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Dublin in early autumn had the crisp air of change, and at the INMA Media Innovation Week but that mood was matched by a conference that never strayed far from one theme: time is running out. Delegates from across Europe and beyond gathered in a city long associated with publishing to hear what felt less like a strategy workshop and more like a survival briefing.
Over three days, executives, editors and technologists dissected the future of news from AI tools to pricing models, from brand building to the fading economics of print. What became clear is that the clock has sped up. What once felt like decades of transition now looks like a handful of years.
Earl Wilkinson
Earl Wilkinson, INMA’s long-serving chief executive, opened with Irish humour, but his real message cut through. The news industry, he said, has reached the end of the line with its old assumptions. Search referrals are evaporating, social media has become unreliable, and the era of Big Tech payments for content is fading fast. His phrase for what comes next was the ‘zero search world’: a landscape where logged-in, direct relationships with readers matter more than a million fleeting clicks from Google or Facebook.
Wilkinson’s framing was stark. Publishers, he argued, face a binary choice: treat journalism as just another expendable content vertical, or double down on what makes them unique, distinctive journalism, brand strength, and deep audience ties. He pointed to data from INMA’s Insights Report showing how consumer behaviour is shifting from search towards answer-driven interactions, with AI likely to intermediate by default. In that world, publishers that lack strong direct relationships risk being invisible.
The wider pressures are global. Press freedom is under strain in multiple regions, advertising models are fragmenting, and AI adoption is patchy. Wilkinson called out one uncomfortable statistic: while 52% of publishers are at the start of their AI journey, only 11% can be described as advanced adopters. That gap, he warned, is not sustainable in a market where technology cycles compress ever faster. The refrain was blunt: publishers have five years, not fifteen, to make the turn.
Delegates from the INMA Innovation Media Week in Dublin, September 2025, Image Copyright INMA.
Mediahuis (Peter Vandermeersch)
If Wilkinson set the global scene, Peter Vandermeersch of Mediahuis sharpened the message from the publisher’s chair. His assessment was unsentimental. Print, he said, is fading and in many markets will vanish within the decade. AI will strip out routine work, and platforms can no longer be trusted as gateways. The only safe ground lies in journalism that cannot be commodified: investigations, deep analysis, and distinctive voices.
Vandermeersch stressed the need to rebuild trust between editorial and commercial teams. Too often, he argued, newsrooms treat marketing with suspicion, when in reality aligned brand building is essential to survival. He described platforms as ‘shop windows, not homes’ useful for reach, but never a substitute for direct ties. And he was clear about AI scraping: the use of journalism to train models without consent is, in his words, ‘the theft of the century’.
Circulation of paid print titles across Europe continues to decline at double-digit rates annually, while digital subscriptions are growing but not yet at sufficient scale. Trust in media remains fragile, particularly among younger audiences who expect authenticity and platform-native formats. Vandermeersch’s prescription was urgent but practical: experiment faster, double down on brand, and make journalism worth paying for. The years ahead, not the decades, will decide who survives.
The Irish Times: making AI ordinary
From the global to the local. Aisling McCabe, strategy director at The Irish Times, described how AI is being folded into the daily fabric of a trust-owned paper. The projects are small but purposeful: automated tagging, reader summaries, audio versions of articles. Each carries risks — summaries may cannibalise reads, tagging can misfire — but together they are designed to make journalism easier to find, easier to consume, and ultimately easier to pay for.
McCabe stressed culture over technology. Training is mandatory, hackathons have been staged, and an AI hub is in the works. The metaphor she used was home renovation: some extend, some patch, some rebuild. The only wrong move is standing still. The Insights Report backed her up. It found that culture, governance and skills are the real barriers to adoption. Technology is the easy part. One line stood out: ‘There is no silver bullet. It depends on your circumstances.’ McCabe’s incremental approach is precisely what most publishers, still at the start of their AI journeys, can manage.
Politiken: putting names to the stages
Astrid Jørgensen formerly of Politiken unveiled a six-stage model of digital maturity, developed with Pernille Kræmmergaard. Its value lies in language. Different departments often sit on different rungs, from digitising PDFs to running personalisation pilots. Without a common map, strategy discussions collapse into spaghetti. She warned of a widening gap between consumer expectations, technology’s speed, and the newsroom’s pace. The Insights Report reinforced the point: maturity requires alignment of strategy, leadership, skills and infrastructure. Fail on one, and the rest falters
Ringier Axel Springer: from 120 islands to one pool
Bernard Volf described how Ringier Axel Springer centralised 25,000 weekly stories across 120 brands into a single content pool. Ten per cent of content now flows through the system, producing five per cent of group page views. Stories can travel — a Serbian pop feature surfaces in Switzerland, Slovak verticals run off content produced elsewhere. But risks remain: local colour can vanish, compliance and copyright checks are essential, and the system must be faster than writing fresh. The Insights Report described cross-brand content flow as a structural lever for efficiency and reach, but warned that governance is critical.
