to people from a migrant background. Addressing new generations through a conventional newspaper Stefano Feltri, described the philosophy of Domani, a newspaper which launched in autumn 2020 in Italy. He illustrated how a conventional approach can potentially meet the demand for quality journalism, and discussed the importance of being relevant to all age groups if a business model is to work. Domani was designed to fill a gap in the market for a progressive newspaper sensitive to issues such as inequality and the environment. It is backed by a foundation that leaves the editorial team with complete independence. Domani has a print and an online version on the grounds that “it is not possible to be taken seriously in Italy without a print version”. “The Italian media market is still very old-fashioned…The Baby Boomers don’t trust digital.” At the same time, Domani believes it is building credibility with the under-25’s by not patronising them but really listening to them, making them feel part of the product. However, reconciling the two audiences is a challenge: “In Italy younger readers are interested in fact-based news, they think you are not focusing on what matters if you cover political debate. Gender is not relevant for Baby Boomers but is for the younger audience. You have to find a balance.” Addressing new generations through new formats: VG TV and Tagesschau VG TV is part of the same corporate group as Verdens Gang, Norway’s largest tabloid newspaper. It is an online video news channel for a young audience with 2.5 million users.2 It aims to tackle complex topics for an audience in their mid-twenties that prefer video to reading an article. “It is not just about shorter material, it is more complex”, Gard Steiro, Editor-in-Chief of Verdens Gang told the audience. It is about content, context, a different tone of voice and understanding how to tell the story to an audience that does not read a newspaper every day, and using journalists from the same age 2
Norway has a population of 5.4 million.
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group alongside more experienced journalists. VG TV is a news provider with three-hourly news bulletins and breaking news, but 90% of the workflow is investigative journalism. “Younger audiences do understand complex stories that may take 20 minutes to tell, but you can’t say ‘this is a complex story you can only understand by reading a long article’; we have to adapt to them. They are the future.” This, to him, requires a non-traditional approach to the newsroom. It requires a cross-functional newsroom where designers, developers, video teams and journalists work together and the distinction between different thematic silos, such as politics and economics no longer exists according to Gard Steiro. “You need people who understand Snapchat in the newsroom, not in some separate department.” It requires a lot of new talent on the technology side, data journalists and younger journalists from diverse backgrounds alongside people who have been there several years and understand how journalism works. María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros, Director General of PRISA Audio, described a similar approach at PRISA: Spain’s “El Pais” has an audio team of nine people in the newsroom. Patrick Weinhold, editor-in-chief of social media at Tagesschau, also said their strategy for reaching younger audiences has required a new framework in the newsroom, incorporating new channels such as TikTok, using storytelling, emotional design and relying on young journalists. The Tagesschau counts with three people in the newsroom working on TikTok products day in day out. To broaden its reach beyond the traditional audience for its daily evening news show, Tagesschau, ARD implemented a “digital with tradition” strategy. “We had the courage to be first adopters,” Weinhold said. They were the first media brand on Instagram and have 1 million subscribers on TikTok, the second largest media audience on TikTok after the Washington Post. Tagesschau plans to be using A/R by 2025. Using the existing brand creates brand loyalty so that audiences switch to other platforms (but similar media) as they grow older. Addressing new audiences with new formats: podcasts Binge Audio, an openly feminist native podcast production, also addresses younger audiences. Native podcasts are not new, but they recently grew to become a mainstream media product across Europe as they became technologically easier to use, Gabrielle Boeri-Charles, one of Binge Audio’s cofounders, explained. “25-40% of the population has listened to a podcast in the last month” she said. As a result the audience for podcasts is expanding out of the original base of educated women. The background of the podcasters is also becoming more diverse. According to her, there is still a technology barrier because podcast popularity is based on Apple technology, but the growing success of podcast is “not a mere matter of technology; these podcasts cover new subjects with new voices.” “You cannot talk to young women in the same way as in the past. You cannot talk to the podcast audience in the same way as on