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“We won’t get credit for authority if we don’t convey authenticity”
It was a conference of “hard truths.”
Nieman Lab local news staff writer Sophie Culpepper and I spent yesterday at the GBH Media Summit here in Boston. The audience heard from industry and philanthropy stalwarts as well as newer voices such as climate news influencer Lauren Bash and the founder of hyperlocal news site Down in the County Andrea Bruce. But the conference was ultimately defined by its heavy public media presence, including CEOs from Detroit PBS, St. Louis-based Nine PBS, Arkansas PBS, and, naturally, GBH.
“Today, we heard a lot of hard truths about where we are,” GBH president and CEO Susan Goldberg told the audience as the summit drew to a close on Thursday.
Goldberg did not know that at 11 p.m. — just a few hours after the summit’s closing cocktail reception — Donald Trump would issue an executive order seeking to end federal funding for NPR and PBS. But the “hard truth” of a president antagonistic to the free press was in the air.
“The challenges we face will still be here tomorrow,” Goldberg said. “I do know this: people will remember how we act at this time.”
A few other takeaways from the summit:
“What’s your only?” Nine PBS CEO Amy Shaw and Arkansas PBS CEO Courtney Pledger both said focusing on what their station — and only their station — can provide was driving better decisions in their news organizations.
“Don’t just tell the truth, show the truth, show the evidence.” Marty Baron advocated for newsrooms to adopt policies of “extreme transparency” as political leaders seek to fabricate and manipulate the truth. In a world where technology, advertising, and news consumption habits are changing rapidly, Baron noted, “inertia is a decision, and a fatal one.”
Experimentation is “imperative,” Baron said, in part because the customary formal tone adopted by many major news organizations is no longer resonating. “We won’t get credit for authority if we don’t convey authenticity.”
“We have a lot of work to do, and we need to get to it,” said Texas Tribune co-founder and senior advisor at Emerson Collective Evan Smith. “There is no more important time for all of us in this room to get to work.”
‘Tis the season for journalism conferences. This week we also published datelines from Copenhagen, Denmark (where Andrew Deck attended the Nordic AI in Media Summit) and Tempe, Arizona (which hosted the Society of Environmental Journalists’ conference attended by Neel Dhanesha). You can find that on-the-ground coverage and more original reporting below.
— Sarah Scire
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“The article will die, should die, but storytelling will not”: Notes from the Nordic AI in Media SummitTopics included model building, “liquid content,” and European tech sovereignty. By Andrew Deck. |
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How Outlier is helping Detroiters get millions of dollars back from Wayne CountyThousands of Detroiters were eligible to reclaim profits after their homes were sold in tax foreclosure auctions. Outlier Media launched a massive community outreach effort to reach people eligible to file claims. By Sophie Culpepper. |
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A conference of twin crisesAt the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference, one question reigned: How do you cover an existential threat when your industry is facing an existential threat of its own? By Neel Dhanesha. |
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Trump’s first 100 days show him dictating the terms of press coverage — and following Orbán’s playbook for media controlOrbán’s campaign offered a 21st-century model for media control — one rooted not in overt censorship but in narrative saturation. By Adam G. Klein. |
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Tomorrow’s Publisher, a site about the future of news, is “powered by” an AI startupNoahWire is bringing an LLM treatment to news wire services. By Andrew Deck. |
“The 2025 edition of the non-profit’s Press Freedom Index is the first to classify the international media freedom situation as ‘difficult,’ a downgrade from its earlier ‘problematic’ status and the second-lowest grade possible….
The U.S., which had already dropped down to a ‘problematic’ overall rating, fell a further two spots from its 2024 position to 57th place, immediately behind Sierra Leone and Romania.”
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is “a private entity that is supposed to be protected from government interference, including executive orders from the president. The corporation is currently suing Trump because the White House tried to terminate three of its board members earlier this week.”