Global winners of Digital Media Awards 2026 honoured at Marseille Congress

WAN-IFRA today announced the global winners of the Digital Media Awards 2026, honouring digital news publishers and innovators across 12 categories at the 77th World News Media Congress in Marseille.

Inside VG’s ‘speedboat’ strategy to outpace AI and rethink legacy news products

The Norwegian publisher’s app, VGX, is a radical reimagining of the traditional news product. Functioning as an agile “speedboat,” the project experiments with new formats without risking the core brand, serving as a testing ground to future-proof VG’s legacy website and app.

‘It’s not a transaction, it’s a choice’: Guardian’s Katharine Viner on hope, reader revenue and an enviable ownership model

Ten years ago, the Guardian made what was widely seen as a rather crazy bet. Instead of putting up a paywall, they decided to start asking readers to donate to them, while keeping all of their journalism freely available. Even now, it’s something very few publishers are willing to try.

Mind the gaps: How tomorrow’s newsrooms are bridging today’s divides

Integrated, non-hierarchical, agile and engaging: inaugural Future Newsrooms report outlines glaring disconnects within the fragmented news publishing industry by identifying core shifts – and showing how tomorrow’s newsrooms are evolving to meet them, today.

A crisis of connection, not content: Inside Spilnews’ GenZ model

Information is everywhere, connection isn’t. That’s the gap Spilnews, a Dutch newsroom is building around. Its model puts themes before creators and treats community as a reporting resource, not just a distribution channel.

NYT’s Sulzberger condemns AI giants for ‘brazen theft of intellectual property’

“Some tech leaders will portray my comments today as anti-AI. As defending the old status quo. As yet another ossified institution lashing out at the innovators who are driving the forward march of progress.” – A.G. Sulzberger

2026 WAN-IFRA Golden Pen of Freedom acceptance speech

“When journalists are killed, when they are labelled enemies, when they are shut out — it is not just the journalists who suffer. It is everyone who depends on the truth.”

2026 WAN-IFRA Golden Pen of Freedom award speech

“We award the Golden Pen of Freedom to an amalgam of journalists who against all the odds, including the killing of colleagues and family members, have persevered in the most grotesque circumstances – to honour the memories of those killed and to ensure the world can never say – we didn’t know.”

With trust on the line, Prisa Media prioritises diligent AI governance over speedy rollouts

When the likes of Prisa Media, the world’s largest Spanish-language media group, deliberately puts the brakes on rolling out its AI development programme, it’s worth knowing why. Olalla Novoa Ojea, Head of AI at Prisa, explained why building governance into the system took priority over speed of rollout; all in the name of trust.

(More) lessons learned from WAN-IFRA’s AI Catalyst accelerator programme

Sceptical of AI evangelists in love with the shiny thing for its own sake? You’re not alone. The good news is that learnings from WAN-IFRA’s Newsroom AI Catalyst accelerator programme make it clear; AI only succeeds when it solves real newsroom problems, and it can only do that when working in partnership with people.