radio or TV”, she explained. Like VG, she stressed that it would be wrong to assume that younger audiences have no patience for long formats: a 25-minute episode is not a barrier on podcasts. As these example illustrate it, new formats require new approaches to news management. María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros, Director-General of PRISA Audio, described the umbrella audio platform that PRISA Group has established as part of their goal to be number one in the Spanish-language market for podcasts (the second largest in the world after the English language). They are targeting 1 billion downloads per month by 2025 (compared to 420 million now). The umbrella organisation PRISA covers all their companies worldwide. These range from Caracol, a radio station in Colombia, to Spain’s leading quality newspaper, El Pais, that the group wants to see become the benchmark for quality podcasts. The umbrella organisation sets the strategy and negotiates with suppliers, while the 7
companies keep their own identity. This was an innovation in a group where companies are used to working in silos, which required a culture shift. María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros Garcia is a strong believer in podcasts and feels the pandemic has been key in expanding the market because people have stopped looking at the screen and listen to a comforting voice: “The power of radio remains intact, but podcasts have gone beyond radio as they are a social tool, with a potential to go viral, to be interactive. They are also a hybrid between radio, audiovisual and literature.” A podcast is not just radio on demand, she said, “it is an art, a business”. “Radio and media companies have to pay attention to this relevant format,” which has taken audio from push to pull mode and will breathe new life into old forms, such as radio serials. That was a point also made by Gabrielle Boeri-Charles: “Podcasts have forced radio to innovate.” The advice to others from María Jesús Espinosa de los Monteros: “invest and take audio seriously; train your journalists to tell their stories thinking about sound; be patient to get results”. Relevance to local communities Another approach to being relevant to audiences, in this case local communities, is that of Correctiv. Correctiv is a non-profit investigative newsroom financed by donations from foundations and individuals, whose approach was described by David Schraven, its Founder. Their work is “not about scoops, the number of lines or generating clicks, but what is important to people, what really matters to them”, and then telling the story the right way through partners. That could be through feature articles, TV shows or in schools. Correctiv does not seek to own a particular channel. Correctiv works with local newspapers and individual citizens to carry out research. Schraven gave the example of identifying ownership patterns of apartments in Hamburg. The German land registry is not in the public domain, but by harnessing the right of individual citizens to find out who owns their own apartment, it was possible to identify the Danish teachers’ pension fund as a major housing investor in Hamburg, thus opening up the possibility of a dialogue with them of their impact on rising rents. Correctiv shares its methods and skills though a subscription scheme. Diversity overlooked Thembi Wolf, co-founder of Neue deutsche Medienmacher/innen, presented her research, pointing that the German TV networks are not reflecting the make-up of the population either in their newsroom staffing or in the composition of expert panels. During the 2017 elections, only 10% of the talk shows panellists were people with a migrant background. Yet 25% of the population of Germany has a parent or grandparent born outside Germany. Within a generation, that figure will grow to 40%. In some big cities, it is already the case of more than 50% of people under 30. Yet, she regretted, media professionals with migrant communities make up only 5% of German newsrooms. As far as people with disabilities are concerned, she said they are hardly represented. While 6% of editors have an international background, that background is generally Western European. “They don’t suffer racism or discrimination”, Thembi Wolf said. “Most companies want more diversity, but hardly anyone has done anything about it; they just did not know which way to go.” Consequently, her organisation produced a handbook – free for media, in exchange of a one-hour meeting with a member of the association’s board. 60-70 German media, including major ones, responded positively. Thembi Wolf argued for a paradigm shift that must come from the top and also include people with disabilities or from working-class backgrounds. “We hope to make progress in time for the next preelection talk show panels.” For others wanting to know where to start, she stressed that “the bosses
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have to believe in it, dedicate resources to it, have a person dedicated to it and give it time”. Neue deutsche Medienmacher/innen are now working with organisations in other countries to update the guide.
