At Media Party Buenos Aires, Mattia Peretti delivered a Keynote titled “Reinventing Journalism: New Ideas for a People-Centric Sustainable Future.” Peretti, a learning experience designer and then-ICFJ Knight Fellow, addressed the structural challenges facing the media ecosystem, citing data that reflects low public trust, rising rates of news avoidance, and ongoing mass layoffs across newsrooms.
According to Peretti, the industry frequently responds to these pressures with “cosmetic” adjustments rather than systemic change, describing a common readiness to “sprinkle a little bit of AI magic dust on top of what we do” and expect it to solve structural flaws. Drawing on his five years of experience managing the Journalism AI initiative, Peretti described himself as a technology optimist but cautioned that the real problem cannot be coded away. His thesis posits that journalism has lost touch with its core mission and confused its identity with its output format.
The Trap of "Informing the Public"
Traditionally, the news industry has operated under the assumption that the core mission of journalism is simply to inform the public so that citizens can make educated choices, such as when they vote. Peretti argues that this definition is no longer enough.
Information only carries real value if it actually helps people take action and support the positive changes they want to see in their world. To achieve this, he challenges journalists to do the hard conceptual work of untangling their identity from pure content production.
The act of doing journalism manifests itself most often with producing content, whether it’s writing an article or recording a podcast, and that’s fine. […] But the mission of journalism, the mission of a journalist, is not to produce content.” — Mattia Peretti
Journalism as a Service to Society
If journalism doesn’t equal “content,” what is it? Peretti’s answer is transformative in its simplicity: journalism is a service. The moment media professionals separate their purpose from the mere mechanics of content generation, they open up the space to focus entirely on the actual value built for individuals and society. Under this service-oriented framework, journalism takes on the responsibility of driving positive impact at multiple levels:
- Individual level: Helping people navigate their daily lives by providing necessary context.
- Community level: Supplying the tools and information citizens need to meaningfully participate in their local environments.
- Macro level: Actively strengthening democratic structures nationally and internationally.
No Social Value, No Financial Sustainability
One of the sharpest points of the presentation addressed the media’s financial crisis through the lens of economic logic. Using a Venn diagram as the visual anchor of his theory, Peretti argued that a relentless focus on the value journalism creates for people is a necessary condition—though not a sufficient one—to guarantee the financial sustainability of the industry.
News organizations undoubtedly need to be smarter about monetization and business models. However, if a publisher fails to create real, tangible value for its audience, there is simply nothing to monetize in the first place. As consumers, we pay for products, experiences, and services that genuinely add value to our lives; journalism is no exception to this rule.
The goal for media organizations must be to obsess over the intersection where social value meets financial support, until everything a newsroom does exists firmly within that space.
Redefining the Metrics of Success
Closing his talk, Peretti acknowledged that there is no single magic formula to deploy this people-centric approach overnight. However, the path forward starts by transforming how the media defines and measures success.
Through News Alchemists, a movement Peretti began prototyping back in 2024 alongside other industry professionals, the challenge remains to completely shift the benchmark. Media organizations must learn to measure success not just in terms of engagement and profit, but in the human value created. Only when value becomes the primary metric will every editorial and business decision naturally align toward a truly sustainable, public-spirited future.
Want to dive deeper into Mattia Peretti’s presentation? You can watch the full talk here.
The Path to Media Party Barcelona 2026
The discussion around audience-centric strategies and sustainable media continues at Media Party Barcelona 2026 on September 7–8 at CaixaForum. Making its European debut, this upcoming edition centers on sustaining information integrity in the post-search era and the age of generative AI. Register now!
