site.btaJournalists Blame Audience for Not Caring about News, but Fail to Give It What It Needs - Expert

The 2025 New Horizons in Journalism Conference opened in Sofia on April 15 under the theme "Who Tells the Story". Journalists were once the primary storytellers, shaping public understanding through print, radio, and television. Then came the internet, social media, and now generative AI — each shifting control over who informs the world. The conference tried to give an answer to the question: what role does journalism play in this evolving landscape. 

In the first panel, titled "The New Gatekeepers: Who controls the news now?," the discussion, moderated by Xhemajl Rexha, chairperson of the Association of Journalists in Kosovo, focused on the fact that journalists are no longer the sole news storytellers. 

Camilla Bath, journalist, editor and media consultant from South Africa, said that journalists do not go to their audience any longer, they do not give people what they need. And, Bath asked how the media respond. According to her, they produce more content, make more noise and in the end, blame the audience that it does not pay enough attention to news.

According to Bath, the problem is not that the audience is not interested in news, but that the media floods its audience with stuff it does not care about. Journalists refuse to realize the difference between what is important for the media and what is important for the audience. Bath said that the media must focus on the crossing point between their work and the needs of the audience. Perhaps there is a better question then “What’s new today?” which is “What can you do right now?” the media consultant believes. 

She pointed out that journalism has always relied on a set of traditional news values ​​such as timeliness, conflict, relevance, novelty, and those values are still valid today. She added that she continues to teach these values, but they reflect what the media think is significant, and not necessarily how and why it is significant for the audience. Bath explained that newsrooms need to shift their focus to the needs of their audience. People turn to news because they need help navigating through life, they need a deeper understanding, they need a community, she pointed out. Bath said that there is a need for new values, which are related to the media helping the audience make sense of a given situation, explain its significance, be useful to the audience. Journalism has to bring order to chaos, the media consultant said. 

Bath talked about various methods, including what she calls “journalistic therapy” in support of society. She believes that every media outlet should introduce one day a week that is devoted to deep analysis, to the tracking of past events, a space for reflection. She added that another approach is for artificial intelligence to help the user choose the way they want to consume the news.

How to Survive and Stay Relevant: The Future of Journalism was the topic of the second panel of the forum, with moderator Bridget Rollason, Europe correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Veronika Munk, Director of Innovation and New Markets, Dennik N news outlet, said that she moved from her native Hungary, where the government has treated independent media in the past 15 years as an enemy, to Slovakia, where there is an autocratic government which treats the media as an enemy.

Munk is the founding editor-in-chief of the Hungarian independent online news daily, Telex. She was the deputy editor-in-chief at Index, Hungary’s largest online news daily from where she and her colleagues resigned in 2020 due to external political influence. She added that Telex was created thanks to a campaign on YouTube to raise funds. One million dollars were collected in a week. Independent journalism cannot survive without financial independence, Munk said. Her experience does not confirm the idea that the audience will not pay for news, she said and added that the audience has also responded extremely well to the media outlet’s offer to make a “gift to society” if it gets 10,000 new subscribers. For example, to distribute the printed version of the newspaper to the elderly, to train young journalists, or to distribute subscriptions to new voters, in order to educate the public, Munk added. 

As part of the conference, three workshops will be held on April 16. Documentary filmmaker Matthias Sdun (Germany) will explore AI as a storytelling tool, while Camilla Bath (South Africa) will focus on AI’s role in editorial work. Investigative journalist Cesare Treccarichi will lead a session on the latest open data and fact-checking tools.

The event has been organized by World Press Institute, supported by the Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria (AEJ-Bulgaria) and America for Bulgaria Foundation.