Re-thinking business models Re-thinking business models may mean new forms of financing or monetising content, or it may mean re-thinking the approach to co-operation. Some of the alternative forms of monetisation are touched on in the previous section: Correctiv benefits from a tax exemption and receives donations from citizens; and Domani is backed by a foundation. In this section, we describe how Telex in Hungary and Binge Audio have used crowdfunding, while AFP is reducing its dependence on its traditional clients through an agreement which will see Google pay for AFP content. Among the different forms of cooperation, Arena for Journalism (an organisation promoting crossborder journalism) provides an infrastructure for cross-border cooperation between journalists. Radioplayer leverages technology-sharing to achieve greater negotiating power and put competing domestic radio stations in a position to take on Apple and Google, e.g. in the case of radio in the car industry. Two projects financed by the European Commission are investigating new tools to mitigate investment costs for individual organisations, and to develop other new forms of monetisation and sharing. For some, co-operation will not be enough and it will require consolidation to take on existing challenges, including the issue of media pluralism. Both Thomas Leysen, Chairman of Mediahuis and Gilles Pélisson, Chairman and CEO of TF1 Group saw consolidation as inevitable. Whatever the model, there was consensus among all speakers that new models should not undermine editorial independence in any way. New forms of monetisation Veronica Munk described how she set up Telex in Hungary after she and 90 colleagues walked out on their previous employer (Index) over editorial independence. They founded Telex, which was based on a crowdfunding and advertising-based model. They raised through Facebook a few thousand euros within an hour and one million euro within one month of launching through crowdfunding. They currently have 49 000 contributors and an audience of 500 000, making it one of the largest news portals in Hungary, and one valued for its independence, the quality of its journalism and its financial and ethical transparency. Binge Audio has also used crowdfunding. It could finance a publishing venture that traditional publishers were not interested in, and this year published four books, mainly on gender issues with a feminist take. “We had an engaged community not only willing to pay, but eager to pay,” Gabrielle Boeri-Charles explained. Monetising any format in the current environment is one of the biggest challenges and it is an area where Fabrice Fries, AFP CEO, said its organisation broke new ground as the first news agency to have signed a neighbouring rights agreement with Google (in November 2021). Unlike some other agreements, including in France, it does not mix elements of copyright and commercial services, but is purely about copyright. According to Fabrice Fries, it will diversify AFP’s sources of revenue, put Google
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among AFP’s top five clients and help finance the training of its own journalists’ and their media clients in fact-checking. Richer journalism through co-operation A range of speakers presented different models of co-operation models, often under the cross-border angle (see above for the work of Correctiv on tax issues). Binge Audio, the podcast channel described in the previous section, has made co-productions with the BBC – on a programme called No Country for Young Women3 –, with RTS (Switzerland), and still works closely with an RTBF podcaster. The Leading European Newspaper Alliance was cited by several speakers as good practice. “It has demonstrated a faster and stronger way to investigate at a global level,” as Jean-Pierre Philippot of RTBF put it. Fabrice Fries of AFP also mentioned the pan-European newsroom initiative supported by the European Commission and led by AFP and dpa, whose concept is to pool resources for the 14 other participating smaller agencies from the EU and the Balkans. They will collaborate on exchanging news stories, on training and instilling a fact-checking culture. Brigitte Alfter, of the collaborative journalism network Arena for Journalism, stressed that her network is not just for collaboration on projects like the Panama papers requiring hundreds of journalists. It can be for teams of twenty or thirty partners or less, either on an ad hoc or a permanent basis, formally or informally. The concept is that each knows its own community best and together they can tell bigger stories to their own audiences that are enriched by each bringing their own facts, perspectives, prejudices and contexts. She described collaborative network journalism as a means of bridging the gap between the local and national, and local and European levels, and a contribution to pluralism. The goal is to build an infrastructure where journalists who want to connect can meet, connect the voices of citizens, reach critical mass and contribute to decision-making. It avoids reinventing the wheel and can take the work to another level. One example is a team of 25 journalists in 16 cities who, thanks to a grant, produced 60+ stories on affordable housing, which almost one million unique users have read.4 Sharing technology, competing on content Radioplayer is a non-profit radio station aggregator that makes radio available in cars and on devices. It is a pan-industry partnership aimed at growing listenership in national settings, but owned and operated by broadcasters. They share technical standards for the browser, the radio-discovery apps, and the back-end systems that power them, but broadcasters retain control over their own branding, streaming, and commercial deals. In short, partners “share technology and compete on content,” according to Lawrence Galkoff, General Manager at Radioplayer Worldwide. “We make sure that broadcasters can monetise themselves.” The partnership gives Radioplayer the strength and the metadata to talk to the automotive industry so that radio stays on the dashboard. “The biggest inhibitor for collaboration is the mindset. We need to change the mindset and see that other radios are no longer competitors but that they need to invest in collaborative platforms to compete against everybody else.” “Collaboration protects our language, our art, our music, plurality, our national identity and national employment”, he added. Christophe Leclercq, Founder of the Euractiv media network and Europe’s Media Lab, presented two projects/studies funded by the European Commission with a view to finding efficiency gains through pooling resources and new forms of content monetisation. One of the two projects funded by the 3 4
