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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