After a two-year break, the International Journalism Festival was back in Perugia. Journalists from all over the world discussed pressing issues facing the news industry such as the rise of hybrid newsrooms, reader revenue models, the coverage of the climate crisis, news innovation. Here are some of the highlights of the festival, curated by the Reuters Institute's editorial team.  

1. Innovation is (also) about deciding what not to do. "One of the roles of innovation is introducing new questions to the live conversations that are always happening inside organisations," said Robin Kwong from the Wall Street Journal at an interesting panel on how to decide whether to do new things in newsrooms, moderated by Renée Kaplan from the FT. "Jumping on every new feature launched by a tech platform is not innovation," said Chris Moran from the Guardian. "An innovation has to be something that is genuinely useful for the audience or the newsroom. What I try to do now is finding interesting people in the newsroom with interesting problems to address." | Watch | Read our interview with Chris

2. Declining ad revenue may not be a bad thing. Alan Rusbridger, Chair of our Steering Committee, said the slow disappearance of ad revenue is forcing journalism to focus on the needs of readers and earn their buy-in. “The dependence on advertising is going to diminish, but we’re learning inspiring stories about how journalism is repositioning itself and demanding to be taken as a public good in the public interest.”

3. Reader revenue requires patience and habit. A panel hosted by our Head of Editorial Eduardo Suárez looked at three news organisations that run successful reader revenue models in very different countries: elDiario.es in Spain, Zetland in Denmark and Dennik N in Slovakia. "We can't take for granted the fact that people know what the need for journalism is and the sheer fact that it costs a lot of money," said Lea Korsgaard from Zetland. "If there is no habit, there is no reader revenue," said Tomáš Bella from Dennik N. "People will only pay for something they are used to using on the regular."

A second panel chaired by our Head of Leadership Development Federica Cherubini looked at what's next for the business of news. "Many newsrooms have experienced huge spikes in traffic during the pandemic and this led to conversions. The real challenge today is the retention of those new subscribers, which is incredibly difficult and quite expensive," said Renée Kaplan from the FT. "We can feel the pressure from our members when there's a controversial issue. Our editor-in-chief often writes directly to the people who want to cancel. He often manages to bring them back," said Rosalía Lloret, CEO of Spanish newspaper elDiario.es. | Watch | A thread on the reader revenue panel | A thread on the business of news panel | Read Eduardo's paper on reader revenue

4. We need urgent action from newsrooms to address hate directed at journalists. At a panel on government-directed disinformation in Brazil, our former Journalist Fellow Daniela Pinheiro said that media organisations should be ready to proactively fend off fake news and harassment. “Newsrooms should employ experts on digital so they can respond fast to any threats. You have to have your own army ready for combat." Her fellow Brazilian journalist Patrícia Campos Mello agreed that journalists targeted, who are often women, should not be left to deal with it alone: “Companies should do something. There should be an institutional response,” she said. | Watch | Read our interview with Patrícia

5. We need new perspectives and formats in the coverage of climate change. “We need to look at who's telling the story of climate change, how it is being framed, whose perspectives are being centred,” said our Deputy Director Meera Selva at one of the panels on the coverage of the climate crisis. “When it comes to climate science, it's not that we have to separate rigour and accuracy from emotions. It's not just about numbers. It's never about facts. It's always about emotion, and climate change is deeply emotional, because it's about life and death,” said Angela Morelli, CEO and co-founder of InfoDesignLab, a socially conscious information design firm.

Other speakers focused on how global warming was depicted in the news media. BBC News' environment correspondent Matt McGrath said: “In 2007, when we covered the IPCC report, it was smokestacks and polar bears. And I fast forward to now, when we're talking about migration and air pollution, and about the interconnectedness of these difficulties and the relevance to real people.” Pulitzer-winning photojournalist Michael Kodas stressed how photographs were increasingly used as an investigative tool in the coverage of climate change. "There's a real role for very good visual journalism in accountability journalism,” he said.