Draft Four: Existential (journalistic) questions
The Perugia #ijf25 edition.
As I left Bucharest for the International Journalism Festival in Perugia there was something bothering me: never in my 25 years of calling myself a journalist had I felt so uncomfortable with this identity.
In the days before the trip I watched the family tragedy of a close friend become media cannon fodder, their family story used for traffic and clicks on dozens of news sites, from well-known brands, to obscure extractive operations. They were playing up the salaciousness of the event with SEO-approved rage clickbait, working on copy-pasted information from one another, perpetuating factual errors, doing next to no verification, dropping text in between ads and ads and more ads, feeding the world with words that made nobody’s life better.
It was like an army of AI-bots topping one another to demonstrate their lack of humanity.
Is this what I do?
Is this what you do?
Is this what we do?
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Perugia is a place of hopefulness, though. Always has been in the many years I’ve been coming. Maybe it’s the pasta, the gelato, the Aperol Spritz’s in the sun, the Umbria reds, or the magical street-side porchetta.
Or just maybe it’s the right kind of place to bring your doubts, like a once true believer shuffling into church, hoping to rekindle the fading fire.
There are hundreds if not thousands of journalists of all generations, from all corners of the world, roaming through the hilly alleys. If before the pandemic there were a handful of Romanians attending, and almost none on panels, now our WhatsApp group had 30 people in it, and it didn’t include everyone in the city. I’m partly at fault for spreading the word that this is the place to come when doubt is strong, and also for pitching Romanians for panels – last year we showcased Recorder, this year we did the same for HotNews, Snoop, and Moldova’s Ziarul de Gardă (watch the session here).
But. You knew this was coming.
Some of Perugia is self-sufficient. For every doubter: of self, of industry, of purpose, there is at least one who believes the world owes journalists for simply existing, and at least one that wants to sell a new miracle cure, now AI-upgraded, for others to buy.
So what follows is less a round-up of the hopeful stuff I usually collect in my days here, and more a list of questions, dilemmas, worries, hushed thoughts that I picked up from more than dozens of friends, old and new. Oddly enough, I regain hope and agency – including a willingness to call myself a journalist –, the moment I increase complexity and uncertainty.
So pour yourself a dark red, and follow along with some invitations to reflect, worry, argue, and get energized for what’s next.
What if you’re good at many things – but not really exceptional at any one thing? How do you find your place in journalism if you’re a multi-hyphenate, someone whose CV spans too many roles, skills or interests? What do you tell people you do, especially in midlife?
Is there room in journalism for quiet(er) voices? Ours is a field with many salespeople, always pitching: an idea, a project, themselves. But what about those who aren’t smooth networkers or loud talkers? Can conferences, newsrooms, and professional spaces lift voices that aren’t already known or amplified?
What are journalism awards really for? Having chaired a major European prize for a few years now (our shortlist is out!), I’ve seen how meaningful they can be – especially for small collectives, freelancers, or fragile initiatives from the borderlands. But at a fundamental level, what are we rewarding? The individual? The newsroom? The impact? The resilience? If we want a more collaborative, less competitive industry, how should we rethink awards?
Have we stopped taking gender coverage seriously? We haven’t solved gender inequality anywhere. So why does journalism still treat gender and its inherent inequities as a niche, optional beat? Why don’t more organizations have dedicated resources to cover it, and why are some of the resources that were available going away? (h/t Megan) Not to mention the larger umbrella — are diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging off the table just because Trump says so?
Why don’t we stay with a story long enough for it to matter? Why do we chase the new instead of exhausting a subject until it’s fully understood – or until we’ve helped move something forward? What would it look like to practice more journalism that sticks around?
What’s broken in the grantmaker–grantee dance? There’s a performative dynamic between founders selling ideas and funders chasing outcomes, often disconnected from the needs of the citizens. Are we missing something essential in this exchange? Is the power of intermediaries too great, and their fear of losing status so large? What would it take to make grants feel less like show-and-tell and more like true partnerships?
What if we accepted that much of donor and grant money are gone? More than a billion euros vanished just in the past few months with US funding schemes being cut. That number doubles or more if we look at the past five years and at tech money going away. What if we stopped thinking that “saving democracy” is something we should be paid for? What if we actually had a tangible problem statement derived from the needs of our communities? What if we embraced product in its true consumer-centric way?
Why are we still obsessed with traffic and other vanity metrics? We game the system, invent fake bylines, publish filler content – all for clicks. (A worse than nothing metric as Aron Pilhofer called it). Who benefits from this output-obsessed model? How do we break this incentive structure that serves no one well? What will happen in a year or two, when our clicks won’t even come from real people, but AI agents? (Many already do).
Do you actually know what public service means for your newsroom? What do your public service metrics look like? Is it just code for “whatever we decide is worthy”? Are you measuring what people need and how you solve for those needs? Are you helping them live better, solve problems, fulfill their own missions?
Do you have a theory of change or just a theory of publishing? Can you distinguish between outputs (articles, podcasts, traffic) and outcomes (a new park, a changed policy, a contribution to reducing poverty)? Would it be so wrong to decide your work should lead to something tangible? Can’t we consider impact a change you are actually helping your community deliver in the world? What if information empowers and leads to action?
Why do we invest in editorial brilliance but tolerate bad management? We continue to pour resources into stories, but we leave strategy, leadership, innovation, and engagement underdeveloped. Not to mention taking care of our staffs and their well-being. Why do we treat these capacities as secondary when they’re essential to flourishing – both for the business, and for us all?
What’s our duty of care? For the work, for the journalists, and especially for the people our work serves. Would it be a tragic to look at delivering hope as a service? Of looking at trust as the outcome of listening, not hectoring?
There and many more are the questions bugging me, and of course this list has the inherent selection biases of a 43-year-old white man in Eastern Europe that can’t stop poking at what we do; at least at what I do.
Also: nothing here belongs solely to me – my thinking has always been informed by wiser, kinder, and braver folks. For everything above, my thanks go to Shirish, Mattia, Flora, Megan, Iliana, Mar, Emma, Mark, Adam, Nina, Khalil, Jeremy, Ariel, Peter, Patrick, Jazmin, Jennifer, Ella, Federica, Ariel, Natalia, Mikhael, my Romanian colleagues, and many more than I can name here.
They enable my freedom to think, and there is nothing more precious than that. As Tim Snyder writes in On Freedom: “Since freedom requires capacities that we cannot develop by ourselves, we owe our freedom to others.”
SIDE DISHES:
Just this – the new Mumford & Sons album is just what you need to take a breathe and recharge. Also, this line works well for any journalist not yet a cynic: “Don’t leave the liars in the honest places”.
Very good questions, Cristi. And what I loved about them, is the fact that just reading them, they provide comfort, because they bring a glimpse into what could be possible. Once we ask the right questions, the solutions come into view.