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p063zy3c https://journalismarena.eu/use-our-data-make-your-own-housing-investigation/
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Commission looked into the feasibility of a single user-facing branded platform in Europe to compete with Google News, and concluded that sharing across all forms of media would be the ideal. Yet, business models are too different: according to Leclercq, “an all-encompassing platform will not happen,” but a B2B2C platform concentrating on broadcasting (and in particular the public service broadcasters) is feasible. The project is also looking at tools which can act as building blocks in driving innovation and mutualising costs, at syndicating the work of freelancers through translated syndication of features, maximising the use of translation technology, and at a new concept for news agencies, where agencies would not only sell content to the media but would also buy content from the media and sell it to corporates. Corporates, unlike the media, do have money to spend on buying content. “If the agencies do not do that, the GAFA will, so let’s pre-empt them.” A separate strand of the work is data sharing in a common media data space: “data creates revenue, especially if it can be targeted more.” Changing mindsets on co-operation at national level The examples above largely deal with cross-border collaboration, though the Radioplayer model combines both as it requires national radio channels to compete. Several speakers noted a perception that co-operation within borders is not possible where everyone is fighting for market shares. They argued that the industry needs to move on from this mindset in order to understand that the industry is not competing nationally, but has a common external competitor with the global digital platforms and other changing media consumption trends, these speakers stressed. Lawrence Galkoff of Radioplayer was one speaker who highlighted this challenge: “The biggest obstacle in sharing data is mindset. We all have the same aim. Collaboration should be a massive benefit; we should be thinking about where we can share things.” Jean-Pierre Philippot was also an advocate for this domestic cooperation: “we have to work more closely together between public service broadcasters, between newspapers and local players. We have the same competitors.” Greg Piechota of INMA made a similar point: “Smaller players need to recognise where they are actually in different segments. They can collaborate to use contextual targeting or team up in dealing with advertisers.” Examples cited during the Forum of how new forms of cooperation are already emerging or could be envisaged included national news organisations cooperating with local news organisations, and cooperation with cultural and educational players. When consolidation can be an answer In some instances, speakers underlined that co-operation may not be enough. Thomas Leysen, Chairman of Belgium’s Mediahuis argued that “continuing quality journalism needs a certain amount of scaling. This leads inevitably to a degree of consolidation, but it should not be at the expense of plurality.” He believes many medium and small-sized media firms will find it very hard to survive standalone or to make the investments that will be needed to invest in technology platforms and to attract people, including on the technology side. Gilles Pélisson of TF1 had a similar perspective, that is consolidation is the only way to make the technology affordable. “The GAFA have technical capacity in tens of billions and TF1 has tens of millions.” For him, consolidation is also an opportunity to build a French champion. Victoria Svanberg, President of Sweden’s NWT Gruppen, regards consolidation as an imperative in smaller countries. “It is necessary to survive” and the only way to afford the investment in technology. The new environment also requires new skills in technology and data as well as journalism, a topic touched on by several speakers. Thomas Leysen suggested that smaller groups will struggle to attract those skills, while a consolidated international group can offer more interesting career prospects.
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Bernard Marchant, CEO of the Rossel Group, highlighted in particular the difficulty of finding the best journalists and identified the search for talent as the key issue for him in 2022. “What is important”, Thomas Leysen added, “is to consolidate in a way that does not impoverish the quality of the journalism”. He shared that Mediahuis companies have completely separate newsrooms but try to maximise synergies in technology, printing, subscription management etc. “The journalists are completely independent”, he underlined. “We have rules on how editors are appointed; if we messed with that, we would have a large outcry, but the temptation has not arisen; it is part of who we are.” Victoria Svanberg of NWT made the same point: “we attach great importance to the independence of the journalists.” Thomas Leysen of Mediahuis believes that a free press will only survive if it is a viable business in private sector hands, and in fact, a number of European companies have demonstrated that media can be a viable growing business. He argued that government ownership is not a good solution. Mr Leysen announced that Mediahuis has set up Pluralis in conjunction with several foundations as an investment vehicle to invest in media pluralism where it is under threat.5 Grants can help support media organisations, Leysen said, but investment that brings networks, experience and digital skills is a better way to help media companies remain independent and be as financially viable as possible.
