28 November 2025 · 3 min read

If your Journalism is not mission-led, what is it? Insights from Newsrewired 2025.

Reflections from Newsrewired 2025 on mission-led journalism, subscriptions, personality-led products and authentic reader relationships.

There’s lots of complex conversations happening right now about how to help journalists cut through the AI noise and the solutions offered are often complex themselves.

But sometimes someone says something quite simple - and it hits you like a sledgehammer.

That’s what it felt like listening to Jakob Moll from Zetland at Newsrewired. Jakob is a very charismatic speaker, opting for personal stories over slides and this format reflects his editorial strategy - reconnecting audiences with news through authentic relationships.

I really enjoyed his talk because he spoke about the traffic paradigm: that moment when you’re launching a news brand where the audience starts becoming a faceless blob behind the analytics dashboard.

For Uusi Juttu, personality-led journalism IS the brand, replacing the polished veneer of the traditional newsroom with authentic Kodak moments. Their audio output aims to fit into the precious attention economy.

It was an inspiring talk and I wondered for a moment how newsrooms would change if you took away all targets with only subscription growth remaining.

Likewise, it was interesting to hear Liz Wynn from The Guardian about not only their mission-led approach to journalism, but also how they deploy their subscription teams when there is a traffic spike. The team identifies trending articles that are leading to conversions and amplifies their reach.

The mission-led point was critical in both speeches. Mission-led journalism doesn’t have to be a natural reflection of a more partisan media environment. As the Uusi Juttu example shows, it can be more about editorial transparency - demonstrating what you do as a newsroom to an audience that may not understand the function of journalism and who might engage more with creators than journalists.

I’d also call out the general head-nodding around the room when the speakers mentioned that simply taking moments to thank readers for their attention or membership always pays dividends.

It’s like my aunt always says, saying thanks doesn’t cost a penny.