No One Can Do This Alone: Lessons from the 2026 International Journalism Festival

Information providers across the world are grappling with the same challenges: how to do more with less, how to reach audiences and how to stay financially afloat while doing work that matters. Those pressures were a common thread running through sessions at the 2026 International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, earlier this month.

Three sessions - on shared services, the rise of independent news creators and radical collaboration - approached the problem from different angles but kept arriving at the same conclusion: no one can do this work alone anymore. ICFJ+ (PLUS) team members took part in the conversations.

Speakers in a panel on shared services explained that many newsrooms are run by journalists who have strong reporting skills but no business experience. Shared services aim to fill the business and operational gaps that most newsrooms are not equipped to handle on their own by sharing support across news organizations.

Jim Brady, the principal of Spirited Media Consulting, said that for the cost of one full-time position, a newsroom could use multiple experts on an as-needed basis through shared services. Website developers, legal counsel, product managers or HR professionals would split their time across multiple media organizations. "You could rotate through that, whatever the need of the moment is," he explained.

"Everybody, as we all know, tries to reinvent the wheel. And you don't need to reinvent it most of the time," said Sharon Moshavi, the co-CEO of PLUS, the entity behind the Plus Hub, a shared services initiative. The Plus Hub, Moshavi explained, provides shared services along with co-implementation across all the foundational areas required to be a successful news and information provider. "We're helping with the deep technological needs across eight layers, starting with market validation, moving on to audience and product as foundational things before you do anything," she said.

The need for shared infrastructure extends beyond newsrooms. In a panel on creators and the future of journalism, participants described many of the same needs, particularly on the business and sustainability side.

Amy Mitchell, the executive director of the Center for News, Technology & Innovation explained that many creators want to figure out the business side of their venture but struggle to do so on their own. "As we heard over and over," she said, "going solo is very fulfilling, but it can also be exhausting and it can be lonely."

One of the ways to make a living as a news creator is to create side products rather than make audiences pay for content, said Justin Arenstein, the co-CEO of PLUS and the CEO of Code for Africa. "It's generating an audience, nurturing that audience, then converting the audience into other ways of creating revenue that is not paying for the content itself," he said. "The content is rather where you build the glue."

Local News International (LNI), the company co-founded by former "Washington Post's TikTok Guy" Dave Jorgenson, uses a similar model. In addition to advertising, LNI generates some revenue from social media platforms but mostly from the consulting side of the business, which provides advice to newsrooms around the U.S., Jorgenson said.

Shared services also offer peer support. Newsrooms and independent journalists get to learn from each other, share experiences and build on each other's successes. In essence, shared services are a form of radical collaboration.

At a time when journalism is changing so fast, radical collaboration is essential, argued participants in a panel on the topic. Collaboration is a "force amplifier," said Maggie Farley, the vice president of strategic initiatives at ICFJ. "It requires generosity, it requires a lot of trust, and it requires a shared mission. And it's not easy, but it can have great benefits. It can amplify your impact, it can reduce the costs, and it is really worth the effort."

The same urgency was reflected across all three conversations: For journalism to continue reaching audiences, we need to build the right kind of support for all information providers. As Cheryl Phillips, the founder of Big Local News in California put it, "If we can play to everybody's strengths, then we can really do great work."