Levelling the playing field A common thread running through a number of presentations was the need for a level regulatory playing field, and the European Commission’s role in providing it. A number of speakers welcomed the Media and Audiovisual Action Plan. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, was pleased that some of the “solutions that have long been suggested by experts are now being taken seriously by policymakers.” “We want all players to have to play by the same rules,” said Gilles Pélisson of TF1, stressing the importance of the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act in levelling the playing field. His particular concerns were having fair rules on advertising and having access to the rights to major sports and other events because they bring people together, “thus helping fulfil television’s social function”. Fabrice Fries of AFP also addressed what he wants to see from regulation and the regulators, i.e. the transparency of algorithms. “The business of disinformation itself is financed by advertising”, he said. According to him, achieving such transparency will require on the one hand the cooperation of the platforms, and on the other regulators that have the capacity and skills to regulate. He welcomed the European Commission initiative to set up national hubs of academia, researchers and journalists working together better to understand conspiracy theories and sources of disinformation by country. Joanna Krawczyk, Chairwoman of the Leading European Newspaper Alliance, stressed the importance of this policy-making taking all stakeholders into account, including local and regional players who she feels are often left out of the decision-making process. She also emphasised the importance of finance for operational costs. “80% of news media are struggling right now with operational costs, but the support we received is project-based, and does not add to sustainability.”
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https://www.pluralis.media/
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Closing remarks Commissioner Vera Jourová, Commissioner for Values and Transparency In her closing remarks, Commissioner Vera Jourová, Commissioner for Values and Transparency, emphasised the crucial role journalists play in democracy, including beyond the European Union. Recalling that the first session of the European News Media Forum in March 2021 had discussed the safety of journalists, she reiterated the message from that Forum: no journalist should die or be harmed for doing their job. She is following up with Member States on the conclusions of that Forum, in particular with a series of measures to guarantee journalists’ safety, with a specific focus on the safety of women journalists and those belonging to minorities, including through the creation of independent national support services. These should include helplines, legal advice, psychological support and shelters for journalists and media professionals under threat. In parallel, the Commission is preparing a proposal to help fight abusive litigation against journalists and rights defenders, the so-called SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). This piece of legislation will likely be put forward in early 2021. Picking up on Commissioner Breton’s remarks on the forthcoming proposal for a Media Freedom Act, Commissioner Jourová also stressed the importance of rules based on common principles, such as editorial independence and transparent ownership, in order to counter the many attempts by governments to interfere in media, undermine their independence and therefore distort the market. With the Media Freedom Act, the Commission wants to address problems and at the same time support what works. Turning finally to the digital transformation of the media sector, and in particular the Commission’s Media and Audiovisual Action Plan adopted in late 2020, she underlined the support this will give to the objective of a strong and diverse media sector. As she recalled, the Creative Europe programme will allocate at least EUR 75 million to media freedom and pluralism projects between 2021 and 2027. The Commission is also working on two other initiatives. One is how to create more financing opportunities that fit the needs of news media and potential investors better than the existing EU investment instruments, starting with a new equity pilot project in collaboration with philanthropic foundations. This should be up and running in 2022. Journalism partnerships are another initiative. These aim to tap the diversity of models across Europe, where linguistic diversity has often meant that media companies have followed separate development paths specific to their national contexts. EUR 8 million has been allocated to help news media professionals share their innovations across borders, test collaborations and transform their businesses. The European Newsroom, already mentioned in the opening speech, pursues the same spirit of cooperation. The 16 participating agencies will set up a joint news production hub in Brussels to cover EU affairs and produce content in 15 languages. Her key takeaways were that European cooperation can open the way to innovation, and to successful and resilient business models, and that the EU’s common values are the basis for this work. Second, a sound financial model is the best guarantee of independent reporting and media pluralism. In that context, the Commission will do its best to help media play its essential role for democracy.
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