The route between journalism and its audiences is changing faster than most newsrooms realize. Today, AI agents are increasingly acting on behalf of users—retrieving, summarizing, and delivering information before a person ever reaches a publisher’s article. As this shift accelerates, the fundamental unit of value in media is moving from the document to the verifiable fact.
To explore how media organizations can adapt to this new reality and ensure their most rigorous work isn’t lost in translation, Media Party Barcelona—taking place on September 7–8 at CaixaForum—will feature media strategist and ‘user needs’ pioneer Dmitry Shishkin as a keynote speaker and workshop facilitator.
About Dmitry Shishkin
Dmitry Shishkin is a globally recognized media strategist best known for championing the ‘user needs’ model of audience engagement—a transformative framework that has reshaped editorial strategies in newsrooms around the world.
He currently serves as Strategic Editorial Advisor at Ringier. Previously, he was CEO of Ringier Media International and spent years driving digital innovation as Digital Development Editor at BBC World Service. He is a frequent speaker on newsroom transformation, engagement and AI.
Sessions at Media Party
Dmitry’s upcoming sessions will directly address the intersection of AI, audience engagement, and editorial strategy.
Keynote: Do Agents Have Needs? What Journalism Must Do to Survive AI Mediation
The User Needs Model helped journalism move from institutional habit to audience intent. But today, this model alone is no longer enough. In the process of retrieving, compressing, and transforming journalism, AI agents often strip out the very signals that make news trustworthy—attribution, uncertainty, chronology, source hierarchy, and editorial intent. As a result, careful, nuanced journalism may be met with “AI silence,” while simpler content from less rigorous sources gets surfaced instead.
This keynote will introduce the concept of an Agent Readiness Layer—a practical framework mapping human user needs against what an AI agent requires to serve it faithfully. Shishkin will argue that preserving editorial judgment in the age of machine mediation requires urgent collaboration between media organizations, AI companies, data specialists, and editorial practitioners.
Workshop: Do Agents Have Needs? Building Your Agent Readiness Layer
Moving from diagnosis to design, this hands-on workshop will allow participants to audit a selection of their own content against the Agent Readiness Layer framework. Groups will identify the biggest gaps in their content, metadata, and editorial workflows, and sketch out the necessary changes to make their journalism genuinely agent-ready. Participants will leave with a prioritized gap analysis and concrete next steps to implement in their newsrooms.
Join the Discussion in Barcelona
As AI reshapes how audiences discover information, Dmitry Shishkin’s framework offers essential guidance for media leaders. Join us at CaixaForum on September 7–8 to explore how newsrooms can protect editorial judgment in the age of machine mediation.