Delegates from the INMA Innovation Media Week in Dublin, September 2025, Image Copyright INMA.
Russmedia: taming the asset monster
Dominic Depaoli of Russmedia shared how years of patches turned their asset system into a nightmare. It slowed rather than helped. The fix was radical: scrap and replace. After testing 40 vendors, they chose Finland’s Media Pocket, valued for its APIs and AI tagging. Workflows are faster, images tagged instantly, but Depaoli admitted technology alone is not enough. Staff cling to old systems until they are switched off. The Insights Report called asset management one of the clearest efficiency wins available, but also one of the hardest to achieve because of culture and habit.
Mail Metro Media: building a toolkit with journalists
Chris Clemo explained how Mail Metro Media built Mail IQ directly with staff input. Journalists wanted admin help, not creative replacement. The toolkit evolved into three modules: Generator, Explorer and Analyzer. They save time across tagging, archives and analytics. Some prototypes have stuck, others not. Clemo likened AI to an intelligent graduate: useful only when trained. The Insights Report stressed that in-house builds enjoy more trust and adoption than off-the-shelf solutions, and produce immediate efficiency gains.
Schibsted: predicting interests, not guessing
Joy Mutoloki from Schibsted described how predictive models now classify content into more than a thousand topics, building profiles even for anonymous readers. The results are clear: sharper targeting, lower churn, better recommendations. In sport, algorithmic predictions outperformed human segmentation for new sales. The main challenge was taxonomy — agreeing what ‘fashion’ or ‘politics’ means across titles. The Insights Report highlighted predictive AI as outperforming human curation, and as a shared taxonomy that can align whole groups.
Funke: reels in minutes, not hours
Paul Elvers of Funke addressed how to reach younger audiences with local news. His Real Machine tool converts stories into reels in ten minutes, not two hours. Five hundred reels later, the results show AI reels perform as well as human-made. Reporters like it because they can publish to social feeds directly. The Insights Report praised Funke’s ethos: ‘Just build things. If it doesn’t work, at least you tried.’ It is a model of scrappy but effective experimentation.
The Black Forest experiment: realism over hype
Valentin Heneka from BZ.Echo, a small German publisher warned against over-claiming for AI. LLMs, he said, are ‘not very good at journalism’. They produce plausible text but with flaws that local audiences cannot forgive. Yet his newsroom uses them effectively for speed: 500 briefs each week now take five minutes not 15; 1,000 headlines optimised; transcripts in hours not days. They built Bitz Echo, combining LLMs with code for precision. The Insights Report echoed his caution: AI is best applied for efficiency, not credibility.
Brand building on a shoestring
Tom McCave, who ran brand marketing at The Economist, reminded delegates that brand spend is often first to be cut but is essential. Less than 10% of spend kept The Economist distinctive for decades. Cut brand, he said, and acquisition costs rise. He offered practical tips: brand every touchpoint, align PR and editorial, buy media more intelligently, experiment with audio. The Insights Report connected brand strength with resilience, particularly with younger audiences demanding authenticity.
Neelkamal Biswas: pricing needs to flex
Neelkamal Biswas, drawing on his Uber experience, argued that flat pricing ignores reality. Readers are not uniform. He suggested flexible offers — day passes, win-back bundles, regional adjustments. Execution is hard: it requires data, governance, and courage. ‘If you leave it flat, you leave money on the table,’ he said. The Insights Report labelled dynamic pricing a structural advantage when embedded organisation-wide.
Robert Whitehead: from generative to agentic
Robert Whitehead looked to the next shift: from generative to agentic AI. These systems act, not just output. He built an app live on stage from an RSS feed. His vision is journalists with ‘25 super-helpers’, automating mechanics so humans focus on distinctiveness. The Insights Report predicted agentic AI could halve CMS costs and enable smaller but more productive teams.
Summary from INMA Media Innovation Week
Across three days in Dublin, the threads came together. The opening warnings of a ‘zero search’ world and a shrinking window to adapt were underscored by case studies that showed both experimentation and hesitation. Some projects dazzled with speed, others stumbled, but all revealed a sector in motion. The Insights Report provided the grounding: only a small minority are advanced in AI adoption; most are still at the start. Culture, governance and trust are as decisive as any line of code.
What emerged was not despair but clarity. The industry now knows the levers: distinctive journalism, direct audience ties, flexible pricing, pragmatic AI adoption, and consistent brand building. The task is execution at speed. As one delegate put it over coffee: ‘The ideas are all here. The only question is whether we can move fast enough.’
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