Reports

Resourcing, technology & audiences: An industry-led agenda for journalism practice and research (2025)

This report brings together key findings from a half-day, in-person industry roundtable held in late September 2025 that aimed to better facilitate exchanges between industry and academia. Industry participants were drawn from four key segments of the Australian news sector: (i) journalism associations; (ii) large commercial media; (iii) small/independent/community media; and (iv) public media.

The roundtable discussion was divided into two halves, the first focusing on industry challenges and the second on how research can help address these challenges. The challenges identified in the first half of the workshop have been thematically grouped across four areas: (i) Resourcing and personnel; (ii) The influence of technology; (iii) News audiences; and (iv) Sector environment and impact. For the second half, participants identified various ways in which researchers can support industry. These included whole-sector studies of the viability of different digital business models, as well as research on how and in which ways government advertising is supporting Australian journalism. Further researching the news needs of local and regional communities was also called for. Participants identified influencers as an emerging actor whose impact and quality needs to be assessed, as well as for more research on Australian AI literacy.

Engaged journalism in the heartland: understanding regional news audiences (2025)

Local news often serves as the primary source of information about the community and is an essential platform for civic participation. However, the provision of local news in regional Australia is declining, while audience needs are shifting. This report investigates the gap between journalistic norms and audiences’ perception through an empirical investigation of what audiences want from local news and how they might be involved in the production and dissemination of news.

The report pays special attention to visual news given that smartphones are an important part of the local news landscape, both in its production and consumption. To better understand how audience participation can strengthen the relationship with local news media, the concept of engaged journalism was applied.

The study confirms a void in the provision of local news as news organisations struggle to find optimal business models to serve the local community. It also finds that the shift to digital in regional news has enabled a unique news ecosystem where audiences are actively engaged in the generation of news through digital platforms, especially using visual formats.

The report includes key recommendations for the local news industry and stakeholders.

Generative AI & journalism: Content, journalistic perceptions, and audience experiences (2025)

This empirical report aims to familiarise the reader with a wide array of AI in journalism use cases, provide grounding on the legal and ethical issues that journalists and audiences identify regarding this technology within journalism, and reveal news audiences’ expectations regarding how this technology should or should not be used. The report ends with a series of questions for journalists and news organisations to consider as they work through their experimentation with and guidelines around AI use in journalism.

This report brings together six discrete research and engagement activities over a three-year period (2022-24), drawing on fieldwork in seven countries (Australia, Germany, USA, UK, Norway, Switzerland, and France), and focuses on AI in journalism within three broad domains: AI-generated content in journalism, journalists’ perceptions of and use of AI in journalism, and news audiences’ perceptions of and reactions to this technology being used in journalism.