Kathimerini participates in Athens University conference on future of journalism

Kathimerini was one of the main participants in the seminar on “Investigative Journalism, Innovation and Disinformation: New Perspectives in the Media” held on June 11 by the Department of Communication and Mass Media of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (EKPA).

During the conference, the importance of investigative journalism and innovative approaches that strengthen the digital transformation of the media were highlighted, while tools and journalistic practices were proposed to combat disinformation.

At the start of the conference, IQ Media, a European hub for supporting the digital transformation of news organizations, was presented by the project coordinator and professor in the Department of Communication and Media at EKPA Konstantinos Mourlas and Catherine Sotirakou, director of IQ Media Hub at EKPA.

The aim of the program is to support the digital transformation of news organizations, upgrade the digital skills of media professionals and promote cross-border collaborations.

“The New Technologies Laboratory of EKPA has invested in recent years in new scientific fields of communication. Specifically, in data journalism, in artificial intelligence and its applications in journalistic practice, in the utilization of new business models and in the personalization of content and the targeting of readers based on their preferences,” said Mourlas.

“With the IQ Media project we set a high goal… To transfer this knowledge to professional journalists in order to improve the quality of reporting in the media by leveraging new digital practices but also to lead media organizations in a digital transformation that offers new business possibilities and financing opportunities,” he added.

He also noted that “our scientific presence and recognition of our work is reflected in the actions of disseminating our results through the IQ Media project, while ideas for the commercial exploitation of our new products and ideas are slowly starting to mature within the context of the project.”

For her part, Sotirakou emphasized that “the objective of the hub is to bring the academic community together with the news organizations, so that both the research produced and the innovative artificial intelligence applications that we build in the Department of Communication and Media do not stay in the drawers, but they become useful tools in newsrooms in Greece and abroad. The seminar marked the beginning of a series of free educational activities on artificial intelligence, new business models and marketing, which will be addressed to professional journalists from Greece and the other countries participating in the hub.”

Thodoris Giaouzis, head of customer relationship management at Kathimerini, presented the features of the subscription service of kathimerini.gr, a pioneering development for the Greek media landscape, since the adoption of digital subscriptions in Greece, unlike abroad, was nascent, with many publications relying primarily on advertising revenue. He explained the development process of the platform and how readers can access exclusive content, ensuring a browsing experience enriched with cutting-edge technology.

“I had the pleasure of speaking at the IQ Media Hub kickoff, sharing insights from kathimerini.gr’s journey toward the introduction of a reader’s revenue model. Together with other speakers, we discussed the challenges that news publishers are facing these days, such as the need for trustworthy investigative journalism, the use of AI in news production and revenue diversification through the introduction of subscription models. As kathimerini.gr, we want to strengthen our collaboration with IQ Media Hub and academic institutions in order to inform students and young graduates about the evolution of digital news publishing,” he noted.

Kathimerini’s investigative journalist Yiannis Papadopoulos shared his valuable experience in a panel discussion on “Investigative Journalism and Innovation,” about the value of research in highlighting complex issues, underlining at the same time the need to cross-reference the final information with the aim of credibility.

“Journalism is evolving, it now has new media, platforms and tools at its disposal. But this does not change the way of work, how a journalist must filter and evaluate information, how he must approach sources and delve into the issues he deals with. The conference gave us the opportunity to highlight this and exchange experiences with other journalists. For the students, I think it served as a source of inspiration and gave them a first glimpse of what they will encounter in the newsroom,” said Papadopoulos.

The above conference was conducted under the program “IQ Media: A Collaborative Framework Towards Business Transformation, Innovation, Quality Journalism, and Advanced Digital Skills in the Media Environment Covering Greece, Cyprus, France and Portugal” – IQMedia, Project ID 101112285, co-funded by the European Union