Wow. After a great week at the INMA’s World Congress, I’m back in Zurich but still processing the conversations, observations, and inputs I brought home from Berlin. After a few days — and a few extra hours of sleep — the moment has come to pull together some of the most important lessons from this Congress.

While in Berlin, I had a genuinely good conversation with Francisco Torres Vázquez, a colleague from Mexico. Francisco is deputy executive director of the Mexican Publishers Organization (OEM). We talked through our learnings together. I told him I sometimes feel, with this initiative, that people expect me to give them the one golden rule. But there isn’t one. What strategy a media organisation applies to reach younger generations depends on so many different strategic layers. 

“I think anyone who sits in a seminar expecting to find a solution is in the wrong place,” he said. “We don’t need to wait for a solution. We all need to become part of the solution.”

I could only agree. (Francisco also told me he listens to my podcast while jogging; I think that counts as useful feedback 😀.)

So, with that framing in mind, here are the lessons I’m taking from Berlin.

1. Trust is the new — old — currency

The trust conversation in journalism isn’t new. But something crystallised at this Congress: In a moment when AI-generated content is proliferating and audiences increasingly can’t tell what’s real, trust has become the actual product. Not the article, not the TikTok, but the human connection behind it. The relationship we build with our audiences.

What struck me is this: Young audiences aren’t less trusting than older ones. They’ve simply moved their trust — away from institutions, toward individuals. 

According to Reuters Institute data, 51% of young people trust individual creators more than they trust news brands. That isn’t a trust deficit. That’s a trust transfer.

The question for legacy media isn’t how to rebuild institutional trust. It’s whether news organisations can build personal, human trust at scale. The ones figuring this out aren’t treating trust as a brand problem. They’re treating it as a people problem.

2. The joy is still there

This might sound like the softest point on this list. Bear with me, because it turned out to be one of the most concrete things I took from the entire week.

During my plenary slot, something happened that I hadn’t fully anticipated: You could feel the passion for journalism. All three panelists — me included — were highlighting the love for journalism. 

More feedback came back to me about that energy than about almost anything else. More than one person told me: “You could feel the joy.”

In an industry that spends so much time in crisis mode, that felt worth naming explicitly. The people making progress with young audiences aren’t the ones who’ve been convinced it matters. I think they’re the ones who already believe it.

3. The monetisation question doesn’t have a universal answer

During my seminar, Rainer Esser, former CEO of Die Zeit, made a point that has stayed with me. Die Zeit is investing seriously in TikTok, fully aware the platform doesn’t generate direct revenue right now. But Die Zeit can afford that investment period. The brand recognition they’re building, the audience pipeline they’re developing — it pays off on a longer timeline.

Here’s the uncomfortable follow-up question though because not every publisher can afford to plant seeds that won’t pay off for three years: What does this mean for regional outlets without Die Zeit’s brand weight to fall back on? What does it mean for publishers operating without a subsidy-tolerant ownership structure? The monetisation conversation is far from over, and I’ll be coming back to it in a dedicated deep dive soon.

If you want to listen to my conversation with Rainer Esser and Sruthi Gottipati (Spot on) you can: In my newest episode of “No One’s Reading This,” live from Berlin. Listen here on Apple Podcast and here on Spotify.

4. Be where they are — and actually mean it

Siri Pallesen, head of social media at VG, shared something in her seminar that I keep thinking about. A few years ago, VG was falling behind a competitor on TikTok. Instead of posting harder, they stopped and analysed why. The result was a new playbook. Within one month, VG was back at No. 1.

What makes the playbook interesting isn’t the tactics. It’s the philosophy underneath them. VG’s guiding question for every story is: “How would I tell this to a friend?” Not: How do we adapt our Web site story for TikTok? Not: How do we reach young people? But: What does this actually sound like when a real person explains something they care about?

When competitors started hiring influencers, VG made the opposite call: They trained their own journalists to be on camera. And the data backed it up. The comment sections on influencer-fronted stories filled up with comments from people who appreciated seeing journalists doing their work. 

Being where your audience is doesn’t mean showing up. It means understanding why the platform exists for them in the first place and building for that. VG still has the clear goal to bring users back to their platform, but that also means they have to integrate their storytelling within the product.

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