10 reflections on the 2025 International Journalism Festival in Perugia

The International Journalism Festival in Perugia closed on Sunday, so it’s time for a few reflections on what it can tell us about the state of journalism and prospects for 2025. 

While the event continues to grow and develop with each passing year – primarily thanks to the tireless work of Chris, Francesca and the rest of the IJF team – the state of the media is a more complex story. 

As in previous years, the funding story continues to be at the heart of the media transformation – this year will probably be the most disruptive to date. But other trends – including tech, talent and distribution models also play a big role. 

Despite the doom and gloom of the funding cuts, I left the festival more optimistic than I arrived – mainly because of some of the less obvious ways in which the industry has changed. So here are my 10 thoughts coming out of the festival. 

The start of 2025 was marked by brutal funding cuts – USAID and NED funds were frozen just months after OSF’s quasi-exit from the media space. More broadly, many mid-sized funds refocused on domestic issues rather than international support, or non-media causes.

This led to some pretty apocalyptic predictions about a potential media “extinction event”, at least for some countries or types of media. True enough, a number of media are on the ropes or have shut-down / are in process of shutting down. 

But the main victims, so far, appear to be the implementors, both regional and international, that moved the funding (and took a huge chunk of it). Despite preaching about sustainability to the media for years, it turns out they had none to speak of.

This elicited mixed reactions from publishers I spoke to, to put it mildly. While industry associations / organizations are important, it is fair to ask why the better part of funds allocated to media failed to reach the target group.

It is quite clear that the current donor-supported-media-ecosystem, faced with a major decline in US funds, will be unable to sustain itself. Part of the ecosystem will clearly need to be downsized, but the truth is that media support and development can become orders of magnitude more efficient. 

During one discussion with a group of donors we found that the most efficient program had about 30% of administrative costs (split across an international and regional organization). More often than not, chains of organizations result in costs of 50% or more. Given that many programmes don’t even support media directly, the share of funds actually making it to the target group is shockingly low. 

Solving this is a daunting task. For now, I would say most of the people in donor and grant-funded media space are simply hoping things go back to normal. Maybe a bit poorer, but fundamentally unchanged. 

They won’t. The media industry has already entered a new chapter. The good news is that many of the changes needed are more manageable than they appear at first glance. Those who look forward and embrace them sooner will get the biggest benefits.

Expecting donors to fundamentally change the way they work is unrealistic, at least for most. But no alternative will fill the gap quickly enough. The tough truth is that a lot of well-intentioned projects, albeit with poor “market fit” will die or go dormant over the next 6-18 months. 

The question is what happens after and who emerges from the rubble. Many publishers mentioned an optimism that the new leading media will be better in tune with audiences, deliver content that actually adds value and will be forced to find ways to monetize it. 

The media space might look quite different in 2026, perhaps featuring more content producers that don’t resemble traditional publishers. On the other side, larger, more resilient publishers will integrate smaller, struggling peers (although more by hiring individuals than buying companies; egos and budgets still make mergers and acquisitions a marginal event in publishing). 

The upshot: it’s unlikely we will face a shortage of quality news content. But we might need to pay a bit more for it.

Firstly, “MediaTech” is about more than AI and it was encouraging to see a number of publishers get it. They should, given that, for many, software and tech make up 10-30% of their budgets.

This IJF seemed to have more software and tech solution providers, looking to solve key problems for publishers. Perhaps even more importantly, these were smaller, more targeted organizations (rather than the so-called Big Tech firms whose attitudes range from disinterested to antagonistic).

Equally important, many MediaTech firms have senior leadership that worked in publishing and know the industry’s pain points. Whether there are enough budgets and scalable cases remains to be seen (publishing is incredibly splintered and almost everyone has a unique combination of problems). But the prospect of more tools is certainly encouraging.

A few years ago donors and donor darlings were the stars of the show (also, IJF was considerably smaller). This year, in particular, the crowd seemed much more diverse – including news agencies, large commercial publisher staff, more individual creators…

There are also more and larger specialized communities: MediaTech and solution providers, exiled media, specialized industry media (covering such topics as agricultural or healthcare). 

That diversity is incredibly helpful – it broadens the discussion on how to solve media problems, introduces new ideas and generally promotes more creativity. It also means Perugia is being more representative of the incredibly varied space that is media.

Many publishers and media organizations present mentioned they had fired staff this year (usually 10-30%, but there were much more extreme cases). This has somewhat reduced the pressure on remaining publishers, who for years complained about hiring challenges. 

The problem is that many of the media jobs have changed in recent years (or are completely new). Others require the independent-thinking and common sense that comes with years of experience. 

At its core, the huge talent problem in publishing is due to 1) lack of investment in on-the-job training, 2) a deteriorating pipeline of educating students / bringing people from outside media into the industry and 3) donors and media support organizations hiring top talent (paying above industry rates). 

Pressure on media managers has reduced a bit, but it would be overly optimistic to assume that talent acquisition will not be an issue going forward.

Media conferences have the unfortunate tendency to turn into pity-parties. Asked about our view of the future, we see nothing but endless problems (we all do it; I, for one, am certainly guilty). The bigger issue is that then we throw up our hands and announce that trying to solve the problem with our current resources is useless and shift the blame.

In a way, this is the biggest change I have seen at this specific festival. Time and again, when someone said that they couldn’t do anything about an issue, other publishers stood up and said how they were addressing it. Tolerance for shifting responsibility has dropped.

This is an important change. Previously donors could not credibly tell the media to “go and figure it out”. It’s very different when a fellow publisher does exactly that. That agency is perhaps the single most positive change. 

The other, unfortunate, tendency of media conferences is that too often panels turn into circles of mutual adoration. We praise and take care not to disagree or criticize each other (or at least not too strongly). If there are clashes, they are more often based on personalities and not principles.

That’s a problem – as long as industry leaders don’t genuinely challenge each other on the way forward innovation and risk-taking will suffer. There’s something really powerful about saying “No, I want to move forward according to my vision” (importantly, though, this needs to be authentic and not just virtue-signalling). 

It may be anecdotal, but it felt like there was more appetite to disagree and challenge each other. That bodes well for the appearance of desperately needed real debate about how to address the media's daunting problems.

With the declining role of donors (both due to their actual decline and the inclusion of more commercial media in the festival), there is a rising sense that publishers / content producers have agency – i.e. they have both the responsibility and the freedom to force their own destiny. 

More so than previously, there were discussions about how publishers can solve things themselves, can help each other, or even create joint solutions. Importantly, the discussions are much more practical and focused, unfettered from endless bureaucratic processes tied to securing public / donor funding. 

To be clear, it’s still very early in the process. But there is a mood shift and we might just be on the verge of a much needed change in the way of thinking (at least among a meaningful minority of media present at the conference).

Given that it's 2025 you are not allowed NOT to mention AI in a piece about the media industry. AI is definitely a thing – especially when it comes to such issues like text-to-voice, transcription, reader revenue funnel optimization… 

These are all important issues. But many media overlook them because they are not core to the work of a chief editor, who in most publications continues to be the dominant personality. And so media are implementing innovations around the edges but not at the journalistic/ reporting core. 

That’s probably a good thing. There’s already too much regurgitating of the same quotes and comments and too little original reporting. For the time being, at least, AI is unable to generate really good public interest reporting – but it’s not exactly easy for most publishers either.

Source of the cover photo: Diego Figone for IJF 2025