SvdJ Incubator · Workshop
Suppose journalists ran their own distribution platform. What would they want to govern, and what would they rather hand off?
We are organizing this workshop as researchers within the SvdJ Incubator programme. With eight people working in or around journalism, we will explore one question: if journalists take more control over their own distribution, which choices do they actually want to make themselves?
When Thursday 11 June, 15:30 to 17:30, followed by drinks.
Where Waag Futurelab, Nieuwmarkt 4, Amsterdam.
Who Eight participants with mixed backgrounds: e.g. freelance journalists, members of a journalism collective, newsroom staff, and tech or product people at a news organisation.
Compensation Participants receive €100 compensation for taking part.
The problem
The distribution of journalism is now largely in the hands of a handful of big technology companies. Google, Meta, and now also generative AI platforms shape what gets seen and read. For independent journalists and small newsrooms, that position keeps tightening: traffic is falling, dependence is growing, and the people writing the rules do not work in the Netherlands and are not journalists themselves.
One possible alternative is a shared platform built on open protocols, owned by the journalism sector itself. That would put decisions about recommendations and moderation back in journalists' hands, instead of leaving them to the major platforms.
Current: choices about moderation, curation and distribution sit outside the sector.
Proposed: those choices move into the sector. But who should actually make them?
The idea is appealing, but unfinished. Who decides which articles appear in a shared feed? Who moderates, and on what grounds? Who safeguards journalistic standards? How much infrastructure do you need to run yourself before you can say the platform is really yours? Which decisions belong to a members' council, which to an editor, and which to the operational staff? There are multiple possible answers to all of these questions, and each one shifts where power actually sits.
What this research is about
Within the SvdJ Incubator programme, we are working toward forms of shared governance for journalistic distribution. That means we need to get clear on which choices journalists want to make themselves, and which they would rather leave to others. This session helps us understand where a say really matters, and where it doesn't.
That's why we put concrete dilemmas in front of participants. For example: a new paying reader joins the platform and doesn't follow anyone yet. Which accounts should the platform recommend first? The well-known journalist with reach and reputation? Or a promising new voice that doesn't yet have a large audience? During the session, we work through several situations like this — questions without an obvious answer.
Why take part
This session is for people who see in their own work how dependent journalism has become on large platforms, and who want to help think through how that could work differently. You'll be at the table while the design question is still open, before the choices are fixed. The outcomes go back to the SvdJ network and appear in our research output, with participants named if they want to be. We'll close with drinks, snacks, and time to keep talking with people working through the same questions.