Onwards and upwards

The previous year was a transformative period for the Public Interest Journalism Initiative.

Our main work switched from academic research to advocacy, but the purpose of our organisation remained the same: to support a diverse and sustainable future for public interest journalism.

In a time of upheaval for the industry, PIJI aims to shed light on the biggest changes and issues affecting the work of journalists in Australia and abroad.

As an independent advocacy organisation, every click and share helps.

We would like to extend a big thank you to subscribers, supporters and those who shared their insights with us throughout the year.

Here’s to 2026!

We appreciate your support. Please consider forwarding this newsletter to someone interested in the sustainability of public interest journalism and its importance to the survival of democracy.

Journalists put to the test as Australia grappled with Bondi attack

The Bondi Beach terror attack brought Australia to a halt – and simultaneously pushed newsrooms into overdrive, rushing to report the latest updates on the country’s deadliest mass shooting since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

Industry predictions and priorities for 2026

The journalism community shared hopes for what the future may hold for the industry – and what must be done to ensure the good changes outweigh the bad.

PIJI’s 2025 highlights

In case you missed any PIJI updates, or fancy a reread, here are our top 10 most-clicked pieces from 2025.

ICYMI: Industry updates

Australia

• Following the Bondi massacre, the Centre for Journalism and Trauma Asia Pacific released guidelines for newsroom leaders on how to protect the mental and emotional wellbeing of journalists covering traumatic events.
• A merger between Seven West Media and Southern Cross Media Group is set to go ahead after an overwhelming majority of Seven West shareholders voted in favour of the move.
  The merged entity will be led by Seven West Media CEO Jeff Howard, and will be called Southern Cross Media until a new name is chosen. Kerry Stokes will step down as chairman to be replaced by Southern Cross chairman Heith Mackay-Cruise.
  The merged entity will own 104 radio stations, a national TV network, a national online newspaper and newspapers across WA.
• A LINA survey of 77 news organisations found 34 per cent identified their news organisation’s future as being uncertain or at-risk. However, 2025 saw some growth, with median full-time equivalent staffing, revenue and monthly website visitors rising from the previous year.
  The results reinforced the importance of advertising spend in journalism, with advertising listed as the top revenue source by the surveyed news organisations, followed by audiences (subscriptions and donations) and grants.
• The MEAA announced an enterprise agreement with Private Media. Aside from a four per cent annual wage increase for three years, agreement included a commitment to not replace human workers with AI; six days of paid cultural and ceremonial leave for First Nations workers per year, and; eight days of paid reproductive health leave per year for all workers.
• News Corp Australia launched its Corporate Copyright Licence, which will allow licensees to download, share and copy the publisher’s content, including for AI prompts.
• The ABC announced its new social media initiative, ABC News Loop, which will focus on delivering fact-based explainers specifically developed for social media.
• Three board directors resigned from The Walkley Foundation, citing resistance from the MEAA to changing governance structure to allow for increased independent oversight.

Around the World

• In Bangladesh, media outlets came under attack, with the offices of Prothom Alo and The Daily Star torched by mobs triggered by the killing of political activist Sharif Osman Hadi, a leading figure of the country’s 2024 July Revolution that toppled Sheikh Hasina’s government.
  Journalists and staff were trapped in the burning buildings, and firefighters who attempted rescues were reportedly attacked.
  The newspapers may have been targeted for being perceived as pro-Hasina and pro-India (where Hasina is currently sheltering), though both publishers say they are independent. Bangladesh ranks 149 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.
• CBS News drew criticism after editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulled a 60 Minutes story hours before it was set to air. The episode investigated the El Salvador prison which received hundreds of Venezuelans deported from the US by the Trump administration earlier this year.
  Weiss said she held the episode because “it wasn’t ready”. But the segment’s key correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said the episode had been screened and cleared by “CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices”, and labelled Weiss’ decision as political, not editorial.
  Weiss’ decision proved to be for nought as the segment was “mistakenly” streamed in Canada and clips rapidly went viral online.
• US President Donald Trump followed through on his threat to file a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the BBC over edited footage of a speech made by Trump on the day of 2021 Capitol attack.
  In the lawsuit filed in Florida, Trump said despite the BBC’s apology, the organisation “has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses”.
  Since regaining office, Trump launched legal action against multiple news media companies, including CBS and the New York Times.
• Reporters Without Borders’ 2025 round-up found almost half of the journalists slain in the past 12 months were killed in Gaza by Israeli armed forces. Following Palestine, Mexico and Sudan were listed as the most dangerous countries for journalists due to targeting by cartels and groups such as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, respectively.
  Worldwide, 67 journalists were killed in 2025 and 503 are currently detained, according to the report.
• A Reuters Institute and University of Oxford report found more than half of UK journalists use AI professionally at least once a week.
  Survey respondents said they used AI most frequently for language-processing tasks, such as transcription/captioning, translation and copy-editing. They also used AI for more substantive journalistic tasks such as story research, brainstorming, fact-checking and generating first drafts of text articles.
  Reporting beats and number of expected outputs appear to be a factor in AI use; 43 per cent of business journalists using AI professionally at least weekly compared with 21 per cent of lifestyle journalists, and the more media formats journalists produced in, the more frequent their professional use of AI.
• Really Simple Licensing (RSL) 1.0 was released with the endorsement from the likes of Yahoo, The Associated Press and the Guardian. RSL 1.0 is an open standard that aims to allow publishers to define licensing and compensation terms for their content scraped by AI companies, while also automating the compensation and attribution process.
• Lawyers for Reporters Canada was launched by the Canadian Association of Journalists, the University of King’s College and the Canadian Media Lawyers Association. The initiative will provide a range of pro bono legal services to newsrooms, such as pre-publication reviews and responses to actions interfering with public interest journalistic newsgathering.
• The OCCRP and Anti-Corruption Data Collective launched the Illicit Finance Data Lab, an initiative aimed at strengthening collaboration between investigative journalists, academic researchers and data scientists to expose and understand corruption and dirty money flows. 

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