According to ChatGPT, “A playbook is a term used in several different contexts, but it generally refers to a set of strategies, plans, or procedures designed to guide actions in specific situations.”
For media, it says: “Used metaphorically, a playbook refers to a set of tactics or manoeuvres someone repeatedly uses to gain an advantage.”
Our goal with this Congress report – um, playbook – is indeed to give your news organisation not only a leg up on the competition but also perhaps a way to benchmark where you stand with global peers. And by the way, can you pinpoint your competition today anyway? A moving target.
We have distilled tactics, strategies, best-practice, even failures from the more than 120 news executives who spoke over the three days at WAN-IFRA’s World News Media Congress in Krakow in May. We apologise for the tardiness of this publication; our GenAI “assistants” were helpful but the human touch took longer than we anticipated!
We settled on seven chapters covering the broader issues of business sustainability:
1. Beyond survival: Innovative, sustainable solutions for longevity
2. AI, everywhere: In strategy, systems, processes, workflows
3. Leadership reloaded: How to lead amid relentless change
4. Newsroom evolution: People, platforms, purpose
5. Next-level engagement: Shifting focus from audience to community
6. Refining revenue: Monetisation strategies that work
7. The next frontier: What’s working, what’s needed, what’s next
Each chapter features numerous sub-sections/topics to flesh out so you can easily navigate or find your wish list.
This year, I was partly responsible for building the CEO track of the conference programme, and was essentially there the entire last two days, with no chance to visit the other two tracks – the Digital Media Summit and the World Editors Forum.
“So it has been rewarding and interesting to read through all of the great case studies, innovations, challenges and opportunities emerging from that part of the event.
Lucky for me, I had the time to sit in on many of the special sessions on the first day of Congress, especially to see Oksana Brovko, CEO of the Association of Regional Press Publishers of Ukraine (AIRPPU), and Oleksii Pogorelov, President of the Ukraine Media Business Association (UMBA), accepting the Golden Pen of Freedom award on behalf of media professionals across Ukraine.
“We don’t write because we are brave. We write because silence is not an option,” said Brovko. “Independent journalism is not a luxury – it is the infrastructure of freedom. In Ukraine, we are keeping it alive under fire. This award is not a celebration, it is a responsibility – to keep speaking, especially when silence is safer.”
The why…
I say it every year, but I will repeat: like no other event, Congress is a true microcosm of the news media industry. It’s difficult to walk away from such an event not being inspired and understanding the “why” of what we do.
And while the challenges we all face are daunting and were addressed in Krakow, a sense of optimism and opportunity shone through, at least where I was sitting.
Here are two of my favourite quotes of the event, both tinged with a sense of optimism and warning.
From Christian Broughton, CEO of The Independent:
“I remember there was another conference I was at not so long ago,” he said, “and there was a big board as you walked into the conference, and it was called something like the ‘threats board.’ And the idea was you’d fill out a Post-it note and stick the big threat to your business on the threats board. And possibly quite naively, I said, ‘Oh, wow, where’s the opportunities board?’ And they said, ‘Oh, we don’t have one. We’ve never really thought of having one.’ I think sometimes our industry can be really kind of mistake-focused. And you know what happens if you keep staring at the threat or the mistake? You’re going to go straight towards it.”
From Lisa MacLeod of FT Strategies:
“A lot of the choices we make in this industry are driven by fear, not because of excitement, not because of optimism, but absolute fear.”
“The biggest problem in your life is not a robot writing a headline for you. You’ve got many bigger problems to deal with. That is a tiny proportion of what’s coming down the road. It’s a tiny proportion of the opportunities that await you.”
There are a lot more gems like that in this playbook report – thanks in large part to the great work from our Insights team. And, of course, from all of the news professionals who shared them.
Hope to see you at next year’s Congress in Marseilles, if not before.
Dean Roper is director of insights at WAN-Ifra.
WAN-IFRA members can download the report from our Knowledge Hub
Congress non-member attendees can receive the report (please email: customerservice@wan-ifra.org)
