AI, revenue, audience trust dominate Digital Media India 2026

Digital Media India (DMI) 2026 convened 140 media executives from over 50 organisations. Now in its 15th edition, the conference remains a key forum for South Asia’s news publishers on digital transformation, revenue development, and emerging technologies.

From institution to destination: How Tagesspiegel is rebuilding the reader relationship

Germany’s Tagesspiegel has been at the centre of an AI scandal that renews questions of AI and trust in journalism – but inside the Berlin daily, a quiet revolution to future-proof the 80-year-old newsroom is in full stride.

Can you stop the use of AI on opinion pages? 

News organisations are extending their AI guardrails to insist on disclosures on contributions received for opinion pages. Amid reports that high profile authors had used AI to develop arguments and help write articles, new guidelines are being written to help protect publications’ integrity – and retain trust.

A.G. Sulzberger set us a challenge. Join us to explain why journalism matters

World News Day 2026 offers a rare opportunity for the news industry to speak with one voice. David Walmsley and Stig Ørskov urge you to sign up now to join the campaign and help signal that journalism matters.

Reuters’ Barrett on why people matter more than tech in AI transformation

For all the attention being paid to artificial intelligence in newsrooms, Jane Barrett said the harder part of AI transformation is not technological but human. Success depends more on communication, culture and leadership, she said.

‘If you can’t get people to pay for your product, the problem is in your product’: Newslaundry’s co-founder

For Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, the case for subscriptions rests on a single idea: purity of message.

How publishers are leveraging Substack for new audiences

Substack offers creators around the world a platform where they own their audience and can experiment with products and services that are either free or paid while building engagement outside of their normal subscriber base.

Brut India bet on platform users over news consumers – and it paid off

Mehak Kasbekar, Editor-in-Chief of Brut India, traced the product strategy behind the outlet’s growth during the past eight years to a single founding choice: skip owned infrastructure and build directly on social media, where the audience already lived.

Inspired tactics: A news subscription series – part 1, first-party data and the first 100 days

In this series, Bihag Karnani, a senior product manager at Google, addresses some solutions to key questions that he sees publishers trying to answer by using the data and lessons learned the technology industry has found for converting readers into paying subscribers. He will also share examples of how publishers have used these concepts and their results.

From ‘messy’ to strategic: A framework for newsroom-creator partnerships

The appeal is obvious: creators have the reach, newsrooms have the credibility. Bridging those worlds has proven far from straightforward. Adriana Lacy spent two years in the trenches of creator collaborations – and presented a framework born from hard-won lessons at the 77th World News Media Congress in Marseille.