From 4 to 6 May, Krakow in Poland hosted the World News Media Congress 2025, the most important global conference on the future of media, organised by WAN-IFRA. The main themes this year were the use of AI, building relationships with audiences and the resilience of media brands. Here is a selection of the most interesting talks from WNMC 2025.
Gannett: Before you launch AI, you need trust
One concrete example of AI use in editorial practice came from the American group Gannett. Jessica E. Davis of USA Today described how they approached the automatic article summary feature. It was not a reckless rollout. First, they wanted to know what both journalists and readers thought.
It turned out that journalists saw the original summaries as another unnecessary step that slowed them down. They also feared that once readers saw a summary, they would not read the full article. The audience, for its part, trusted content from people more than content from machines.
Based on these findings, a new feature called Key Points was created. AI prepares a draft summary, which the journalist can edit as needed. The result? Journalists quickly came to like the tool, and it delivered its best results in the travel section, where readers spent on average 36% longer on each article.
French Mediapart bets on community, and it works
French website Mediapart.fr took a completely different approach. Its aim is to build a community and involve readers in creating the content itself.
It runs Le Club, a platform where readers can publish their own blogs. The editors select the most interesting ones and give them space on the homepage. Active discussions run under the articles. And when it launches an investigation, it is not afraid to turn to the community with crowdfunding. For example, thousands of people helped fund a documentary about Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign, and more than 150,000 people then saw it in cinemas.
Mediapart also prides itself on openness and access. It publishes its financial statements, you will find information about the sources used for each article, and its journalists regularly talk with readers on podcasts or on Twitch. Real people also answer emails and phone calls.
Agora: When a crisis hits, resilience decides
The president of host group Agora SA, Bartosz Hojka, called resilience the most important value for today's media. Not because of a single problem, but because of a whole series of crises that arrive unexpectedly and often at the same time: pandemics, wars, economic turbulence, and changing behaviour among audiences and advertisers.
Agora therefore invests only in areas where it has experience and a solid base. At the same time, it relies on what platforms cannot offer, namely brand and trust. According to Hojka, that is decisive not only for readers but also for advertisers.
Mariam Mammen Mathew from Manorama Online confirmed the same: they cannot compete with the big platforms on numbers, but they can offer a trusted environment for brands, and that is the key today.
The experience of media from around the world confirms that, whether we are in Krakow, Paris or Prague, we are dealing with similar things. How to deliver quality content, how to stay credible, how to use new technologies without losing authenticity.
Topics such as trust, relevance, AI or resilience are not buzzwords. They are the key challenges that shape the future of media. And we believe the answer is not resignation, but smart innovation and honest work.
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