My personal experience with change
Much of Change-Centric Journalism is informed by my own experience as the co-founder and editorial director of Paraguayan digital news outlet, El Surtidor. Known fondly to our audience as El Surti, we have managed to earn a place in a media space captured by economic and political interests over the past 10 years.
We broke through barriers with our award-winning visual journalism – a mix of reporting with images that drive attention, such as memes.¹⁴ Our work has been praised locally and internationally as a prime example of how newsrooms can make information more accessible and shareable to new audiences.
Our tagline at El Surti is “Information for action”. Over the past two years we have been fine-tuning our workflows to ensure that action is realised. As our workflows have evolved, so has our mission: we are starting to see ourselves as facilitators of connections around information that drive change.
But as El Surti has advanced, so has my sense that a fundamental discussion is missing: one that the hype around formats will not address. I started to question where we are all heading in this race for attention.
My disquiet has unfolded against a backdrop already discussed: plummeting referral traffic, an issue that will only worsen with the disruption of AI.¹⁵ More recently, the realignment of Big Tech to Trump’s explicit contempt toward journalism – evident in Meta’s suspension of its fact-checking programme days before inauguration – has been a watershed moment for the industry.¹⁶
It brought into focus the troubled relationship journalism has built with the most powerful elite. The situation not only raises ethical concerns, but leaves us with the question of whether we can continue relying at all on platforms to reach people.
Over the past five years, I have encountered a growing network of editors, journalists, impact producers, researchers, media consultants and other practitioners who are discussing, collaborating and testing potential solutions to the above challenges.¹⁷
At the International Press Institute World Congress & Media Innovation Festival in 2023, I was on a panel with colleagues from Botswana and the UK, discussing ways to make journalism more engaging and more impactful.¹⁸
Among the reflections was the need to shift away from breaking news and towards sensemaking. There was also a call to take audiences more seriously and listen to them. My co-panellist Kulkarni summarised: “Journalism might be the only industry where the customer is always wrong.”
¹⁴ Global Investigative Journalism Network. (2023). Thriving on change: El Surtidor’s Groundbreaking Multi-Platform Visual Journalism. Retrieved from https://gijn.org/stories/thriving-on-change-el-surtidors-groundbreaking-multi-platform-visual-journalism/
¹⁵ Jaźwińska, K. (2025). A new report takes on the future of news and search. Columbia Journalism Review. Available at: https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/new-report-future-ai-search-google-openai-altman-perplexity-gemini-apple-llm-artificial.php
¹⁶ Chequeado. (2025). Fact-checking is not censorship: it’s a tool that empowers citizens. Retrieved from https://chequeado.com/el-fact-checking-no-es-censura-es-una-herramienta-que-empodera-ciudadanos/
¹⁷ Three initiatives that are worth checking out: the lessons from the Membership Puzzle Project by Ariel Zirulnick; ICFJ fellow Mattia Peretti and his unrelenting search for the purpose of journalism in his newsletter News Alchemists; and News Futures, a US-based community of practice where journalists, organisers, educators and more are thinking how to make journalism more participatory, service-oriented and reparative.
¹⁸ International Press Institute. (2023). Making journalism more engaging and more impactful for people. Retrieved from https://ipi.media/ipiwoco-recap-making-journalism-more-engaging-and-impactful-for-more-people/