The Davos of journalism takes place in Perugia, Italy

Hundreds of global experts in the media industry gather each year in Perugia, Italy, to talk about the past and future. Some of the items on the schedule look particularly interesting, so I have started putting together my personal agenda.

Thursday April 2  

Local journalism
Reinventing local news: how digital transformation works for small and medium-sized newsrooms
09:30 - 10:30 thursday 2/04/2020 - Sala della Vaccara, Palazzo dei Priori. On the panel are Alexandra Borchardt, Catarina Carvalho, Matteo Rainisio, Hannah Suppa.


Collaborative journalism
Enemies to friends: how news companies can partner for survival
10:45 - 11:45 thursday 2/04/2020 - Sala del Dottorato. On the panel are Jane Barrett of Reuters and Guido Baumhauer of Deutsche Welle.

Travel
Digital travel journalism: marrying creativity and technology
12:00 - 13:00 thursday 2/04/2020 - Palazzo Sorbello. On the panel are Ana Banas of the BBC, Nicoletta Crisponi, Brekke Fletcher of CNN, and Dmitry Shishkin of Culture Trip.

12 road maps for sustainable digital media worldwide

Renaissance maps showed monsters, hazards to avoid.

The future of journalism is increasingly digital, mobile, and in flux. It is unexplored territory. 

Like the explorers and navigators of the Renaissance, various organizations – governments, NGOs, journalism groups, and universities, among others – have been trying to map the most promising routes to sustainability in the new media ecosystem. 

It's not just about making money; it's about providing news and information crucial to a democratic society. 

Versión en español 

(At left, a map from Chet Van Duzer's book Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps. Click to enlarge.)

As traditional news media organizations have lost revenues, laid off employees, and reduced coverage, new digital media have emerged as important players in providing public-service journalism, especially on the local level.

Databases and promising routes

Researchers from a variety of organizations have created databases of thousands of new digital media to study best practices and find new models for sustainability. Below are the 12 studies that I have found useful, mostly taken from a paper I presented at the World Media Economics and Management Conference May 5 at Fordham University in New York City.

On 5 continents, thousands of digital media startups

Versión en español.

As traditional media organizations cut back on staff and coverage, thousands of new digital media are popping up all over the world to fill the gaps.

I've compiled 14 lists of startups below. Some startups are included on more than one list. Can you think of any lists that I've left out?

Many of the organizations that compile lists also share tutorials, especially on revenue-generating models, to help others launch and sustain their news sites. Sustainability is the Holy Grail. Part of the reason digital media are springing up is because of the gaps left by cuts in coverage and staff at major media (graphic below, from Mark J. Perry's Carpe Diem blog via Clay Shirky's Medium post, "Last Call").

Mark J. Perry's graphic shows newspaper decline. A digital opportunity?

United States

1. The Pew Center has done a study of 178 nonprofit journalism websites with a detailed breakdown of their business models, "Nonprofit Journalism: A Growing but Fragile Part of the U.S. News System."

Gigaom followed up with an analysis of the study, and the Knight Foundation sponsored a roundtable discussion on the topic, with videos of the sessions.