🔶 #26: Hope is a strategy.

Hello news alchemists! How have you been? Welcome back to another edition of this hope-full newsletter.

And a first welcome to new subscribers from Zetland, Diálogo Chino, Investigate Europe, FT Strategies, Clean Energy Wire, Corriere della Sera, iMEdD, and Fix The News. Let me know if how much you enjoy what you read in here 😉

I've been back from Chicago for a little more than one week (context here if you need it) and it was an intense week because I've given myself no time to recover – going to two full-day events in the span of six days, while the jet-lag was still living rent-free in my head. (Admittedly, not my smartest move.)

It was worth it though, because I got to meet many of you at The Audiencers Festival, where I was treated to a very pleasant surprise when Madeleine, the host of the event, brought the News Alchemists Venn diagram™️ on stage as part of her opening speech.

The Venn diagram – best experienced here – is a visual representation of the News Alchemists' vision: our journalism must create value for people and society to mean anything (the light blue circle on the left); and we also need to get people's attention and make money to support what we do (the purple circle on the right).

Everything we do must sit at the intersection of the two circles = our aim should be to offer products and experiences that create so much value for people's lives that they will want to pay for them (if they can). Or in other words:

A sustainable future for journalism is not a dream: we'll earn it by relentlessly focusing on serving people’s needs and curiosity, and the benefit of society.

I used to obsess a little about this Venn diagram, to the point that I made an entire presentation about it at Media Party in Buenos Aires last year. Conveniently, the video of that presentation was just made available on YouTube last week – and shared on social in his usual creative way by Nico.