Key Insights on Mattia Peretti: Toward Sustainable, People-Centered Journalism

-What tasks do you handle in your role?

As an ICFJ Knight Fellow, I had the freedom to spend 12 months developing a project of my own. This allowed me to prototype News Alchemists, a movement that aims to help journalism put people’s needs and curiosity, as well as the benefit of society, at the center of everything.

My tasks include organizing the work of the fifteen founding members who make up the initial News Alchemists community, and facilitating the group’s monthly meetings with the support of designer and artist Aslı Sevinc.

I also focus on advocating for what we call “extreme user-orientation” through writing, organizing webinars, and participating in journalism conferences (like Media Party!).

When my fellowship ends in December, I will add fundraising to my tasks as I seek funding to support the mission and activities of News Alchemists.

-What are the keys to moving toward sustainable and people-centered journalism?

It all starts with our mission. We believe that journalism has the power and the responsibility to generate a positive impact on society: helping people navigate their lives, providing them with the information and context they need to participate meaningfully in their communities, and strengthening our societies.

We also believe that focusing on the value our journalism creates for people and society is a necessary condition to ensure the financial sustainability of the news industry. Creating products and experiences that add value to people’s lives is the primary factor that leads to a sustainable business.

We must learn how to measure the success of our organizations not just in terms of profits, but in the value our journalism creates, and how to make every editorial and business decision based on maximizing that value.

-Does artificial intelligence (AI) play a role in sustainable and people-centered journalism?

Earlier this year, I argued that we are approaching artificial intelligence the wrong way. We are rushing to find use cases for every cool new product launched by tech companies. But, for the most part, we are doing so without a coherent strategy on how we want the potential of AI to serve our vision of a sustainable journalism that adds value to people’s lives.

I believe journalism needs to be reinvented starting from its mission, and I truly feel we can use new technologies to support that mission. But AI won’t do the reinventing for us, nor will we succeed simply by adding a little AI to what we already do without fundamentally questioning whether what we are doing is wrong from the start.

-What are the first steps that small and large newsrooms should take to head in this direction?

We must learn to listen much more, and talk and write less.

Internally, every media outlet should make space to listen to what motivates each person on the team (from the intern to the CEO) to work in journalism instead of any other industry, and use those insights to articulate the principles that guide the organization in its desire to create value for its communities.

Most importantly, we need to listen to our audiences and to all the people we are not serving with our journalism, to learn how we can change what we do, how we do it, and offer products and experiences that people want to pay for because of the value they add to their lives.